“I know you know a lot of musicians,” he says out of nowhere as we’re hugging goodbye. “But I want to sing at your funeral.”



He’s strangely insistent and repeats himself twice.



Oh, good god, I think. Because while I’m quite ill, my death isn’t imminent, he hasn’t sung professionally in decades, and he’s getting worse—now he’ll even make my last hurrah about himself. 



I want an alternate reality, a better one, where he’s just the kind guy who’s my close friend and not somehow this stranger, as well. 

But his moods keep pivoting faster than a cheetah on Dexedrine and his fits of grandiosity are ballooning like a Macy’s parade float gone rogue.



Later that night he sends a 15 paragraph email comparing himself to Bob Dylan.



I reply, “I love you, but you need some fucking help.” 


I sleep for a little while and wake up at 3:00am exhausted.



I know he’ll ignore me again.



In the morning I wake to a 20 paragraph email in which he’s now both Placido Domingo and the Pope.



I don’t respond—there’s no point anymore. I’m done.



I cry a little as I get dressed for work.

Litsa Dremousis is the author of Altitude Sickness (Future Tense Books). Seattle Metropolitan Magazine named it one of the all-time “20 Books Every Seattleite Must Read”. Her essay “After the Fire” was selected as one of the “Most Notable Essays 2011” by Best American Essays, and The Seattle Weekly named her one of “50 Women Who Rock Seattle”. She recently left the Washington Post, where she’d been an essayist who wrote extensively about Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Her work has appeared in Esquire, Hobart, McSweeney’s, NY Mag, The Rumpus, et al.