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The sermon for Aug. 31, 2002 is: uglykatie and beautifuldanielle
6:28 p.m. dude, when are you going to kill yourself? It's always depressing to acknowledge the existence of other people. I don't know when I will kill myself. I will share with you, though, my hideous katey, that more and more often I awaken in the morning with a gasp, with a start, a violent jerk of the head. Maybe my heart had stopped, maybe I had stopped breathing. Oh who fucking cares. Actually I'm going to stop sharing now, if you don't mind. This is fucking terrible. I only write in my diary when I'm suicidally depressed or suicidally happy. I don't hide my diaries since it seems falsely modest to write "for posterity," or write for the future, or write for fame, or whatever. I write because I'm obsessively-compulsive, and sometimes I simply can't stop writing, as I can't stop thinking or cutting myself or gnawing on my fingernails. Other times I can't speak at all. You're right, when am I going to kill myself. Well, whatever. I'll kill myself someday. Before I got sidetracked by Pepin the Short, I wanted to write about my friend Danielle. She's twenty-three years old, just turned 23, and last Thursday she went to her doctor and they confirmed what she was afraid of, she has a lump in her breast. She told me because she knew I would tell everyone I know. I told Alison, and Alison said, Why the hell did she tell you? You're the most fucking insensitive person I know. And Alison then went over to Danielle and offered Danielle the use of her apartment and all of her crayons. We can colour, Alison said. And Danielle smiled and nodded and she sought me out and she told me, Why the fuck do people suddenly turn into fucking gelatin dildos once you get a fucking fatal disease? Editorial note -- I use the word "fuck" a lot, though rarely in its technical conjugation of "technical conjugation." The people I know use the word "fuck" a lot. This is because this makes us look crass and cool and with-it when confronted with stuff like rape, and the murder of children, and suicidal ideation like the slow filling of black water in the throat, and the mystery of cancer appearing like a wrapped Christmas box silent in the snow outside your window. So Danielle is writing and directing a movie, la di da. Thursday night I took her to go see Julio Medem's "Sex and Lucia," a lovely trifle of a movie, as elaborate and frail as an angelfood wedding cake, like life, like love. By Friday morning she had come up with a script inspired, so she said, by her dream of Medem and by her life; so for lunch we went to Burger King and had french fries while she read me her script. It reminds me of "It's My Party" and "Peter's Friends" and other oh-ho-ho-I'm-dying-so-nobly-but-fuck-you for-being-so-horrid-to-me exemplars of the genre, but since Danielle may have cancer and since she is my friend I think I should give her more slack. It's her movie, after all, and her cancer, so I just smiled and patted her hand and wondered what did Alison mean by me being insensitive. I told her I wanted to make a documentary about her movie-- basically what I used to do long ago when I had friends, which is simply tape everything that happens. Danielle told Alison that she wanted me to do stand-up at her funeral about what a bitch Danielle was; she told me that she wanted "Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead" played as her coffin slid into the flames. This, I think, would make a lovely end to my documentary, and set the stage for my sequel, which I'm planning on calling "The Big Chill." Alison's a dweeb, she thinks we're being hopelessly fatalistic. She doesn't understand that we're being hopefully fatalistic. I'm taking Danielle to her ultrasound appointment soon. She's started looking for life insurance and we're already talking about hospice. My, we're efficient. I bounce from self-absorption to self-neglect, from delusions of grandeur to successive moments of actual grandeur. Life, in other words, I suppose. I brush my hair, I comb my teeth, I sleep, prepare for life. The last twist of the knife.
 
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