If I\u2019ve only got a month left to live, I don\u2019t want to spend it defined by my role as part of the collective, some nameless chunk of problematic meat. I won\u2019t be limited like that. I\u2019m an individual, with my own set of hopes and fears. I came from Neil, yes, but even in my brief independent existence it\u2019s clear we don\u2019t see things eye to eye. Yet just as he resents being viewed now as a cancer patient first and everything else (Dad, Husband, Writer, Brother, Teacher, Uncle) second, I don\u2019t want to be just the trouble-making gland at the center of his sob story. So from this moment forward, I\u2019d like to be thought of as Steve. In the Bible, Stephen was stoned for his faith and Jesus intervened. Later, Saint Stephen was the first Christian martyr.\u00a0 Maybe, like him, I was destined to die for a cause. More importantly, I imagine \u201cSteve\u201d to be a good neighbor, the sort of guy who can do his own plumbing, change his own oil, follow a couple college football teams with some regularity, have a basic understanding of carpentry. \u201cSteve\u201d is always kind to strangers and courteous to his dates, though I fear he\u2019s not the marrying type, being a bit of a loner. It’s a shame though. I\u2019d like to think \u201cSteve\u201d is the kind of guy who would\u2019ve made a good dad.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Honestly, I thought I meant more to Neil. For every orgasm, from his shady teenage fumblings in sullied sheets to the creation of both his sons, I was there. Always reliable. Plugging away. Doing my prostate thing. Across the span of decades, when he lost his first job and his first wife, when he faced depression and rejection, betrayal and the death of one’s beloved, I stayed true. We were in it all together, or so I thought. And I was happy to contribute, to be part of the valued team. Whenever he called on me\u2014for distraction, recreation, procreation\u2014I was there. I delivered. I\u2019ll stand by my track record. What more can be asked of you? Now, at the first sign of a little trouble, he\u2019s ready to jettison me, to have them slice six holes in our skin and release some Assassinator 2000 death robot to seek me out and scalpel away the parts of me that connect me to him, to us. I feel like the faithful employee who shows up to work after five decades to find my card key doesn\u2019t work. I\u2019ve been downsized, canned, fired, let go, shown the curb, pink-slipped, terminated. Call it what you will, rationalize it all you want. It’s fucking wrong.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It is too much to ask for a little peace and quiet? The specific date of my demise is on the calendar\u2014July 3, so there seems no doubt that I\u2019m living on borrowed time. So why, when I\u2019m trying to meditate, gather my thoughts, put my affairs in order, must he constantly be stopping whatever he\u2019s doing and putting me in a vice? Imagine someone choking you for ten seconds, then stopping for a few seconds, then doing it again. Twenty times! And all this 3 or 4 times a day. It\u2019s like goddamn waterboarding, but I have no secrets to tell. For what am I enduring this torture? He read some article online that strengthening these muscles might help him recuperate more quickly after I\u2019m gone. Good to know he\u2019ll miss me!\u00a0 Sometimes, he squeezes so intensely he loses his breath. His closed eyes flash white. Times like these, I know what he\u2019s imagining, that if he just clenched hard enough, he could crush me himself, grind me down to dust, and grind my dust to nothing. Only a fool writer, pathetic and desperate, imagines shit like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Honestly, I thought I meant more to Neil.\u00a0For every orgasm, from his shady teenage fumblings in sullied sheets to the creation of both his sons, I was there. Always reliable. Plugging away.\u00a0Doing my prostate thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":23766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3529],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-nonfiction","writer-neil-connelly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22812"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23765,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22812\/revisions\/23765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}