I’m walking down the road, and I’m thinking nothing costs an arm and a leg anymore. Not literally, anyway. We’ve got doctors for that shit, insurance paid by our employers who tell us to check ‘no’ to smoking, narcotics, and skydiving, because that lowers the rates.

But look at me; I’m Cancer (in its dormant stage).

I’ve got this cancer stick smoldering between my fingers, the best use I’ve found for my appendages in years. I mean look at these fingers! They’re just pinched, fleshy mounds of skin that I stain a deeper diarrhea yellow with each drag, worthy accomplices in my leisurely death.

I hardly even sleep anymore; I’ve got my Cancer bed instead, like I’m fucking Dracula or something. My fan maxed out weeks ago, but I will go through searing pain to manufacture this perfect tan. It’s all a part of my determined demise. In there I singe my fingertips until the patterns that make each human so unique peel away. About once a week this happens. About once a week I get to be unique again. And what is more unique than death? Compared to our births, anyway. We all come out of the same place, but how we go, where we go, that’s where we get to make our own choices.

In a way, then, I am becoming my own death, my body slowly decomposing as I watch. In a way we all are. The old man who lives next door gets the bottoms of his feet shaved off once a week by the cash-on-delivery nurse, the kid who rides the bus to school each day peels his face with masks that promise to zap those zits for good!, the women at the malls get their nails cut off by Chinese immigrants whose mothers need wheelchairs from binding their feet as babies, the cheerleader sits in French class staring enviously at the girl with leukemia who walks in thinner each day – this whittling away, this destruction, it’s inescapable.

I’ve even helped spread it, this decaying. My cancer cock should be an unwelcome guest, the kind of blow you run from screaming. But my girls, they think HPV’s just a cold, and let me roost all night long. It takes years for the night to ruffle their feathers, but sooner or later the gynecologist is going to tell them cervical cancer won’t be covered by their health plan, that this is the way they’re going to go. It’s no wonder a Canadian is projected to live till eighty, while her American counterpart will be gone by seventy-seven. That’s three years where social security was supposed to pay the bills, but forgot.

Then come the reports, the testimonials on national television, the women who’ve never even heard of waterproof mascara saying, “I never thought it would happen to me”, the young man who always ate his fruits and vegetables, the actress whose diet pill wasn’t supposed to cause liver cancer. These are all reminders that we will be going, that we are bound, that we do have a path, just maybe not at the cost of an arm or a leg.

I’d like to say, all this was at my fingertips, all this realization was coming to me first-hand, as the ambulance doors opened, the police turned off their sirens, the firemen spat and crossed their arms, waiting for the ok to leave the scene. I’d like to say I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar, my foot finally kicked the bucket, I’d like to say I can be all thumbs. I had the perfect line for the end of my life: I guess I got knocked off my feet, but this time it really was literal.

But instead, I just kept walking until I reached the hospital. The doors opened, and the nurse at reception said, “Tan’s looking great, Doctor Phillips.”