WARNING: If you have been exposed to HIV (Humor Immune Virus) do not read this story. You may crack a smile, or even in rare cases, laugh. LYG
***
"I'm so sorry Charlie,"
Well, that wasn't too bad, I figured hearing I had six months to live would make me feel a lot worse. But after getting the news, I was, well, I was ok. Hell, this news didn't even hurt as bad as a root canal.
I bet you wouldn't have taken the news this well, go on, admit it, you'd have been crying and screaming. You big fuckin' baby, I took it like a man. Shit, I even went back to work after leaving Bob's office. Oh, you know Bob, the doctor I play golf with, he's the one that just handed me my death sentence. He's an eight handicap, I'm a six.
I went to Bob for a routine physical, some insurance bullshit. He called me in after he got all the test results in, he says it some kind of nuclear melon coma of my bilateral clavicle thingy. I'm no doctor, so all I got out of it was six months to a year at best. Hey, do you want to go have a greasy cheeseburger with me? No use watching my diet now, what's it gonna do kill me? I might even order some onion rings.
So, that all happened a couple of weeks ago. A lot has happened since then, you probably want me to tell you about it. No? Then why the fuck are we sitting at this bar talking? Ah, fuck you, I'm gonna tell the story anyway.
I did have that cheeseburger, and I did go back to work. The day was much like any other, paperwork and phone calls, sort out someone else's problems... Go see Bob, find out I'm dead meat, walk out of Bob's office without my pants, drive around aimlessly trying to remember where my office is located... Go back to get my pants, do more paperwork and then go home to my loving wife.
My loving wife Mary, I was just about to shit on her parade. She was going to be devastated, I'd taken the news pretty well up until that point. I was standing at my front door wondering how I would tell her, how do you tell someone you've loved over half your life, you're going to die?
How would Mary do it? She's a pretty no-nonsense kind of woman, always has been. Mary walks right up to me and tells me what she wants, that's how we got together. I was dating one of Mary's friends back then, she cornered me at a party, and told me we were going to get married. It seemed pretty farfetched to me, but that's what happened twenty something years ago.
No girl had ever chased after me before, not that I minded the attention, but still, it shocked me. I never considered myself a real catch, however, Mary did. I wasn't in her league, I would have never even asked her to dance, let alone get married. She told me later that she saw something in me, and that I'd always be there for her. I guess I'm going to fool her.
As I flipped the lever on the door, I decided to do it Mary's way. I wasn't going to beat around the bush, just come right out with it. I walked into the house to a big "SURPRISE." The room was filled with all of my family and friends, a great big fucking surprise birthday party, complete with balloons and cake, all for little ol' me. I'm pretty sure my face showed the proper amount of shock, it was real, and this was the last thing on earth that I wanted right now.
How the hell was I supposed to tell Mary that I was a dead man walking, I could see my mom and dad were there, they'd have flown halfway across the country to be there for me. My kids were both there also, I wasn't ready to tell everybody at once. I had to swallow all the words that I'd prepared for my wife, I'd have to do it later.
I should have expected something like this, it was my fiftieth birthday. Mary loved to throw parties, I think we celebrated Yugoslavian forth of July once. She could have made a career out of it, but she just did it for the fun.
My chagrin must have been pretty apparent to Mary, she asked me,
"What's wrong Baby? You look like someone stole your puppy."
"It's nothing, I just wasn't planning on all of these people," I shrugged.
"Oh, I know what it is, you were expecting your other surprise in the bedroom. Don't worry Baby, you can have that too, you just have to wait until everyone has left," she whispered and winked.
Yeah, like that was going to happen tonight. Sex was the second to the last thing on my mind right now. Mary was in her element, she tended to all our guests like the proper hostess. Once in a while, I would catch Mary stopping to stare and smile at me. I've watched her do that since we started our lives together without knowing I saw her, she would stop what she was doing, look at me and smile contentedly. That simple act, told me Mary loved me the same after all these years.
The end of the party couldn't come too soon for me, but it did finally end. When I locked up for the night and went to bed, Mary was waiting for me in my new birthday present. She was lovelier than ever in that long black lacy gown, Mary had gained about twenty pounds since we'd married and they all went to the right places.
It was our custom to spend the night making love after one of her parties, but tonight would be the first time that I let her down. God I was such a pathetic excuse for a man right now, I could only hope the remaining days I had wouldn't be the same. This whole day came crashing down on me, and it gave me a headache. After Mary was asleep, I got up to get some aspirin. When I went to the medicine cabinet, the bottle was empty. Mary always kept something for a headache in her purse.
I wandered down to the kitchen, and started my search. How women ever find shit in their handbags, I'll never know. I dumped the contents of her purse on the table, there they were, thank God. As I threw the pills back, my eye caught a glimpse of something that shouldn't be on the table. I almost choked when I found the empty condom packets. Twelve of them, what the Fuck, we hadn't used condoms, ever. Mary had been on the pill, and I'd been snipped after our youngest was born.
All I could think at the time was, "I'm sorry Charlie." How many people do you know that are given the death sentence twice in one fucking day. Isn't that called double jeopardy? Well happy fucking birthday to me. I went to the cupboard and got one of those Big Gulp cups that Mary saves, that's a lot of whiskey in one glass. I needed it right then to calm the voices in my head, and there were many of them.
"Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
"You're gonna die loser."
"Kill the cheating bitch."
"I'm sorry Charlie."
"You fuckin' wimp."
"Hey, put some ice in that whiskey."
The last one was the only one that made any sense, but I was too far gone by then to remember what drawer she kept the ice was in. Ice, ha, that's funny, I felt like the Titanic after it crashed into the iceberg. My soul had a big gaping hole in it, my Mary was cheating on me. Hadn't I always been a good husband to her? What a cruel way to put punctuation to the end of Charlie. At least the voices were passed out from the whiskey, they never could hold their liquor.
I awoke with the step sister of all hangovers, don't even try to figure out what I just said, trust me, it was a bad one. Mary had covered me with a blanket at some point, hell, she still had some felling for me. That's some comfort huh. I needed some more aspirin, but I wasn't going to dig through Mary's purse again. I found some pills in the bathroom, I should have read the label before I swallowed them.
