Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me(48)
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We had met with the doctor on a Thursday. The next day, we went swimming at noon, as we always did on Fridays, and then spent a quiet weekend together, taking walks, reading, listening to music, going to the open-air market at Abingdon Square, cooking, both of us trying to absorb the overwhelming news. Oliver consulted with a few colleagues, including the ophthalmologist who had treated his cancer years before; he had had a chance to look at the CAT scan, too. Recurrences such as this were considered extremely rare, yet the consensus seemed to be that the preliminary diagnosis was most likely correct and that treatment options were few.
On Saturday night, we got stoned—if only as a diversion from thinking the unthinkable. Oliver didn’t like to smoke weed; he preferred edible cannabis chocolates made by a friend of mine, Laura, a trained pastry chef. These were very delicious and very potent. He became extremely cheerful, hilarious, and animated.
“What are you seeing?” I asked at one point, as he lay on the couch.
“It would take a hundred pages a minute to tell you,” O said matter-of-factly.
A moment passed, then he reported with a gust of giggling, “I just had an astounding alteration of perception! I opened my eyes, and in place of my body all I could see was my feet—my comically large, flat human feet. They seemed very brightly colored!”
“What color?”
“Oh! Every color!”
We laughed a lot, laughter itself being something that Oliver felt was very good for one—stimulating pleasure-inducing neurochemicals—and, in turn, good for us as a couple. The effects of all this essentially harmless pleasantness wore off after a couple of hours, at which point we ran a bath, sharing the water in his giant tub, while listening to music and sipping our favorite liquor, Brennivin.
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Over the weekend, Oliver mentioned a few times that he was considering writing “a little piece” about receiving his diagnosis. And on Sunday night, after we had made dinner and cleared the dishes, he took up a small notepad and his fountain pen. At the top of the pad, he wrote, “Sad, shocking, horrible, yes,” underlining each word, “but…”
(Oliver often said that but was his favorite word, a kind of etymological flip of the coin, for it allowed consideration of both sides of an argument, a topic, as well as a kind of looking-at-the-bright-side that was as much a part of his nature as his diffidence and indecisiveness.) Next, he proceeded to list eight and a half reasons to remain hopeful; to feel lucky at the very moment when one might reasonably feel most unlucky.
He wrote quickly, thinking aloud as he wrote, then making one or two corrections with a red-colored felt pen. Once he’d finished, he handed the pad over to me to read:
But …
1. AN EASY DEATH (relatively)
2. TIME—to “complete” life
3. LOVING SUPPORT (Billy, et al.)
4. BOOK PUBLISHED (open at last about myself)
5. MORE GOOD WORK
6. ENJOYMENT ALLOWED
(6-A) MJ now legit
7. BEST DOCTORS, TREATMENTS, ETC. AVAILABLE
8. PSYCHIATRIC SUPPORT
I got choked up, the reality of what he and he and I were facing made all too real by his words on paper. I felt, too, amazed that he was able to collect his thoughts and do so with such aplomb and straightforward eloquence. Unlike myself—more of a melancholic sort—Oliver always was essentially cheerful in temperament, and this list—including the making of a list, an ordering and structuring of the world, not unlike his beloved periodic table of the elements—was very much in character.
As a doctor himself, he had seen more than the average share of grisly and protracted deaths, and he knew that—all things considered—there were probably worse ways to die (ALS, for instance, or, for that matter, the post-encephalitic condition that had doomed his Awakenings patients); hence, this form of liver cancer would bring a “relatively” easy death, so long as it didn’t metastasize to his bones or lungs.
For myself, I felt particularly grateful for number two on his list, as I told Oliver: “I’m thankful we have time, will at least have more time together, however much it is. Even just this weekend, even if this weekend is all we have? That’s more than I had at the end with Steve.”
He understood, and agreed. But for him, “time” meant far more: time to “complete” his life on his own terms, finally coming out publicly as a gay man through his memoir, time to see the book published, time to write pieces he had wanted to write, time to get things in order, time that a sudden and unexpected death, or the slow demise of an illness such as Alzheimer’s, would not allow.
As for number six, “enjoyment,” from the very beginning that was equally important, too, and it was with an impish sense of humor that he had gone back to the list and added “#6-A,” which indicated that “MJ”—i.e., marijuana, or cannabis—could now be legitimately, medically, and without any guilt whatsoever consumed.
I have kept this list, for those eight-and-a-half tenets helped guide him (and me) in the months ahead. It also became the basic blueprint for his essay “My Own Life,” which originated over the dinner table as well.
Two, maybe three, nights after he’d jotted his little list, I asked Oliver what he had in mind in terms of the essay he was considering.
“Well, let’s see …” He paused. “I suppose I want to begin by saying that a month ago, I felt that I was in good health. But … now my luck has run out…”