Her hands brush the space under my knees.  I’m still quite ticklish in my rarely touched areas.

I begin to wish their was an afterlife for the first time since I was a child, mostly so whichever of my deadbeat asshole of a family chose to move my semi-sentient body to a hospital twenty miles away from the beach can hear my unearthly bitching and complaining for a portion of an eternity.

Thank god for CraigsList.

My breathing was more labored by the minute and at this point.

I had given my erotic worker the instruction to fill a kiddie pool somewhere private as close to the hospital as possible.

(what I want to die in, as a last resort)

She thought I had an aqua fetish and needed to be back at the hospital before six o’clock, which wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.  I asked her to fill the child’s pool with lukewarm water.

This was going to cost more than I’d thought, considering recent inflation, but it’d be less than my wedding, and absolutely more important.

No nurses were around.  You really can’t find good healthcare anymore.  I peered from my window to see her pimp’s suped up Acura.  I began to wonder if he was Asian too.

I reach underneath my left arm and rip my pic line out.  It’s a weird feeling that a tiny string had been inside me.  I wonder if the prostitute could relate.

I slide my ass off the side of the bed and my feet hit the ice cold floor.  Why anybody would die in this cold death machine continues to baffle me.

Sneaking into bars, concerts, and strip clubs whilst underage and not wanting to pay cover, had trained me in looking completely and utterly that I belong.  This will mean no one will stop me from getting into that god damn Acura.

As the sliding doors opened, the warm Florida breeze bounced off my face.  It was a hot breeze.  This was a perfect day to go. 

She wasn’t Asian, but she wore enough mascara to seem like it.

He wasn’t Asian, but he drove a suped up Acura.

(generally what pimps drive)

The pimp apparently wasn’t exactly briefed thoroughly of what was going on.

I began to wonder if they were just going to rob me and dump me on the side of the highway.

Even in my frail state, I was the most dangerous person in the car.  No matter what I did, I was going to die today.

A man who’s going to return to the universal ether has no problem jamming a pen into some twenty year old eastern European pimp’s neck or use my last few ounces of strength to kick a prostitute out of a moving vehicle.

At this point, I don’t really need to give a fuck anymore.

But I had a mission, and I’d prefer everybody be cool and let me die how I wanna die.  God knows my ungrateful family couldn’t focus for one fucking second about anyone but themselves to let me die my own way.

In minutes, we were in the backyard of some shitty house somewhere in Broward.  I probably could have made it to the beach.

If only I would have set my “Fast Withdrawal Preferences” on my Bank of America ATM card, I would have had time to fucking rent an umbrella and stop at Wet Willies.

So it goes.

As I entered the house, EuroPimp immediately began to count my money.  No manners. 

The Prositute led me to the backyard where the pool I requested had been waiting for me.  I wouldn’t have been around long enough to watch her inflate and fill it.  I respect people that come prepared.

I remove my hospital gown and the pair of stained white underwear briefs riding up on my asshole.  I look down on my wrinkled frail body and one of my final memories flow into my brain.

It was with a girl named Jenny who had lived near me.  We were fourteen years old and in my backyard.  In front, a block party loudly crashed through the early September night.  It was just a kiss, but it somehow seemed more important than the vast number of sexual partners and the following decades of sexual exploration.

It must have been the kiddie pool.

Completely nude now, I fall back, hands pointing in opposite directions, it startles the prostitute.  The water splashes back at her.  She bends forward in a failed attempt to cushion my landing.

Her hands rubs over the scars on my left kneecap and then under the knee itself.  It tickles and I wonder if their is an afterlife.

Their are more questions that enter my head.  The Prostitute and EuroPimp will probably bury me in this backyard.

Warm water is how we were brought here.  Why wouldn’t it be the way we go out.  As breathing becomes harder, I start wondering when the DMT was going to flood my brain.  I’d figure it start by now.

I start to go, waiving the prostitute off.  This is the first time I clued her in that this isn’t just another deviant fetish of mine. 

You could say that this was my final joke.  One more prank for the road.

“Tricked you!  Now I’m going to die and you’re responsible for disposing of a body!  Ha Ha!”

Petty prejudices and conceptions are gone, as well as most of the memories I chose to never let go.  All things suddenly become illuminated.