Epilogue.

I go out now...sometimes.  It's like remembering a vague idea of love. 

I was on my bike the other night and it was beautiful, perfect, home. 

And I think maybe one day I'll still do my stupid hundred miles.  (but not too soon, though, I'm sadly out of shape.) 

I still have that lump in my groin.  Sometimes it seems bigger and other times it seems to be holding steady.  Sometimes it hurts like crazy and other times it's passive.  I figure I'm peeing okay, no blood, so maybe it's just a thing.  Maybe.  

I woke up in the middle of the night recently, I woke up hard.  It was still dark; it was quiet.  My heart was beating through my chest.  I was sweating through my clothes, my sheets were soaked.  "This is it," I thought, "my last night on earth."  And I was perfectly calm about it, perfectly okay.  I thought about my final day, what I did, the guy who wouldn't stop talking to me and how funny he was.  It was a nice day.  It was a good day to go.

And that is how it will go - unless and until I go to a doctor, that is how it will be.  And I'll wake up the next day and have another go at it except for the one night when I won't.  But when it happened that one night last week, I wondered, Should I get up and pee so they don't find me all pissed out?  Naaaah, I decided, let the fuckers have to clean it up.

Thus ends Chapter 1.