The red squiggly lines under my words are coming more frequently these days. Used to be they would poke their noses around on an occasional basis, most often when the Pabst was flowing and my fingers got fat.

I guess it’s inevitable, really. Doc Smallee said to expect some things to change after the diagnosis but he wasn’t up front about my fingers going to hell and shaking so much. Ain’t that a bitch.

I should probably just count myself lucky that I was able to put down the several hundred-thousand words I did over my wretched life span. Kinda funny that what was once about my only therapy is now my own personal hell.

Hell or not, I can hardly believe I’ll be giving up so soon. Something like this gets in your blood and that’s just how it is. The funny thing is that I’m not sure just who will read these last ramblings of an old man. No matter. I’ve put words to paper for others most of my life, it’s probably time I put a few down for me.

If I could go back, would I do things much different? Hard to say. I’d probably say hello to a few less smokes, maybe make fewer “last calls”. Here at the end it’s easy to woulda, coulda, shoulda, but it’s all so much smoke in the wind now. A life full of regrets, full of genuine oh-my-God fuck ups. Life none the less.

Don’t really care too much about the meaning of it all. It is what it is. Not much comfort to that but I’m not certain I’m deserving of much comfort. If I had done the right thing, maybe. If I’d given myself to her the way she had given herself to me then I expect things would have been different. Half a goddamn century later and I still can’t quite forgive myself.

I couldn’t get past the blindness of my own self centeredness. That’s what it all boils down to. Even as I leaned over the rail of that steamship, eventually losing her face in the crowd, I knew I shouldn’t have left. I lied to myself, believing that I would see her again, that she would wait for me to get the journey out of my system.

I had questions. Christ, I had questions. They needed answered. I had to go. That’s what I told myself. I told myself that even as the tears fell on the telegram from the States. Cold, yet bold faced letters on canary paper announcing her death at the hands of a back alley thug. What could I do then? It was too late. If I had been there, would things have turned out different? I don’t know, dammit. I just don’t know.

That’s how a man ends up as a clichéd writer, lonely and bitter. That kind of thing gives plenty of material to put on paper. Some of it even saleable. When I think about it now, it’s a damned pitiful way to make a living. A kind of blood money earned off the back of someone who was abandoned. Hell, I may as well have thrust that knife in her side myself.

It’s only right that in the end, the only thing that I was any good at is being taken away from me. My mind is still here, but that will go away soon enough, if the saw-bones are right. For now, that bastard of a growth seems content to just fuck with the connection between what I want my fingers to do, and what signals are allowed to pass unfettered. Like some kind of messed up toll gate, where the attendant uses nothing but arbitrary criteria to decide who gets past.

I’m told I’ve got about six more weeks. Plenty of time to consider the meaning of life and all that happy-crappy. Decided I don’t really give a shit at this point. Those questions that bothered me as a young man? Never did find the answers. Or maybe I did, but I just can’t bring myself to try and understand them. Either way, it’s time for me to get busy dyin’. How does a man go about doing such a thing? I don’t recall seeing it in no how-to manual. Probably no wrong way to do it anyway.

I guess I’ll get on with it then. I can’t do what I figure I’ve been put here to do any longer. My fingers can’t find the damned keys, and I’m tired.

June 17, 2004 From The New Haven Star Reporter:

New Haven police confirmed today that the man who fell eight stories to his death yesterday was recluse author James Boyd. Boyd’s work included several novels that critics labeled as “dark” and “bitter”. Fans were not as shocked by his death as they were by the location. All accounts had Boyd living on the outskirts of London where he had lived as an expatriate for nearly 50 years. Boyd had no living relatives. A memorial service is scheduled for this Saturday.