Imminent Belgium

"Would you mind shining your light on someone else today?" Mark Johnson, a liberal writer I managed to infuriate with no one else's help

I went to bed early this morning and couldn't sleep for the agony in my jaw, not so simple now to find a dental hospital that could treat me; it is not simply a question of draining Pennsylvania's Medicaid allocation. I know what it is like sitting in that dental chair for hours on end being tortured with root canal. I now have gum disease, and I'm suffering from indoor allergens and other small secrets relative to quadriplegia, and believe I'm functionally dying, like my Aunt Marie, dragging herself along with less adaptive ability, as time goes by. 

Morally, I don't know what to do. Kill myself now, wait for the bloody stroke, or tell the nigger bitches in the office that they've won, and consign my fate to Inglis House after a life with so little joy to it. Sex was never much, not like it was for Linda and her telescopic exuberance. And I did not want to fuck her, despite my stupidly unwise outburst from which it took me so long to recover. What made me angry was my dialectical rivalry with the spastic bitch. She could have great sex between her two husbands, while my clitoris hangs out like stewing meat for an Italian casserole, with absolutely no memories of that good fuck, except for anal games with my discarded and no less turbulently deceased spic ex of a pig. I do not enjoy anal penetration, don't want to suck tit, and there it lies. My only memories are rift with friction of never fitting with the right man, a good man, or lesbians in a variety pack coming at me not because I was signaling them, but because they thought my emotional vulnerability made me a good butch. And they were lucky that I was too impaired to kill them. That is what would have happened had it gone beyond hitting on me in the wrong situation, or in environments out of my element, and now it's too late. Stresses beyond my control are killing me, enfeebling me beyond being a good advocate for righteousness, or to climb onboard Toomey's train, or even writing one decent scholarly work. Where am I going to get the energy?

I'm barely eating two meals a day, struggling not to be haunted by Frank's infantile gluttony. I don't want to be haunted by it, my remorse, contempt, and the fact I hated him but took pleasure in being a couple, but what else is there, except the olive tinge to his face? I knew my mother was dying, and so did my sister, but I suspect neither of us ever resolved losing our mother. It has been 11 years, and we can mark the same parallel with Frank. I knew he didn't have long, and wonder if he died to spite me. I can't know, especially as I interjected to stay in his life, as opposed to reconciling anything

When the time came, I thought, in the throes of death, I'd scream for Jerry, somewhat parenthetically, or go back further, to Raymond, whose emotional armor I was able to pierce, sibilant, manipulative teenager that I was, but no. There is a place where Joanne and all her longing is simply unraveling, coming apart, without bonds to hold her to the ground, constant tension from my jaw, my temple, strange declensions in my left shin, sturdy enough to linger on in torpor, to lose my time and place. Then I get mad, but it may not be enough, and my Roman father who despised my survival in the world, he may outlive me. The one twist in the endless stream of police procedurals from the European left: in "A Death in Flanders" the actor playing the retired inspector keels over dead on the train, staring at the woman passenger across from him as intently as the French predator he collared, an effective send up. But we're not all that lucky, with our broken, battered hearts. Those of us without looks, figures, or enough shallow ruthlessness.