Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls (18 page)

And who can blame him? I’d give anything to sleep so soundly, and to wake each morning on a cloud of such fuzzy love.

“I’m going to need for you to pass some gas,” said the woman putting papers into envelopes. She spoke as if she were a teacher, and I was a second-grade student. “Do you think you can do that for me?”

“For you, anything.” And as I did as I was instructed, I realized it was no different than playing a wind instrument. There were other musicians behind other curtains, and I swore I could hear them chiming in, the group of us forming God’s own horn section. I’m not sure how long I lay there, blissed-out and farting. Three minutes? Five? Ten? Then I was instructed to get dressed, and someone led me into a room with a newspaper and a Bible in it. There I was reunited with Lisa, who said joyfully, “Didn’t I tell you?”

“Oh, you did,” I sighed. “I just didn’t allow myself to believe it. The next time, we should have these done together. Wouldn’t that just be fantastic?”

I was looking at her, beaming, love radiating from my body like heat from a lightbulb, when Dr. Holmes entered and told me it had all gone beautifully. “Congratulations,” he said. “You have the colon of a twenty-five-year-old.”

I’ll fall for anything, apparently. “Really! A twenty-five-year-old!”

“Actually I’m just kidding,” he said. “All healthy colons look more or less alike.” He gave me some pictures of what the camera had captured, but I couldn’t make sense of them—not then, as I bobbed balloonlike off the walls of the tiny room, or later, at Lisa’s house, after the drug had worn off and I was myself again.

I was just getting ready to go for a walk when my father called.

“So?” he asked. “What’s your verdict? Was it as bad as you’d thought it would be?”

I wanted to thank him for all the years of pestering me, to concede that he’d had my best interests at heart, but instead, unable to stop myself, I said, “Dad, they found something. And Dad…Daddy…I have cancer.”

It’s horrible, I know, but I’d somehow been waiting all my life to say those words. During fits of self-pity I had practiced them like lines in a play, never thinking of the person I’d be delivering them to but only of myself, and of how tragic I would sound. The “Daddy” bit surprised me, though, so much so that tears sprang forth and clouded my vision. This made it all the harder to see Lisa, who was listening to me from the other end of the sofa and mouthing what could have been any number of things but was probably, emphatically,
You will go to hell for this.

“The important thing is not to give in to defeat,” my father said. He sounded so strong, so completely his younger, omnipotent self, that I hated to tell him I was kidding. “You’ve got to fight,” he said. “I know that you’re scared, but I’m telling you, son, together we can lick this.”

Eventually I would set him straight, but until then, at least for another few seconds, I wanted to stay in this happy place. So loved and protected. So fulfilled. 

David Sedaris is the author of the books
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, Naked,
and
Barrel Fever.
He is a regular contributor to
The New Yorker
and BBC Radio 4. He lives in England.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Holidays on Ice

Naked

Barrel Fever