I’m Losing You

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I’m Losing You is a work of fiction. The characters, conversations, and events in the novel are the products of my imagination, and no resemblance to the actual conduct of real-life persons, or to actual events, is intended. Although, for the sake of verisimilitude, certain public figures do make incidental appearances or are briefly referred to in the novel, I have included them here without their knowledge or cooperation; their interactions with the characters I have invented are wholly my creation and not intended to be understood as descriptions of real events or to reflect negatively upon any of these public figures; nor to suggest that they ever sought or participated in any psychiatric or psychological treatment.

It seemed only yesterday that Serena Ribkin was a vibrant, no-regrets member of the Lie — that seventy was “young”—but now she lay bedridden in her frazzled palace with a bad case of colon cancer. Ten months ago, her party, so to speak, had been crashed by a pain-freak hooligan; she duly protested, thinking the intruder could be sassed or paid off, cajoled to leave. Unflappably, she submitted herself to resection and the roughing-up of a good chemo. But when they indecorously cut away thirty-six inches of bowel (not to would be suicide, Donny said), everything changed: the skinhead sodomized her in front of the guests and she had no choice but to give him run of the house. She knew all would be smashed now, every secret-recessed thing. At least, while revelers were slaughtered below, the invader allowed her lucidity and television privileges — that was something, anyway. Now Serena lay stuporous in her cloacal chambers, on the protective-plastic-covered California King. Far from the madding crowd, as they used to say.

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