I was
veritably swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression

So here’s how it went in God’s heart: The six or seven or ten of us walked/wheeled in, grazed at a
decrepit selection of cookies and lemonade, sat down in the Circle of Trust, and listened to Patrick recount for the thousandth time his depressingly miserable life story

by exploiting his cancertastic past, slowly working his way toward a master’s degree that will not improve his career
prospects, waiting, as we all do, for the sword of Damocles to give him the relief that he escaped lo those many years ago when cancer took both of his nuts but spared what only the most generous soul would call his life.

The only redeeming
facet of Support Group was this kid named Isaac, a long-faced, skinny guy with straight blond hair swept over one eye.

I looked away, suddenly conscious of my
myriad insufficiencies.

The hour proceeded apace: Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost; hope was clung to; families were both celebrated and denounced; it was agreed that friends just didn’t get it; tears were shed; comfort
proffered.

“I fear it like the
proverbial blind man who’s afraid of the dark.”

Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this”—I gestured encompassingly—“will have been for
naught.

I’d learned this from my aforementioned third best friend, Peter Van Houten, the reclusive author of An Imperial
Affliction, the book that was as close a thing as I had to a Bible.

I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would
deign to operate on me.

“Yes, it’s difficult to
ascertain whether he is trying to arouse her or perform a breast exam.”

“It’s a metaphor,” I said,
dubious.

“That explains the
aura of sophistication.”

Augustus said, “Hazel and I are going to watch V for Vendetta so she can see her filmic
doppelganger, mid-two thousands Natalie Portman.

The day of the existentially
fraught free throws was coincidentally also my last day of dual leggedness.

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical
zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.

(This is an old argument in the field of Thinking About Suffering, and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be
plumbed for centuries

but
suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not in any way affect the taste of chocolate.)

“Sadly, the bridge is already under insurgent control due to questionable strategizing by my bereft
cohort.”

Any attempts to
feign normal social interactions were just depressing because it was so glaringly obvious that everyone I spoke to for the rest of my life would feel awkward and self-conscious around me, except maybe kids like Jackie who just didn’t know any better.

it can’t end, then it should at least continue into
perpetuity like the adventures of Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem’s platoon.

I enjoyed being
coy.

His dismembered body exploded like a
geyser and the screen went red.

He nodded, the tears not like tears so much as a quiet
metronome—steady, endless.

Pardon the
double entendre, my friend, but there’s something a little worrisome in your eyes.”