Did you know that Paul Quarrington died of lung cancer over a year ago? Of course you didn’t, because you have no fucking idea who Paul Quarrington was, but even if you did know who Paul Quarrington was you certainly would not have known that he died of lung cancer over a year ago because if you did you would have told me. Well, imagine the audacity, he went and did it anyway.
Lung cancer is my least favorite cause of death, as it would happen. Not just because most of the people who die from it could have simply chosen not to do so (If only they were better informed, man! Surely there is somebody out there who is willing to start a letter writing campaign to inform the smokers and the miners that these are, as science has termed them, very bad ideas), but because when you find out that you have lung cancer the doctor usually tells you how long you’ve got left in terms of months and makes a very big deal about how you should not have any kind of hope. It seems to me that this would be an inexcusably awkward conversation. Other diseases may cause similarly off-putting talks, but lung cancer is easily the most prolific of them all.
I think I would kill myself. Not to be a downer, or more of a downer than I am in my standard state of gloom, but evidence suggests that I would kill myself. When I used to play hide-and-go-seek as a kid I would always step out of my hiding spot to confront the seeker as they got close, which goes well with my motto for living: You can’t fail if you don’t try! I think it’s a goodun. I may be a mite-bit passive-aggressive, as I truly hate competition and, especially, defeat. Death is a slightly more final defeat than is being found crouching in a coat rack, so you can count me out.
My uncle recently died from lung cancer, and I hear he was tempted to take matters into his own hands. I think he was in his 60s. My family isn’t all that close and we really only get together when somebody dies, which brings to mind Paul’s Song of Congregation, in turn making me picture my family as whales passing each other off the coast of Japan once a decade or so. We took a day-long boat ride out into the Pacific to drop his ashes (not Paul’s) near an island (not Japan) where my grandparents are buried. No whales in sight.
I have decided that Paul Quarrington would not have killed himself. As I understand it, he was uncharacteristically religious for a man who wrote a lot of stories with the word fuck in them, and I don’t think religios are allowed to be that proactive about death. As I’ve been told, he died sitting up in a chair in his home, drinking wine and chit-chatting with his friends. I don’t really know how to picture that scene, as lung cancer isn’t really a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of ending. To die from lung cancer sitting up in a chair and holding, even drinking, a glass of wine in a room with your friends, seems to imply planning to die sitting up in a chair and holding a glass of wine in a room with your friends. I imagine one would have to list Oh, and then I’m going to die on the itinerary for such a get-together. What an inexcusably awkward moment that would be. But I don’t think he would have killed himself.
This is all very sad for me on an entirely selfish level, because Paul Quarrington was a rare beacon of hope (or of proof, I guess, but all metaphorical beacons are beacons of hope in the way that all dogs are boys and all hot dogs are delicious and what were we talking about oh right) and showed me, as a supposed writer, that a person can write very interesting stories in very interesting ways, break all of the rules, and maybe get away with it. Even win awards.
I never really related to Paul though, perhaps because I knew fuck-all about him, and still know fuck-only-a-few about him. I related very closely however with a character of his, Desmond Howell, who I often channel in my more self-deprecating writings (Paul can’t accuse me of plagiarism now that he is dead and everything). Des Howell was, to flatter him, a fat lonely hermit man who hated to be around people and oh no I’m revealing way too much about myself but basically he was a real winner. If I were to list his positive character traits I’d come off as a narcissist (which I am, it’s just that as a narcissist I can’t allow myself to come off as a narcissist) but you’ll have to take my word that he had a few less deplorable facets. He was a bona-fide musical genius, for one example which applies to me in no way whatsoever, though I suppose that didn’t end well for him. Des thought the Beatles were his downfall.
The book of Desmond Howell, Whale Music, won at least one award and was made into a motion-picture-film also of some regard in the kingdom of Canada. I related startlingly much to Maury Chaykin’s portrayal of Des, even though I think the first time I saw it I was only around eleven or twelve years old. Let’s have a look-see at—
Oh, Maury died last year, too. From complications of a heart valve infection, which just blows all of my plans out of the water. I quit smoking a few years back, but I’m having less success quitting bacon, so bypass surgery was totally going to be my saving grace until Maury went and apparently died from the procedure. He died on his birthday no less, as if to challenge my insistence that the cosmos are going to be on my side come what is sure to be a raging torrent of plausible death scenarios. The way things are coming together here I’ll be lucky to make it to my own birthday in October (All the cool kids die at 27 anyway; Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison, etc).
However, just as Paul’s work gives me hope as a writer, he also had some good advice for people such as myself who have a limited time left on the planet: “Everyone’s dying right? I think in fact everyone should get a piece of paper saying, ‘Dear Sir: you’re going to die in a year.’ Then you’d go, ‘Better get on that then.’ “
Maybe I’ll fry up some bacon for dinner tonight.
