"You're going to die if you keep on like this. I'm your friend and doctor, and obliged to tell you that you're obese, definably alcoholic and a strong candidate for lung cancer."

"Gee, friend, do you assume I'm not aware of all this? I live very well on my terms, badly on yours. Rochefoucauld quipped that hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. I won't pay that tribute to you. Satiation is my life learning, and I've learned it well."

"You're cutting your life short by decades. Think of your family."

Snort of laughter. "You're in the business of pickles and prunes, prolonging withered lives that no longer remember what is was to be fruit, bursting with juice and subject to rot."

Sigh. "You'd have a better life, not worse. Physically active, clear headed, mentally awake . . ."

Half smile. "I explode with sensations, doctor, and there's very little I won't try to add to them. You see me as a chart, but I'm just garish graffiti. Try and enjoy what you see."

"Think of the pain you'll undergo, what your loss will mean to your children, your wife . . ."

"Ex wife. And I'm saving drugs for that phase of my existence. You wouldn't let me suffer in pain, it's against the pickle code."

Wrinkled frown of displeasure. "But you're just numbing and dumbing yourself down until you're inert. What kind of life is that?"

Several second pause. "You know, doctor friend, you're maybe not a sustainer of the living so much as a gardener of death, a vintner pruning away at life. Once we're sprayed and sunned and plucked and crushed and fermented you put us in a bottle labeled with our birth year so we can be consumed at what your medical taste buds tell you is the right time.

"But I'm not getting poured into your bottle. You can spill me on the ground, doctor, as a bad batch. Your mercy for my life is to not try and strain it. Then friend, sooner rather than later, I'll welcome you."