The Dreams of a Dying Man
A cancer patient tricks his friends into dating each other in order to spy on them and reveal their lies so that he can truly know them before its too late. (warning: 11,368 words)
If you’re reading this… I am dead.
Those are heavy words for a person to write. Maybe you knew me, maybe you didn’t. It doesn’t matter to me who picks this up. I just know that by the end of this journal—whether I use up all the pages or not—the cancer will catch up to me.
I wonder how many journal entries have started just like this. I wonder how many people have been sitting in a hospital bed, hooked up to machinery, writing their last set of words reluctantly.
In case this turns out to be a very short journal, here is what I would say if I knew I only had 8 hours left.
My name is Emeril D’Arenberg. Some people call me Em. I am 20 years old. You may have some idea of what my life is like. You may be able to imagine my bald head and my bad days of chemotherapy. But you cannot fathom my dreams. I always thought I’d be an inspirational public speaker, mostly because I thought I would win the battle against my cancer.
But that is not the case.
Now all my dreams are dreams about you. I wish you would take life more seriously. I am in no position to judge you for how you spend your time. That’s not what this is about. This is about you, my intended audience. You treat your life as worthless, and your judgments against others devalue their inherent worth.
The problem is that we have all been taught to devalue life. Your job might tell you that an hour of your life is worth $12.56, just because you are young, and you have no experience. This means that an hour of your life is equal to a meal at a fast-food restaurant. This means an hour of your life is worth half as much as a shirt. A day of your life is worth $301.44. A brand-new Lamborghini is worth 2 years of a minimum wage employee’s life, and that’s assuming that every hour of their life is paid for, which it is not.
You are being programed to suffer a worthless life. You are being taught that you do not matter to the world. This could not be farther from the truth. Life isn’t valuable because it can be exploited. Life is valuable because every person is unique, every breath is a gift, and there are no other planets where life can survive.
But I’m sure you know this already even if you choose not to believe me.
I think—though I may be wrong—that it was Stephen King who said writing is a portal through time. So, though I am dead, you are essentially talking to the living Emeril D’Arenberg. And for as long as I continue to write, the portal through time remains open a little longer. I fear that you see hope in my writings; hope that I am not gone forever. And though you may reread this journal, spilling tears onto its pages, no one can undo the inevitable truth that this journal does in fact end.
The thing is nothing ever ends in what every single person sees as a convenient place. Maybe that’s an exaggeration of the point I want to make, but I’ll stick with it. When you read a really good book, a part of you doesn’t want it to end, and a part of you knows that there is nothing that can go on forever. I don’t know why, but I saw reaching the end of books as an accomplishment. Perhaps that’s just the avid reader in me who wants to read a new book every week. But I would hope that you see the end of this as an accomplishment. Not in the sense that you want to see it end, but in the sense that you are proud of me for making it so far. You are proud that an author has finished their work because then you can read it and celebrate it. And until I die, no one will be able to read this.
In reading books to pass the time, I find that the authors infect me with their dreams and visions, and that is why I dream of everyone but myself. I am outside of society, living life through others. The adventurous and daring human spirit baffles me. It is truly amazing how complex the lives of others are. Sometimes I believe I was handed this life specifically to become an audience member. Even a writer is an audience to their imagination, a cameraman for that which does not yet exist.
My friend Jason is a professional liar, or at least, he lies so much he ought to be. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between objective reality and the reality Jason has made for himself. Sometimes there is no point in sniffing out a lie. In Jason’s world, he is a genius that was given his college degree early, and that is why he never attended. No shade against people who do not attend college—it’s not like I will get the chance to finish my degree anyway. His girlfriend is the doppelganger of an Instagram model, and this girlfriend just so happens to be too good for social media, so there are no readily available pictures of this doppelganger to compare with the Instagram model (a little confusing, I know).
I think Jason lies because he is uncomfortable in many situations. He likely doesn’t want to tell me about his real life because he doesn’t want to make me feel bad that his life is better than mine just because he doesn’t have cancer. The bar for having a better life than me is pretty low. So, we indulge in absurd fantasies so that he can talk to me. But somewhere hidden under obvious lies is the truth. It’s clear to me that Jason is not some loser who lies to make himself look better or lies for attention. He lies just for me, and when I dream of his real life, I find a man who dislikes lies that are used for a person’s gain. He is not what he appears to be. I think he is generally kind, but the depths of real life are too uncomfortable and constricting for him to show his heart. And by that I mean that the opportunity to do something nice for another person is rarely given, and for most people who have that opportunity, they do not take it. Philanthropy is only ever done to appease karma, and the greatest good most of us can do on a daily basis is holding open a door.
I think everyone wants to be good. That’s very naïve of me to say, I know. I think the problem is that being good is an active commitment with no room for mistakes. Being a good person isn’t always rewarding; that’s why people believe in afterlives where the good people go to the good place and the bad people go to the bad place.
I don’t know where I’m going after life. I mean, I believe in heaven and all that stuff, but the anxious part of me wonders if there’s a secret rule I’ve broken. Who knows what God secretly thinks is an unforgivable sin? I sure don’t. But I do like to believe that all cancer patients make it to heaven although that is biased of me to believe.
You know, I don’t think Jason has accepted the fact that I am going to die. It hasn’t sunk in yet. I want to chat with him about it, but I’m afraid he’ll deflect. So Jason, this is what I want you to know after I die.
I appreciate your attempts to make yourself and me more comfortable, but you must know that deflection and lies can make things harder and more uncomfortable. Thank you for trying to make me feel better. But I wish I could have heard about your real life a little more. My dreams can’t decide if your life was going well or poorly because either way, you would hide the truth from me. You couldn’t complain. You couldn’t brag. So all I have left of you are far too obvious lies. Because of you, I have stopped drawing lines between reality and dreams, and I fear that my accounts of future events will be unreliable. That is, if I’m alive to document future events at all. I think under normal circumstances, I would be frustrated with your lies, so don’t think for a second that you did the right thing. But lying in bed for hours and hours every day with nothing but books, internet, and people, makes me realize that fiction isn’t so bad after all. If reality is cancer, then fiction is the life I’m not allowed to live except in my own head.
I’m sorry if that’s harsh, Jason. But we do have to be uncomfortable sometimes, just as we have to have times for happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. Real emotion is not an abnormal thing. The world can’t keep pretending that we can’t express our true feelings without it being weird. What’s weird is being happy all the time and pretending like nothing is wrong. What’s weird is the calm and almost emotionless delivery of news anchors, yet that’s how they want us to be.
I know that many people are fighting the wrong fight while filled with anger. I see it everyday while sitting in bed and looking through the internet.
And now for you, Dahlia, I must explain how we met for the sake of this journal. My friend Dahlia once was in the hospital with leukemia, but when that happened, she was just a child. An angel blessed Dahlia, or at least, that’s why I think she lived. We met in a sort of motivational program the hospital runs where cancer survivors come to meet with cancer patients to give them hope. It’s mostly a one and done program, but I asked her for her contact information anyway. I suppose she either liked me or felt some guilt at the fact that I was not going to be as lucky as her. I suppose my friendship is not a big commitment if you see the friendship as something you want to be done with. But on the other hand, the emotional toll will eventually be collected, and the toll is tremendous for any who connect with me even briefly.
I think it was in Fight Club that Chuck Palahniuk wrote, when you’re dying, people really listen to you. Dahlia always listened to me intently, asking questions and mostly keeping me talking. I think she wanted to make sure that I said everything on my mind before no one would hear my voice or my thoughts ever again.
This journal belongs to all who read it, but I think Dahlia is the reason this journal exists at all. She made my thoughts, experiences, and dreams feel important. She encouraged me to talk about books, knowing that it was all I had right now. And if I’m going to read so much, I might as well write as much as I can.
We once talked about how most of the books I read are pretty dark in some capacity.
I said, “I don’t think you can make a very good book without a little darkness.”
“Why not?”
“Even kid’s media has villains. I just don’t think you can tell a good story without something being wrong. But I guess conflict isn’t the same as darkness. Maybe it’s because there are infinite ways to be dark. Maybe it’s about escaping your own problems by reading something infinitely worse. Or maybe it’s just that darkness is inherent to humanity. On some level, we’re all a little selfish. Our intentions aren’t always pure. So maybe in darkness, we see something we recognize even if it’s not something we would give in to.”
“Hmm, do you think you have a dark mind?”
“I guess not. I… well… I wonder if I’ve seen a few things that are a bit too dark. Read a few books that are too disgusting. Sometimes I think the mild fascination is wearing off. But I don’t know what other things I should read that won’t bore me to death.”
I get a dull feeling now writing this that I almost think is a bit of depression. I think we can all get swept up in the highs that permit us to write with a sense of humor, and we forget what it is like to dredge through the writings of ourselves and others. Perhaps I’ve been in this bed too long feeling ill. I wish I could get out. It’s weird this feeling that’s come over me all of a sudden. I think it has something to do with the revelation about dark books. It just reminds me that I can’t do all that much except read. I think I need a break…
If the rest of these pages are blank, I’m sorry that I didn’t write more for you. But I don’t think you would want to hear my spontaneous thoughts for Dahlia in this state. But I guess I should jot down a couple of notes just in case.
§ Dahlia, I wish we had met under different circumstances.
§ I wish there were better things we could have talked about besides the media I was able to absorb from the discomfort of my bed.
§ I love you. Take that however you want to.
The Portal stays open for a moment longer.
I am doing moderately better than yesterday. The dull feeling of depression is mostly gone. I was able to walk around a little. I even got to sit by the window in the sun’s rays. The supplemental things in life are almost as good as living normally. Sometimes I feel like an astronaut with all the things I do to keep from going mad. I imagine astronauts have to take a lot of vitamins. I take a lot of vitamins, so it’s only fitting that they take a lot as well.
To continue, I must say that I do not know a lot about the lives about Jason and Dahlia, so my daydreams and night dreams supplement the information I am missing. As such, I do not guarantee that everything I write is true. I don’t intend to be a liar, but I’ve discovered that a professional liar and a good listener are similar in what they hide from you for the sake of feelings.
But that aside, here is my beyond-the-grave message for Dahlia based on my short notes.
I do wish we had met under different circumstances. The truth is that I have no way of knowing your heart, and I am selfishly self-deprecating enough to worry that you are just doing me a favor; like a young woman promising every World War II soldier from her hometown that she will marry them when they get back. The woman knows that none will return to collect except maybe one who is lucky.
I know it is unfair of me to see our friendship as such, but I really know nothing about you. We both had cancer at different times. Despite your name, you like sunflowers the most. If there’s more to know, I know it through dreams. Your faceless boyfriend who only exists in my mind to make me uncomfortable in the night. Your relieved expression when you get back home. These are the terrible attributes my mind makes up for you. I can’t imagine you enjoy talking to me. I bet there are things you want to say, but you can’t say them to me. I hate myself enough to write these things that I know you would hate to read. I know you aren’t what my dreams say you are, but I can’t shake these feelings.
I love you, Dahlia. I love how kind you are. I love that cancer didn’t ruin your personality the way it ruined mine. But I think that’s as deep as it goes.
The notes sounded nicer, and I probably should have left it at that. But if Jason doesn’t get a break from the dead man, neither do you.
I don’t think you realize how malicious I feel at times. I worry that in all my pain, my thoughts and actions will only get worse. I worry that I’ll be saying sorry a lot more than I wish I had to. And truly I am sorry for what I’ve turned into in the end. Pain turns people into what they prayed they would never become. A broken heart can turn a bitter person into a sexist. Bad parents can turn their children against God. We live in a difficult world full of difficult circumstances, and kind thoughts and actions run out. I wish that was not the case, but it is.
I hope this is not where my journal ends.
In a dream, Jason and Dahlia whispered to each other at my bedside. When I awoke, they were not there, but here is what I heard them say:
Dahlia: “What’s your life like?”
Jason: “I live with my mom to help her pay bills. Even as poor as she is, she gives me gas money to encourage me to come see Em. I’d see him regardless, but I think she’s afraid I’ll stop seeing him.”
“Why does she think that?”
“She thinks Em is dying, but that’s ridiculous. He’ll live.”
Dahlia shifted her eyes awkwardly. “You wouldn’t come see him if you knew he was dying?”
“No, it’s not like that. It would just be hard to talk to a dead man walking. I’d see him of course. It’s just… how do you talk to someone who could be gone forever the minute you leave? It’s just way too serious for me. It’s bad enough that he has cancer; that I can’t tell him about my real life without feeling like a D-bag. Please stop giving me that look.”
You’d think Dahlia would give Jason a condemning look, but her face was a little sympathetic.
“Sorry. I get it. You can’t handle serious situations. But what will you do if Emeril tells you he’s going to die soon?”
“Well, that’s not going to happen. He’s just in a little pain right now. Cancer sucks, but he’s going to beat it.”
That was when I opened my eyes, found myself all alone, and puked into a bed pan. I never needed the bed pan for its intended purpose, but my parents bought it all the same.
To my parents, I didn’t mean to leave you out of my final addresses. It’s nothing personal, but I think you can understand why I needed to address my friends who hid their lives from me first.
The fact that I went 20 years without getting a non-nepotistic job is astonishing. We can’t say I didn’t try. I say to you that I wish I could have rewarded you for the time and money you put into raising me. Now that I am gone, the use of resources to save me has turned out to be a waste.
I want to say you know how I feel about you, but maybe you don’t, so I will write it down anyway if only to prolong the closing of the time warp. I love you guys in a covetous/envious way. I wish I was everything that you were—everything that you are. Loving beyond the call of duty. Adventurous and unwilling to conform to the beliefs of what is necessary to accomplish within a certain timeline. I fear I have made you grow older with the stresses that come from taking care of a cancer patient. I’m sorry that I was unable to come out on top in the end. I know you were rooting for me.
I’m glad my dreams don’t have to supplement you. I’m glad I know you and see you and hear you speak honestly with me. But who knows, maybe later in my accounts of the world (if it lasts any longer than this chapter of my journal) you will find a passage that you don’t remember—something that only happened in my dreams.
I almost worry that someone reading this will dislike how I have presented them, or they will think my dreams make me the grandest liar of them all because they know what really happened, and they curse me for forgetting to mark my dreams as dreams.
Dreams are all I have. Before the dreams were hopes for the future. Before the hopes were goals. Before the goals was what I thought I’d become as an adult.
The heartbreak is how easily you learn to slip into fiction when you know you aren’t going to become what you thought you would be when you grew up. Now you’re more or less grown up on a literal deathbed at the age of 20. No more anxiety about the future. You have no future. All that’s left is a fruitless past. If you were me, you’d let your brain make up all sorts of stuff.
I could’ve sworn I got a text from my older siblings saying I was in their thoughts and prayers, but my phone is dry. No one can be serious with me. They won’t let me know they care because my death is the most uncomfortable thing in their entire life, and as I’m writing this, I’m still not dead yet. There are no words for the dying, only words for the dead. Only eulogies.
They’ll feel bad that they weren’t real with me 8 years from now, and that isn’t my revenge fantasy. It’s just true. I feel bad for not talking to my dying grandpa when I was 12. The thing about gone forever is that they can only say words at my grave to comfort themselves. I’m not sure you can really hear anything so far away up in the clouds, and supposedly, I’ll be so happy in heaven that I won’t need their words.
So, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I keep saying raw words, but the cooked words won’t make you happy either. I’m sorry I’m wasting this bound-paper time portal on things that are hard to hear. But the truth is I don’t feel very good, and I’m never going to feel any better.
Earlier today, for the first time, Dahlia and Jason were both in my room. Maybe they had met before, but they acted as if they hadn’t for my sake.
Dahlia asked about the journal and pen by my bed. I told her it’s just for me to write in—as if that wasn’t already obvious. I could’ve told her that I’m writing a journal to be read after my death, but I felt that this was not the right moment to announce it. After all, this is my fourth entry, and though I have no hope of living, I do think there will be another entry after this. At this point, I’ve addressed everyone: my friends, parents, and older siblings. Now all that’s left to do with the time warp is show off my life and my dreams.
Jason started lying at some point, saying, “Well you know me. I’ve got my millions, my lambo, and old Em here. Can’t ask for much more.”
“Sounds like a very spiritual life,” Dahlia said, smiling.
I added, “Yeah, but the bastard hasn’t cured my cancer yet with his millions. Sooner or later this room is going to be very spiritual too.”
“Well, I tried, Em,” Jason said, “but you know the government would take me out if I cured cancer. Just like how they took out the car that runs on swamp water and the guy who made it.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“Exactly, they took the guy out. They took the car out. And we still have to pay for gas.”
“Literally 1984,” I said, knowing that nothing about it had to do with the plot of 1984.
We talked for some time, and I was surprised that Dahlia wasn’t at all put off by Jason’s habit of telling obvious lies. Two alleged strangers who talked to each other perfectly just like my dreams thought they would. But they were essentially strangers toward me as well, so it was like we were at a party, mingling with friends of friends. I thought to myself how sad it would be to die without really knowing anything about the people who were supposed to be my best friends. So, as the interaction ended, and we all went our separate ways, I hatched a dead man’s plan, a plan that could only work if I were immune to all repercussion.
I was going to set Dahlia and Jason up with each other, and if all went well, they would spy on each other and report back to me.
I started by texting Dahlia that she and Jason got along really well. Then I texted, “Would you be willing to spend time with Jason? Just the two of you? I wouldn’t normally ask, but I don’t know anything about Jason’s life because he deflects so much, so I just wanted to see if you would at least talk to him and let me know what he’s like, what’s going on in his life, and anything else you think is interesting or important.”
She took a long time to read the text and type a reply. She texted, “I don’t know if I can do that, Em. I mean, doesn’t he have a girlfriend? I don’t want to take things too far, especially just to find out information for you.”
“I doubt he has a girlfriend,” I replied. “It’ll be fine. Come on, do you really want me to die knowing nothing about my friend?”
“Emeril…”
“Really, Dahlia? You can’t hang out with my friend for a couple hours? I wasn’t joking. I am dying. I don’t know if you realize it, but I haven’t felt good in ages. I’m sorry… I just want to know something.”
“Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry too. If you set it up, I’ll talk with him.”
“Thank you,” I texted back.
Jason was a little easier to convince. I told him about Dahlia’s inquiring nature and how she spends her whole time listening. I told him I wanted to know anything I could about her.
He joked that his model doppelganger girlfriend wouldn’t like him talking to other girls. Then he said, “Kidding” and agreed to do it. I think it would’ve been hard if I actually had to tell him I was dying to guilt him.
I wonder if Dahlia thought it was weird that Jason just happened to be willing to hang out and talk for no real reason at all. Maybe Jason thought the same thing about Dahlia. I don’t think that they suspected that they will be spying on each other. That’d be crazy, and that’s why they will never expect it.
Perhaps some greater good will come from my meddling. But the ill feeling in my stomach drives me toward anxious thoughts, and I imagine either Dahlia or Jason reading through my time portal cursing me somewhat. They might be thinking, Oh you foolish, foolish Em. Hasn’t the cancer beaten the hope out of you yet? Don’t pretend for a second that this was for us. We know your selfish, bored, dreaming heart. We know you had no other way to create drama for yourself from the discomfort of your bed.
I don’t think these will be my final words, but if they are, I’m sorry. I know that good things are not in my cards.
I had a strange dream. My parents were fighting. They were only staying married for me. But once I died, they would divorce. So, they came up and smothered me with a pillow in my sleep. I woke up gasping, and I realized I had let the blanket get too far over my head, and it was choking me out. My parents have no marital problems that I know of, but you tend to dream up strange things when you’re dying.
This morning I daydreamed while eating breakfast. The scenario was Jason and Dahlia holding hands while visiting my grave. I haven’t heard back from them yet, but I think you can tell how hopeful I am. I said it was only “hanging out” but I know better than to think that nothing else could come from my operation to find out about my friends. That’s the thing about straight people, they struggle to fathom friendship between the sexes.
But maybe I’m wrong.
I feel sick. It’s bad writing to tell you I feel a blanket feeling, so I’ll elaborate. Weak, skinny, skeleton man. Chemicals and radiation and other toxicities. They keep trying to save me, but I know the truth. I will be dead. My only motivation to write is to keep the time warp open as long as possible for you. Beyond that, I don’t want to move this pen across the paper with my bony hand digits ever again. But I do it because I never feel as if I’ve written enough. I never feel accomplished because I’ve written so much yet so little. All this time I could’ve been something of a writer, but my youth was wasted on other things.
I hope you know that I was more or less joking about being a public speaker. I just thought, What else do you do if you beat cancer? I mean, if you beat cancer, what debt should you really owe to society? To live a machine’s life in a job of the service industry seems like a waste of your second chance to live. Especially if you were to beat cancer at a young age.
I hope when you looked at me, you saw hope even when I didn’t. The me you saw was not the me I saw. I stopped looking in mirrors months ago. My reflection was just however sick I felt. I don’t see hope because I don’t feel hope. It’s not a matter of optimism or pessimism. It’s the objective reality that I am dying.
I don’t know how many times I can say that before it loses all meaning to you. I don’t know how many chapters it will take for you to forget that you’re only reading this because Emeril D’Arenberg is dead. If you don’t know me personally, it’s probably even harder for you to imagine that I am dead. You can be amazed at the number of words I was able to write to you, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m gone. You will never see me again.
It's like exurb1a’s video “Dear Nia,” which is about a man using portals to alternate universes to write to his dead wife Nia, and Nia eventually begs him to move on because the Nia he’s writing to is not his, and he will never get her back.
Here I am begging you to stop getting used to words after every divider. Stop getting used to new chapters. Stop praying that at the end it’ll turn out that I was wrong and that I’ll be saved. Until you flip ahead, you’ll never know how many blank pages this journal ends with. And even then, you don’t know how many entries are written in a given day. You don’t know how many entries there will be because I refuse to number them. Our time portal is a strange situation. All you know is that I wrote quite a few words for you. The context of actual time has been obliterated.
The scary thing is not knowing how long I have left. It’s the worry that any cliffhanger will go unanswered. It’s the compulsive need to write something each day even if it doesn’t relate to the overarching story because you don’t know which words will be the last.
I don’t think you understand that you and I could go the rest of eternity without knowing anything more about Jason and Dahlia. It could all be over in mere seconds. Nothing is granted.
Both Dahlia and Jason visited me following their date, and I must say I was right. A straight man and a straight woman will always struggle to be friends, especially when they’ve both been tasked with the job of being a good listener. It seems that the most romantic thing anyone can be is a good listener who asks the right questions.
Dahlia told me that Jason is studying business. He hopes one day to open a pizza place named Emeril’s Pizza in honor of me. I should be flattered, but I wonder if the storytelling for marketing would be a good ploy to attract customers. Like the college kids who make cheap luxury watches, a restaurant in honor of a cancer patient with an Italian name stands to do pretty well. Dahlia said Jason wants to tell me when it’s ready to go. I grimly said he might not get the chance to tell me if he’s waiting.
She also said that Jason is spending most of his time working at an expensive restaurant to gather money and experience.
I asked, “Are you two going out again?”
Sheepishly, she said, “Yes,” then added, “I hope that’s okay with you.”
“What does it matter what I think? Are you embarrassed or something?”
She hesitated to say, “I didn’t think any of this would happen. The spying; you setting me up with your friend. I mean, I guess I thought it was just a bad cover for the truth. I don’t know. I just wasn’t convinced that you really meant what you said.”
“I don’t think I know what you mean.”
“I thought Jason had asked you to set me up with him against your will.”
“Well, I told the truth. I wanted information,” I said, and then after observing her reaction, I added: “What, did you think it was against my will because I had a crush on you? Look Dahlia, I like you, but… I guess I wouldn’t stretch things that far.”
That was perhaps the biggest lie I’ve ever told, and Dahlia, I’m surprised you believed me. But just because there was a time I could’ve seen us together doesn’t mean a dying man has those options anymore. So it was a half lie. As I’m writing this, I must say I’m sorry for taking the opportunity to reject the notion in such a hurtful way, especially when you were right all along.
What’s worse is that I kept talking. I said that it was understandable why she would think that. Two cancer patients seem destined for each other, but I was only looking for more friendship in my final moments. I said all of this in such a way that you’d believe I never had feelings for anyone, like a psychopath.
So, Dahlia I must say in writing that I regret my life. I regret obtaining the outlook of a dying man. I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it now that I’m dead. But I’m not jealous of Jason. I set you two up out of my own freewill. I think what it is isn’t jealousy. It is simply my newfound nature to live vicariously through dreams and other people.
And when you said, “Oh,” I thought of confessing everything right there because I knew I had gone too far. But I couldn’t complicate things just for the sake of taking the right course of action. It is only through this time warp that I may apologize for being the terrible, self-serving person that I am.
There wasn’t much more to be said, so I redirected things by saying, “If you find out anything more about Jason, I’d like to hear it. Even if it’s something small and seemingly irrelevant, or if you just want to tell me about your date. I’ll be here to listen.”
Jason said that Dahlia is an only child because all her other siblings died as a result of genetic diseases. She tries not to talk about herself too much because it makes her feel selfish. We both inferred some survivor’s guilt in Dahlia.
I wondered if maybe it was triggering (if only mildly) for me to guilt her by saying I am certainly dying. When I think about it, it makes me feel evil and manipulative. Now I wonder if Dahlia would do anything for me. I also wonder how much of our friendship is based on my condition.
Jason and I talked about the program I met Dahlia in.
Jason said, “She must really like giving back.”
“Is she doing other similar programs?”
“No, but she tries to save up money to donate. No offense, but you might be the most she can handle right now without crying so much that she erodes her skin like rivers do to rocks.”
“I get it. No offense taken.”
That was probably the most honest Jason has ever been with me.
I asked, “What was the most memorable thing you talked about?”
“She likes eerie paintings. She showed me ‘Pyramid of Skulls’ [by Paul Cézanne], ‘Big Electric Chair’ [by Andy Warhol], and ‘The Nightmare’ [by Henry Fuseli]. I bet you she likes ones creepier than those, but I think she didn’t want to scare me off.”
“Why does she like them?”
“She said unsettling feelings and somber tones are rare. She said you have to be scared on your own terms or else it’s real and being afraid of real things and situations is no fun at all. Why does anyone like to scare themselves? Because there will always be boundary lines that we ourselves will not cross, but we want to see others cross them if only as a secret twisted desire. Then she apologized for being weird about it, and I told her she didn’t need to apologize.”
“See, I would’ve never known that about her,” I said then paused. “I suppose you two are dating now.”
“I mean, yeah.”
“Good. Tell me more when you know more.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“That’s never a good start to a question, but sure.”
“Why did you do this for me?”
“I guess that means you’re grateful.”
“Yeah, Dahlia’s a great girl. I just kind of figured you had something with her.”
“Dahlia’s a friend. There’s nothing more than that for us in the future. Besides I know nothing about her. That’s your job. You can do things I can’t. People are always trying to convince me that I’m the most important person in the room. I’m not. I’m nothing. I’ve done nothing; I’ve got nothing to say. But when people treat you like the most important person in the room, they refuse to be a real person around you.”
This line of dialogue is where I forget where the boundaries of dreams and reality lie. Maybe I said all that. Maybe I left it at “Dahlia’s a friend.” Only Jason knows the truth.
Either way, I’m sure Jason responded by saying, “I guess I owe you one.”
I said, “Matchmaking doesn’t constitute a debt. I just want to hear about the two of you. That’s all I want.”
And I meant it. I wanted nothing more than happiness for the two of you. I just hope you don’t feel like monkeys dancing for my entertainment.
Sometimes I think about how everyone likes their books differently. I think about it every time there’s a garage sale. Or books in a thrift store. I think few people like books that stand the tests of time. Our attention spans are turning to easy language and comfortable tropes. It’s hard to say what will or won’t become a long-standing favorite. It’s hard to say what will average 4.5-5 stars on Goodreads. But I get the feeling that listening to Goodreads reviews is something like basing the average height of all people in the world on a sample of basketball players. You’ll get good numbers, but you probably won’t find the truth.
Why should you care? I ask myself that every time I think of keeping this time warp open just a little longer.
Big shocker, but opinions don’t matter. That’s what I’m getting at. I think the longer we keep pretending there’s a number we can assign to each thing to tell its value, the longer we entertain the idea that there is objectivity in life. I’m not going to say that everything is relative. But certainly value is a very relative thing. Its numbers and scales are always changing. What was best one day may not be best on another day. At a garage sale you can sell a New York Times Bestseller for fifty cents.
I can’t place a numerical value on my life—not a rating that my friends wouldn’t disagree with. Perhaps I feel a bit of pain today that would make me want to tank my own life rating.
I do believe that this journal is keeping me going. But some days there is almost nothing to talk about. On those days, I wonder if life is just the tiniest bit wasted. If in Stephen King’s Misery, Paul Sheldon was an actor or a musician rather than a writer, a lot of value would be cut away from the story. Because a patient of any kind must spend their days in bed consuming media, sleeping or being bored to death. Without Dahlia, Jason, and my parents, my current life is a vast plane of nothingness.
Maybe it’s boredom that really kills you. Cancer gets you to the point where you can’t do much, and maybe boredom does the rest of the killing.
All I can do is wait for new installments of the Jason and Dahlia show. Everything else I know is a fake, a dream, a poor parody of reality.
Before I woke up, I had a nightmare of repetition, which is somehow worse than a nightmare of fear. Dahlia confessed to Jason that she kind of wanted me. Jason reminded Dahlia that I can’t do all that much. She agreed, and then the short scene repeated. The same moment over and over and over forever until I woke up. It was almost a lucid dream, the way I recognized the maddening repetition. But it couldn’t be stopped until something outside of myself made me get up.
In trying to relate with me, Dahlia once told me about her long-gone obsession with having painted nails. It’s not like she doesn’t paint them anymore. It’s about her old obsession with the nail polish chipping. When Dahlia was growing her hair back, she did anything to look like a girl so as not to be confused for a boy. Dresses, make up, painted nails. Her parents indulged in her need to look feminine despite her young age because they figured she deserved the world for surviving.
It all went decently, but her nail polish would chip a lot, sometimes only three or four days after application. She did touch ups and sometimes took all the nail polish off of one nail just to redo the whole nail. She used cuticle oil and clear base coats to prevent any discoloring of her natural nails. It got to be a great nuisance every few days. But one day, young Dahlia just let it chip. It was too much of a hassle to be fixing things all the time.
I think about that last line quite a bit. It was too much of a hassle to be fixing things all the time.
I don’t think Dahlia meant for it to be all that deep. It was just a rare moment of her talking about herself to ease the silence. So rare in fact that maybe I dreamt it. But I don’t know much about nail polish on my own, so it could be real. Who knows? Reality is only the things we agree on or the things that can be proven every time without failure.
I suppose this entry isn’t particularly focused. I would apologize, but it’s my journal, and I think you can follow along just fine. There is no point to anything. Life may be rare and valuable, but a lot of rare and valuable things are pointless: diamonds, cars you can’t drive, baseball/Pokémon cards.
It’s too much of a hassle to be fixing a journal into an ordered set of thoughts and stories all the time.
Jason said to me, “Why the hell does Dahlia say that you’re dying?”
“Why do you think she says I’m dying?”
Jason weakly said, “I don’t know.”
“Because I am dying!” I snapped.
I have thought of this exact scenario multiple times. Still it has not happened yet. Once again, it’s just a dream from a dying man.
Instead Jason told me that he and Dahlia were thinking of coming to see me together sometime.
I told him that he hardly needs my permission to show up at my bedside.
Dahlia apparently, has been thinking of ways to come cheer me up. She obsessed over it as if she owed me a debt, so Jason must be quite the guy. In the end, she thought the both of them visiting me would do me some good.
I only gave them permission today (as if they needed it), so I won’t be seeing the both of them until maybe tomorrow.
Jason told me that they spent a lot of their date coming up with things to do for me. I guess that means there might be more in store for me besides a visit.
I asked what spurred this line of conversation between them.
“Dahlia’s just a little concerned about you.”
“Why?”
“You can’t get mad if I tell you.”
“I won’t shoot the messenger,” I said.
“Okay. She said you’ve been acting a little different lately. Maybe a little bitter. Also, she still can’t comprehend why you set us up.”
“I guess that’s fair. I haven’t been feeling good at all. Really though, she’s being a good sport about it.”
“Well, it’s not like any of us have a choice.” Jason’s eyes widened a little like he knew he shouldn’t have said that.
“You’re a good friend Jason, but maybe you shouldn’t get too comfortable like that.”
Jason looked confused. “Like what?”
“You just said, ‘It’s not like any of us have a choice.’”
“Em, I said, ‘She’s been taking some time to make a choice.’ You know, like a choice about what she wants to do for you.”
“Sorry,” I said, “I think the pain killers are making me spacey.”
“Look, all I was saying is that she’s worried. I didn’t mean to imply anything about you.”
“No, of course not. I probably just need a nap.”
“You think we’re shallow people, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You didn’t hear me, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” I lied.
“I said, ‘You think you’ll sleep now?’”
“Yeah. I need some rest. Didn’t sleep too well last night.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Bad dreams. I don’t want to make you leave, but…”
“It’s okay,” Jason said. “I understand.”
And so, Jason left, and instead of sleeping, I wrote it down for you.
Dahlia and Jason arrived with a box of LED light strips. They installed them along the edges of my room while being so cute with each other that it’s almost sickening. Then again, the ill feeling of sickness is nothing new to me. I suppose “ill” and “sickness” are redundant together, but the statement stands.
The two of them hoped that more, um, creative lighting in my room would cheer me up. I give myself 5 color changes at max before I think boredom will set in again.
“We bought the lights from a cyberthot,” Jason said, assuming I had a good grasp on the meaning of this obscure lie. I understood that he was making a joke about women on the internet. I guess I shouldn’t say women. It’s girls—teen girls—and I can’t say decorating my room like a teen girl on TikTok gives me the most comfortable feeling in the world.
Truly the pain has increased in my final days, not that I know when I will die. I feel like journaling has caused me to develop an inner monologue, and the inner monologue is very mean. My tolerance for Jason and Dahlia was low today, especially as they sparred back and forth verbally.
“Hold this.”
“No, you hold it, I’m taller.”
“I asked you first.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m still taller.”
Dahlia stuck her tongue out.
Jason copied her.
The funniest thing is that they didn’t even ask me if I would like to have LED lights. They just assumed that a darkened room has a deep connection with sadness. Well at least now I can be depressed in RGB. For a moment, I considered faking a spontaneous nap, but then I thought, These are my friends, and they set their schedules to be here at the same time to cheer me up. I should return the favor by being awake.
Jason joked, “I hope you like rainbow lighting because we don’t have batteries for the remote.” He paused. “HaHa! Kidding!”
“Oh ho ho,” I fake laughed then entered a coughing fit due to a dry throat.
“Do you need water?” Dahlia asked.
“Yes…. Please.”
Dahlia left to fetch me water and came back quickly with an obscure cup we never use. It was a color-changing plastic cup with a restaurant logo on it. I drank from it anyway, faintly tasting cheap plastic.
I probably never would’ve devoted time and attention to the details of a plastic cup, but this is how my inner narration chooses to be mean, making a boring sip seem worse than average.
They gave me the remote, and I fiddled with the lights. I landed on blue after being uninformed and disinterested in choosing mood lighting.
“So, what do you think?” Jason asked.
I think you’ve chosen the slowest Sunday in the history of all time to pester me with cuteness and lights. Further, I think about how much you will dislike reading my later thoughts once I’m dead.
“I think you did a great job,” I said.
You see, it’s not that I regret putting you two together, it’s that I hate the inane thinking that comes from a couple of love birds. There are numerous ways I could be cheered up, but I know now that you two are selfish when you mean to be kind. Your courtesies are made to exclude me and shut me out, but I am not blind to a slap in the face. I hope one day you each realize that the other person’s original interest in conversation was spying in order to bring me information. What will you do when you are the betrayed and the traitor? Maybe it’s not as dastardly as I make it out to be. Maybe you two will be too dumb to feel wounded. Regardless, I think about the kinds of friends I have made almost daily. I think of the cruel joke of our lives—the situation we find ourselves in. You two will live, and I will die. I did nothing to deserve this fate, and sometimes I think I am becoming a great evil deserving of death. I am earning my death. Meanwhile, I watch the open jaws of kindness in you, waiting to draw me in and eat me whole.
“Are you alright, Emeril?” Dahlia asked.
“Yes… do I not look alright?”
“You look like you’re deep in thought.”
I muttered, “I think the pain killers are making me spacey.”
“What?”
I repeated my lie louder with more confidence.
“Are you at least feeling a little better?”
I smiled at her to give her a moment of hope. “No,” I said, the smile fading.
“Oh… I’m sorry you don’t feel good.”
“I am too.”
“Can we do anything for you?” Dahlia asked.
Leave, I thought, just leave.
“I don’t know. What else did you have in mind for today?”
“We could play a game or watch a movie.”
“I don’t know if I could play a game. But if you can find a movie I haven’t seen, I’d like to watch it.”
I thought this was an impossible task for them because I have seen every movie America has ever made. Netflix’s entire movie library has run through my head at least once. Name a genre, I’ve seen it all. Even anime movies, believe it or not. Action, horror, thriller, drama, western, comedy, legal thriller, chick flick… there is no end, and the list never stops. I haven’t read every book, but I have seen every movie. Dahlia and Jason don’t know this fact about me, so they start by listing movies they think I would like. The Dark Knight. The Shining. White Chicks. Red Dragon. Deadpool. Good Will Hunting. Seven Pounds. Inglourious Basterds. Mission Impossible. Taken. Gangs of New York. Edward Scissorhands. Goodfellas. Baby Driver. American made. Gladiator. Top Gun. The Sixth Sense. The Hitman’s Bodyguard. 007 Skyfall. The Devil Wears Prada. Mean Girls. Rosemary’s Baby.
I have seen every movie you can buy at a thrift store, every movie on DVD.
Dead Poets Society. Titanic. Inception. No Country for Old Men. The Green Mile.
Jason said, “I know your ass hasn’t seen Fifty Shades of Grey.”
I quoted, “I don’t make love. I fuck… hard.”
“Come on.”
“Don’t bother googling obscure or boring movies. I sometimes use those lists of movies to numb myself to sleep. Besides, you wouldn’t want to sit through those movies anyway.”
“Fine, Em, pick a movie. Doesn’t matter if you’ve seen it or not,” Jason said.
I thought, This is how I know you’re doing this for yourself and not me.
“That’s not the name of the game, but if I’m going to rewatch a movie, it’s gotta be Monsters Inc.”
Somehow this choice surprised them. You’d think that of all the great movies, I’d pick differently. But in my mind, Monsters Inc. was made to be rewatched, and I’ve been rewatching it since I was just a child. It’s probably the one movie I’ve seen the most times.
Anyway, we put the movie on, and I fell asleep at the part where Boo goes on a child-sized rampage through Harryhausen’s while Mike is on a date with Celia. You can’t really blame me. it’s not like I was dying to see Monsters Inc. for the 700th time. I just picked it so that my friends could feel like they were being nice.
In my slumber, I heard Dahlia and Jason talking. Most likely it was just a dream, but who cares at this point?
Jason said, “Is he out already?”
Dahlia touched me. “Yeah.”
“I don’t know about him. He seemed like he was upset, but he was trying to hide it.”
“He just doesn’t feel good.”
“But that means he’s just pretending to feel good for us. He probably hates the lights.”
“I don’t think he hates the lights.”
“Do you think he’s mad at us?”
“Don’t overthink it,” Dahlia said.
“Look, I’ve spent our whole friendship being nice to Em. I don’t want to be nice to an ungrateful prick if he really just hates me.”
“Calm down, Jason. He’s not mad at us. We’re his friends.”
“For how long? I’m not going to be around a cancer patient who has turned bitter and angry. Not again.”
“What do you mean, not again?”
“After my dad—”
I bolted awake for no reason at all, and I found Jason and Dahlia silently leaning on each other. Dahlia asked if I was alright.
“Must’ve been a nightmare.” I looked at the TV. The movie was almost over.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Not even the tiniest bit.”
Jason said, “That bad, huh? It’s okay. We get it. Monsters Inc. can be pretty scary.”
I smiled, but I didn’t feel better. I never feel better, especially not when I’m dreaming up conversations of my friends.
I think I really am becoming a bad person with bad thoughts. Hateful and bitter, my thoughts lash out against good people who love me.
I’m sorry, Dahlia. I’m sorry, Jason. But I am not okay, and I can only pretend to be okay for so long. If our friendship ends in tragedy and hurt feelings, I know that I am to blame. If the conflict is all in my head, I’m not surprised. The dreams of a dying man are varied and strange, and sometimes they turn against the mind that created them. Sometimes we hurt ourselves so that no one else can hurt us first. I know that I am terrible, and these thoughts of mine can’t be controlled, so when I am irritable, you will always take the blame.
After the movie, the love birds decided to leave, and I hated myself for being a little glad.
Not to sound like a pick me boy, but sometimes I think about how I’ll never escape the male perspective. I’ll never know how Dahlia sees the world without asking her, and even then, I imagine her giving me generic, rushed responses. The truth is you can never get inside the minds of other people. Some people can’t even come to terms with the contents of their own minds. You can talk things out and explain yourself, but I doubt there will be very much understanding. Thoughts rarely translate into words. Some people only think in images.
So we demonize people for their perspective, sometimes rightfully so, but we must come to terms with the idea that we can’t rewire a person’s mind. A racist can become tolerant, but it’s doubtful that all the bias has left their body.
I think we were doomed from the start. They can try to fix us a certain way during our childhood, but we are who we are. And that’s why we can’t fit together. There is a right way and a wrong way to live, but we can’t agree about what that is. We can’t separate people by what they believe because no one believes the same thing. Parent and child will fight tooth and nail. People forget that humans are not logical. An overwhelming amount of people fall prey to conspiracy theories.
Men and women will never understand each other, but not because we can’t be understood. We’re not especially complex. We aren’t mysteries. It’s just that I was never a girl at any stage of my life. I never dealt with beauty standards or overwhelming (and usually unwanted) attention from men. Maybe for a couple moments of my life I could understand wanting to look really good when I did not look good at all. But even then, all these things are reductionist. There is more to women than these things, but these are the select things that I didn’t live through.
I wanted to be an author at one point, but I never had a unique perspective until I was dying and dreaming. The sad thing was realizing that a lot of people didn’t want what I had to offer. They shied away from the sharp uncomfortable disturbing writings and moved towards the things that made them feel good. It is a great fear of mine that you will hate me for writing raw things. It is a great fear of mine that you will not like me after all is done. And then you will get rid of all the edgy books because they did not please you. You’ll fill thrift stores with infinitely more romance and young adult novels, and people like me will think that they’re weird and wrong for disliking cutesy shit.
Long after I’m dead, people who shop for books will continue to roll their eyes at what Walmart sells and then special order the not-so-popular books from Barnes and Noble and Amazon. You’ll get rid of perspectives you don’t like, and you’ll burn my pain-filled journal in a fire. Then I’ll be gone for good, and nothing will be left of me.
I understand why you don’t like some of the books I like. I think you understand why I don’t like your books too.
I just wonder if the libraries and art museums are half-full of trash.
But maybe you don’t worry about what happens after you die like I do. Maybe you only worry about majorities taking over in politics. Maybe being young is all about being afraid of stupid nonsense bullshit. Maybe it’s about being afraid that good things expire and die out. I mean, I’ve seen every movie, and I have to come to terms with the fact that the good and bad of media isn’t concrete. No one gets the final say on what good and bad is. Not popular majorities. Not critics. Not scholars. Not even you or me.
So all that worry is for nothing. Worrying that you’re a bad person or that your bias will be the thing that makes others hate you…
It’s all just a big nothing worry. Hating yourself for being a man or white or straight won’t do you any good. You can’t escape what you really are. A trans woman can’t escape being a woman. A trans man can’t escape being a man. We just are. We can try to be better, but we just are. There is good and bad; right and wrong. And we just are.
When everything goes wrong, we live through it.
If these are the last things I write, just know that I’m sorry for everything bad I’ve done, but I can’t dwell on my sharp cutting attributes for too long.
“Do you think there’s a universe where I don’t die from cancer?” I asked Dahlia
“I hope so,” she said.
“Do you think we both live or is that too much to ask of probabilities?”
“I think you’re bored, so you’re thinking of sad things and alternate realities.”
“What’s the scoop on Jason?”
“He’s having trouble at work, and he says they don’t appreciate his humor.”
“So he’s lying again. I thought he only did that when he’s uncomfortable around me.”
“I didn’t say he was lying.”
“But that’s his ‘sense of humor,’” I said. “He gets excessively sarcastic to deflect.”
“I didn’t push it. He seemed upset.”
“He was probably upsetting the customers.”
“You say that like you’re upset too.”
“Just irritable.”
“Em, how long is it going to be like this?”
“I don’t know. I’m just in a lot of pain,” I said. “This could go on forever. Just the three of us playing this game we call life. Endless conversations.”
“Why do you do this to yourself? Why do you continue to ask me for information about Jason?”
“I want to know about him.”
“Do you really? What are you hoping to hear?
“I’m hoping to find out that he’s living a double life as an international super spy,” I said with Jason’s sarcasm in my tone.
Dahlia looked at me as if she knew some great secret about me that I myself would deny knowing. She had looked into my soul and disliked what she found there.
“I think I should go,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry to upset you… I’m sorry I’m so unlikable.”
“Em, when I had leukemia, no one told me I was dying. They just said I was sick and that I would be better soon enough. You think you’re dying, but you don’t know when you’re going to go. I think you’re turning yourself into someone that even you don’t want to be. I think you’re setting yourself up for misery. I think you’re hiding something from me… I’m not going to embarrass you by telling you what I think you think of me. But it’s clear you made a mistake you can’t take back, and now you’re choosing to be openly bitter about it. It’s not pretty. I just want you to stop living every day like you’re waiting to be executed.”
“There is no other way to live.”
“Emeril, what is it going to take for you to lighten up? What is it going to take to get rid of that bad attitude?”
Here’s the situation: for some reason, I am not dead. For some reason, neither Jason nor Dahlia has anything interesting to say about each other. My pain and displeasure has been taken as a sign by Dahlia that I hate their relationship because I secretly like her. She will not give this idea up because on some level it might be true. But this level is not the level where it is true. At this point, I just want to die and leave you with my 10,000 words. The experiment failed. Jason and Dahlia are neither secretive nor interesting. I keep thinking that I’m giving up too soon. I keep thinking that I’ll hear the secret of all secrets. But maybe the most interesting thing going on for them is their cancer patient friend, and even he isn’t all that interesting to talk about.
“Tell me something you could only tell me knowing that I will soon be dead.”
“Like a secret?”
“Like a secret.”
“When you asked for my number, I thought you intended for us to be more than friends.”
“Really? That’s your big secret? My God, you have everything on the table already.”
“I don’t know what you expect, Emeril. I’m not hiding anything from you. Neither is Jason.”
“I guess you’ve just never had anything worth keeping a secret. You goody-goody nice people can be so boring.”
“Well, I’m sorry that everything in life isn’t just there to entertain you.”
“Yeah, well, not much else for me to do around here. Maybe you can ask God why the fuck he gave me a tumor at the peak of my life. Maybe it’s because he realized I’m a useless, no-good, media-consumer who never had a plan for life. Maybe it’s because life is terrible, but there’s no better alternative. What’s the point of it all, Dahlia? What’s the point of a story that has no end? Life goes on after we die, and there’s no promise that the world will ever end anytime soon. If I die tonight, who is going to care? What angel will read my life story and consider locking me out of heaven? I don’t know if there is a god. All I know is that there’s no way in hell that we’re all Adam and Eve’s incest descendants.
“I’ve been writing a journal for you, Jason, and my parents. I kept ending the installments with hopes of living long enough to see things to the end. But those hopes are gone. Stories are like sex nowadays; they barely have any climax anymore. There’s no timely end. There’s no even that marks rising and falling tension. There’s no interesting settings or characters. Now it’s all just a mess of endless conversations. And the conversations aren’t all that interesting to hear. We’re all just writing and living anti-stories. Maybe you can hand my journal to a literature professor, and he’ll defend it for no good reason. Life is just disappointing, and it never ends where you want it to. You can live forever with a suicidal attitude, or you can get killed in a car accident because you had a hopeful outlook.”
Dahlia was shocked, and—
Fuck you. I’m done with this. I’m already dead, and there’s no use keeping the portal open just so you can watch me deteriorate and die.