I'm Dying...Again

Uncle John is very, very sick today. I feel like someone put a deflated basketball in my head and is pumping it up. My head now weighs more than my torso, on account of all the mucus in it. Every time I cough, I feel like someone is smacking my forehead with a ruler - from the inside. I can stand for about two minutes before my legs get weak (I had a mini-meeting in my boss’s office this morning and five minutes into it - as they weren’t any available chairs - I was leaning against the wall, slowly sliding down it, letting out a quiet "mmmeerrrrrr" noise as I nearly collapsed to the floor). Even though you could cook an omelet on my forehead, I’m so cold that there are icicles developing at the tips of my fingers. Or maybe that’s just semen. Whatever.

Though I’m at work today, I’m not a very strong person when it comes to illness.(Had I not been out of the office on Monday and last Friday, I surely would have called out. Also, I didn’t feel like laying around among a sea of snotty tissues in my condo, trying hopelessly to masturbate between replays of the same Sportscenter episode I’d seen three times already.) Remember Michael Jordan’s flu game? When he was sick but dropped 38 points on the Jazz in the playoffs? Often times, you hear of athletes doing stuff like this: transcending their illness to achieve bigger and better things, and in doing so cementing themselves as legends.

Well, not me. Not even close.

I’ve emailed my co-worker at least four times today, imploring her to come "help," "take care of," or "save" me. As she has real, actual work to do, she has yet to make an appearance. So my next email will be sent in about ten minutes. I’ve called my mom a few times, but apparently sometime in the past 48 hours she has disowned me, as I haven’t heard back from her. I’m about two hours away from pulling out my long and distinguished list of ex-girlfriends, picking names at random, and asking them to come nurse me back to health. And let me see their boobies. Because boobies are more potent than most antibiotics when fighting illness. (Look it up.)

No, when I get a cold, I act as though I have AIDS. As I write this, I’m simultaneously writing a letter to my father, apologizing to him for not becoming a real "man." I want him to know how sorry I am about failing him, in case I don’t make it through this illness (odds are 30/60 for survival right now - 10% having been removed because, well, who gives a fuck what happens to me?). He never asked for much; I didn’t have to become an altar boy or a star athlete or attend school every day or even learn how to read. All he wanted was a son who was willing to fight and do a chick at a moment’s notice and maybe get a couple of tattoos, and in this, I failed him. I’m telling him that I’m sorry I can’t bench press over 100 pounds, I’m sorry that I didn’t learn to ride the motorcycle he got me when I turned 16 because "it was too loud," I’m sorry that I never became a two-packs a day cigarette smoker. Of course, I won’t spend too much time on this, since he probably won’t read it (like he always says, "Reading is just a conspiracy").

Next will be a letter to my mom, assuring her that no matter what she thinks, I go to my grave at least 91% heterosexual (one time your mom walks in on you kissing DJ Jerry D. at your 13th birthday party and you get a lifetime of "I can’t believe my son is a gay"). Just because I never brought home a girlfriend or even mentioned anything about a woman (expect to deride her fashion sense, of course) or wasn’t able to get an erection when she secretly got me that hooker on my 21st birthday, well, that doesn’t make me a gay. A little different, sure, but not a gay.

But the good news in all of this is that I think I’ve figured out what caused this illness. For the past two nights, I’ve been sleeping with my air conditioner on, even though it’s dipped into the mid-50’s here in NJ. Why am I doing this, you ask? Preferring cold to heat, I slept with the AC on the past two nights. And now I am sick.

[I’m sure my illness had nothing to do with my past two weekends in when I tried to drown myself in Miller Lite. Completely unrelated. And we all know I went to medical school for one year, so I’m more than qualified to make this statement.]

As for now, I’m going to head back to the bathroom so I can kneel down in front of the sink while hot water is running, soaking in the steam. Wish me luck and let’s hope that no one I know walks in.

And if I don’t make it, remember: I loved you in a way that no one has ever loved you before - from afar, from behind a computer, with a whiskey in one hand and a penis in the other.

(Not my penis, of course.)