All the other afterlife scenarios are just not comforting. Reincarnation without continuance of this consciousness- I just don’t see the point in getting excited about it. And the least comforting eternity scenario of all time, one that is growing daily in popularity, one that people never stop telling me about, is that I will die but my energy will live on.

My energy, ladies and gentlemen.

Is my energy going to read books and see movies? Is my energy going to sink languidly into a hot bath or laugh until its sides ache? Let’s be clear: I die, my energy scatters and dissolves into Mother Earth. And I’m supposed to be thrilled by this idea? That’s as good to me as if you told me my brain and body die but my body odor lives on to stink up future generations. I mean, really. My energy.

But can’t I prolong my existence anywhere? My actual existence, not some positively charged shadow? No, I just can’t convince myself that the soul is anything other than the romantic name we have given to consciousness so we can believe it doesn’t tear or stain.

So, then, the rest of my life was going to be an accumulation of physical pain, mental anguish, and suffering. Normally I could handle it. But the problem was, until I died I’d be thinking only about my death. I decided that if I couldn’t spend one single day without thinking, I’d kill myself. Why not? Why should I struggle against my death? I couldn’t possibly win. And even if by some miracle I did beat this round with cancer, what about the next? And the next? I have no talent for futility. What’s the point of fighting a losing battle? To give a man dignity? I have no talent for dignity either. Never saw the point in it, and when I hear someone say, “At least I have my dignity,” I think, “You just lost it by saying that.”

The next day I woke and resolved not to think about anything the whole day. Then I thought: I’m thinking now, aren’t I? Then I thought: My death my death my death my death my gruesome painful sobbing death!

Fuck!

I had to do it. I would kill myself.

And I had an idea: maybe I should kill myself publicly. Why not fob off my suicide on one cause or another, pretending to die in protest over, I don’t know, the WTO’s wasteful agricultural policies, or third world debt, anything. Remember the photograph of that self-immolating monk? Now there’s an enduring image! Even if you’re killing yourself so your family will be sorry, pick a worthy cause, call the media, find a public spot, and kill yourself. Then even if your life has been a totally meaningless affair, your death doesn’t have to be.

The following morning by chance the radio told me that there was a protest on in the city around lunchtime. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a protest against the WTO’s wasteful agricultural policies or about erasing third world debt, it was about primary school teachers wanting a pay raise and more vacation. I tried to see the bright side. That was as worth dying for as anything, wasn’t it? I didn’t suppose any of the teachers themselves were passionate enough to self-immolate, but I imagined they’d welcome my contribution to their cause. I found an old canvas bag and threw in a can of petrol, a lighter in the shape of a woman’s torso, and some painkillers. I wasn’t trying to cheat death; I was hoping to cheat pain.

Sydney is one of the most beautiful modern cities in the world, but I always manage to find myself at the corner of Drab and Bleak Streets, and always in the section of the city where there’s nowhere to sit down, so I spent the morning walking and staring into people’s faces as I passed by them, thinking, “See you soon!” I was going to die now, but by the look of those triple chins, I knew they wouldn’t be far behind.

I arrived at the protest around twelve. It was a poor turnout. Forty or so people were holding up signs demanding respect. I didn’t think anybody who had to demand respect ever got it. There were a couple of television cameramen too. They looked young, probably cadets in their first year on the job. Since I didn’t require a seasoned journalist who’d ducked sniper bullets in Vietnam to film me, I took a place in the protest next to a couple of angry-looking women I wouldn’t want teaching my kid and psyched myself into the state I needed to be in to do myself in. All I had to do was think relentlessly negative thoughts about the inhabitants of the planet Earth. When I felt almost ready, I took out the painkillers but discovered I’d forgotten to bring a bottle of water. I walked to a nearby café and asked for a glass. “You have to eat something,” a waitress said, so I ordered a late breakfast: bacon, eggs, sausages, mushrooms, baked beans, toast, and coffee. I ate too much; the food in my belly made me sleepy. I had just ordered a second espresso when I saw someone famous coming out of a restaurant on the other side of the street: an old television journalist. I vaguely remembered that this journalist had been disgraced owing to one scandal or another. What had happened? It was nagging me. Did he wet his pants on TV? Did he lie about the state of the world and say on national television that everything would work out well for everyone? No, that wasn’t it.

I paid the bill and walked toward him and was just about to ask him to clarify the details of his public humiliation when a girl came out of the restaurant, flung her arms around his neck, and kissed him passionately. I thought: Sure, I’ve been kissed, but no one has ever flung her arms around my neck. Women have placed them there gently or lowered them over my head as if they were putting on a jumper, but never flung them. Then the girl pulled away and I recognized her too. Christ, I thought. What do these celebrities do, join forces to double their fame?

Then it hit me. She’s not famous! She’s my son’s girlfriend!

Well, so what? Why should I care? This wasn’t very big on the tragedy scale. It was just a teen drama, the type you might see on a nightly soap opera. But by being an eyewitness, I had become a character in the cheap melodrama; I had to play out my part to the end, to the dénouement. How irritating! I just wanted to peacefully self-immolate. And now I had to “get involved.”

I dropped the matches and the petrol in disgust and went home, enormously relieved that an excuse for staying alive had dropped in my lap.

When I arrived home, Anouk was in her studio, stretched out on the daybed she’d made for herself, propped up on a mountain of pillows. I could always count on Anouk for good conversation. We each had our favorite topics, our default topics. Mine was the gnawing fear of dropping so low in my own estimation that I would no longer acknowledge myself in mirrors, but would pass on by, pretending I hadn’t seen me. For Anouk it was always a new horror story from the chronicles of modern relationship hell. She often had me in stitches recounting recent love affairs, and I felt a strange pity for those men, even though they were the ones who left her. She was always creating complications for herself- putting the wrong people together, sleeping with her girlfriends’ ex-boyfriends, sleeping with her ex-boyfriend’s friends, always just on the line of fair play, teetering on the line, sometimes falling.

“What do you think of this girl Jasper’s seeing?” I asked.

“She’s beautiful.”

“Is that the best we can say about her?”

“I’ve hardly had two words with her. Jasper keeps her hidden from us.”

“That’s natural. I embarrass him,” I said.

“What’s natural about that?”

“I embarrass myself.”

“Why are you interested?”

“I saw her today- with another man.”

Anouk sat up and looked at me with bright eyes. Sometimes I think the human animal doesn’t really need food or water to survive, only gossip.