December 11. Charles takes a Magic Marker and points a stake west to Seattle. The sign reads HOME SWEET HOME THOMAS. I doubt I will live to see Seattle again. Another warthog runs through the village at dusk.

December 14. How come everything feels so much better when you’re lying down? I’m really growing to love my little pallet at the button factory.

December 16. Sylvester won’t lay off the tapeworm scheme. Now he’s got Charles hot for the idea. I say, “American women, no matter how fat, won’t swallow a thick white worm.” “Yes they will,” says Sylvester. “They will! What do you know anyhow?” Charles pipes in, “No worm to swallow, just a small vacuum-packed worm capsule. Just the ticket, man.”

December 17. Charles drives me to a three-hut village packed with victims of sleeping sickness. They all look pale, like Michael Jackson. They aren’t so much sleeping as they are “out of it.”

December 19. The button-factory watchman tells me Charles and Sylvester made off with my passport. My mini-pharmacy? “Long gone, man. Fat man Jimi Hendrix belt gone too.” I fall to the ground and kick at it and beat it with both fists. I chip a tooth on a rock. Send me a helicopter, God, and I swear I will never harbor a mean thought for the rest of my life.

December 23. Home just in time for Christmas. Three days in the Slumberking riding out a case of sandfly disease.

December 24. Christmas Eve. A stabbing pain in my foot. I hobble around bowlegged all day, like a busting-bronco cowpoke. I wrap Christmas presents. I can’t get to the Slumberking fast enough. Beyond awful. I wonder what it’s like to die. I’m sick all the time, but the final agonies must be worse. Yet so often I see old people smiling. Putzing around their yard, smiling. Horseshoes and lawn bowling between chemotherapy, and still smiling. What is with that? They croak and an influx of new ones rushes in to replace them. On the plane home I saw a woman eight months pregnant, and she had a big-ass smile on her face. Was she just putting on a good show? Was she really thinking, “Why did I ever fuck that ex-con mentally retarded lowlife? Having this kid of his is going to hurt like hell, and I’ll be a walking stretch mark. On top of it all I’ll have a screaming kid on my hands night and day, living on welfare the next twenty years while the old man luxuriates in the penitentiary without a worry in the world. Man, could I ever use another hit of methedrine.”

December 25. Birds chirping. The distant sound of puking in the bushes. Merry Christmas!

December 29. All I do is sleep. Jesus, I used to have time to do things, but now life revolves around Crohn’s disease, prostate trouble, heartburn, epilepsy, a hundred million problems.