Hey guys, not gonna be here for much longer. I was diagnosed with a terminal illness. I guess the one silver lining in all of this is the fact that the make a wish foundation heard about my case and decided that they would grant me one wish.

My wish was to be Chad for a day. Ever since I was in 8th grade (I'm 21 now) I've been hearing about Chads, and I almost thought that it would be impossible for me to be one. I was a scrawny kid, and I was raised by a single mother. In elementary school I didn't "get" how to act around other boys. While all the guys were playing two-hand touch at recess, I just sort of mindlessly shoveled mulch around underneath the slides.

In middle school, I was of course a late bloomer, as are most boys with an absent father. While other guys were getting taller and growing ugly mustaches and fingerbanging girls at "parties" I was staying home making sure my bots on runescape kept running. I actually had a level 126, some of the best memories in my life are losing and winning hundreds of mills at the duel arena. Unfortunately I never got into pking like I wanted to. I was a little late on making a pure, so I was never able to be OP. By the time I got a good pure built, everyone was bridding using prod-gear and I just felt I wasn't able to keep up.

In high school my situation didn't improve any. I didn't really have any friends outside of school. I made a few associates, we would form a social huddle whenever we had classes together, just to kind of feel less awkward, but we didn't have much in common other than the fact that we were loners. There were a couple of times where I actually was able to get a girls numbers, but they only responded to me with one word texts. It seemed like there was never anything I could say to get them to be interested in me. So sadly, I must admit that throughout high school I remained a virgin.

After graduation I finally started lifting. The most difficult part was eating enough, but I slowly put on some weight. By the time I actually got to college I was benching 165 pounds, and as of writing this I can bench 225. Nothing mindblowing, but I can tell a difference in my body composition. That, along with a better haircut has had me noticing that girls do look my way every now and again, but I'm still plagued by the same inability to think of anything to say to them. I imagine that if I had friends to introduce me, I might be able to figure out a thing or two that we could talk about, but like most things in life it is almost impossible to start from zero. But even if I were to talk to girls, I've noticed that most of the girls go for guys who drive brand new trucks and SUVs. They're usually in fraternities, or could be if they wanted to fit in with those kind of guys, but they have a more indie instagram rich kid vibe instead. My 2001 Ford Taurus sticks out like a sore thumb, but I'm grateful that it never left me stranded.

I figured that after college my prospects might improve. The idea that women are attracted to wealth and status was something that was hammered home for me already in high school, so I picked a profitable major: computer science. I'm a pretty skilled programmer, and I'm sure after graduation I would have been able to get a good-paying job and pay off my debts quickly if I wanted to, but it looks like I'm not going to get that far.

Four months ago I got the diagnosis. My mom already maxed out our deductible for the year, so she suggested I go get a check-up just because I haven't had one in years. They found some abnormalities in the blood-work, and after a few follow-ups they determined I had an aggressive form of late stage pancreatic cancer. I was due to expire a few months before graduation.

At first I didn't really believe it. It seemed like it had to be a mistake, I got a second and a third opinion, just to confirm the same thing to me. I wanted to keep going, but insurance refused to pay anything after the first follow up, and seeing the other two doctors had already cost my mom another thousand dollars. So if I am going to die, which I suppose I am (although I still can't believe it), I don't want to leave my mom with any more of a financial burden than I already am going to with funeral costs.

So all of that was essentially to get you up to speed about what I'm about to tell you. I just got back from the promised land of southeastern Asia. The land of the impotent white man's dreams. The make a wish foundation heard about my case, after I confided in a nurse that I was still a virgin. She was cute, and it was a bit of a hail-mary play. I didn't expect it to work, but I thought maybe, just maybe, she might feel pity for the dying college kid in a hospital gown, and jerk me off, if not fuck me out of a sense of duty right then and there.

Of course, it didn't work, but it did get me in touch with an anonymous benefactor who sent me to Thailand for a few days, which, if there is anything good that can be said about this story, it is in the following paragraphs.

I took a connecting flight to JFK, and from there took a direct flight first class to Thailand. I think that might be the only time in my entire life I can say I ever experienced anything resembling luxury. Even on my birthday, we never went anywhere nicer than Applebee's, which would have been fine if my life ended on that note, but after experiencing this new first class deal, I actually feel now that I was missing out in my past.

I got off the plane, and aside from the other white expats I was the tallest guy in the terminal by at least two heads. I felt like an actual giant, I was an an actual giant here. Back home I felt like a lilliputian. Socially, I was. Everyone smiles at you in SE Asia when you're white. Part of it certainly has to do with the fact that most of them are trying to sell you something, but the ones who aren't seem genuinely interested in talking to you, and hearing about your homeland. They want to know what you think about this and that topic, and what you have to say about everything under the sun.

At baggage claim, a cute attendant helped me pick up my suitcase. Another one bid me good day as I left the airport, where I met my driver. Everyone was zooming around on mopeds, but I was given an old Land Cruiser to ride around in.

My driver took me to my hotel and then left the keys with me. Everything was happening so quickly. I discovered I was dying, and a few weeks later I was on a plane to Thailand. It was the first time in my life that I had even left my state. Nothing seemed real. Thailand seemed like another planet, I felt like I had stepped into some sort of tropical vortex. The strangeness of Thailand alone disorientated me to such a degree that I felt like I wasn't ever going to die, even though I knew that I certainly was.

For the first time in my life I became acutely aware of how quickly time passes. I realized I had been somehow unconscious until my diagnosis. Everything that led up to that day seemed to pass quickly, and was nothing more than a hazy memory of a fever dream you might have in elementary school. But now everything was so lucid. I felt plugged in to reality, intensely. It was in this state that I became acutely aware of how quickly time passed. I wondered why it felt like I spent my entire life waiting for something, when I didn't know what it was that I had been waiting for. Every day that went by after the diagnosis I imagined another leaf falling off of a barren tree.

Even the time that I'm taking to write this is no small part of what I have left.

So here I was, in this strange place, that seemed like another planet, spending a few days of the winter of my life on some strange excursion. I came for the sex, that is what it was all about. I spent my entire life imagining what it would be like to have sex with a woman. To be granted access into her vagina. It seemed almost like something that simply didn't happen to what I considered to be normal people. It seemed almost like a transgression against another person's body, I couldn't imagine what it would be like, what it would take to have sex, anymore so than I could imagine how I would go about committing a murder.

The sexual participants of my society seemed so other to me. It seemed like they had some pre-requisite that granted them access to a club that had me blacklisted for membership. I always saw people navigating the social landscape with such incredible ease, I assumed it was some sort of innate talent that I simply lacked.

Even in Thailand, as a white giant receiving looks of adoration and pats of approbation up and down the bustling city streets, I wasn't sure that I possessed the social acumen to meet a girl and take her to bed the old fashioned way. I didn't feel that I had time to find out either, so I immediately inquired at the front desk of my hotel about the red light district.

The front desk attendant handed me a directory with a couple of numbers to dial, she held her hand out expectantly. I reached into my pocket and gave her a $20. I was confused, at first I thought that she meant that she was available for hire, but pointing me in the right direction was the only service she would render, although she did thank me profusely.

I went up to my room and dialed the number. A woman with a voice that sounded like it belonged to quite the ugly gook answered, asking me if I was looking for a "girlfriend". I told her that I was, but I was unsure about the legality of prostitution, and I said I was just looking for someone to go to the clubs with me that night. She asked me if I had enough money for "pretty girlfriend" - stating that it would run me $100 for a cute one. I told her that I did, she asked me which hotel I was staying at and what my room number was.

Within 30 minutes there was a knock at my door. I looked out the peephole to make sure it wasn't the police, or a gangster or a pimp looking for some extortion money, but all I saw was a tiny little Asian girl, in her late teens or early twenties.

She came in, and in the most businesslike manner proceeded to undress herself in front of me. I thought I would have been nervous, but she took my hands in hers and put them on her breasts - I sort of took over from there.

She hung out a while with me in bed after we got done. I think she was waiting to see if I would fall asleep so she could steal something and run off. So we laid there in bed for a while, even giving consideration to the language barrier I think things were inordinately uncomfortable between us. She had her head on my chest for a while, and I wanted to stroke her hair, but I thought of the hundreds, maybe thousands of guys she has laid her head on. I felt bad and phony. The whole encounter seemed so forced, and the dutiful cuddling she administered reminded me of the times when I was a kid, and my mom would walk into my room while I was playing with my action figures and start recording me, and then insist that I keep playing, but act as if she wasn't there. She seemed to feel obligated to pretend that she had no idea how pathetic I was. Maybe she wouldn't think I was pathetic if I told her I was dying.

But then maybe she would think I was lying. I wondered how that would make her feel, to know that one of the men she had sex with would soon be in the ground decaying. I remember thinking to myself about how it was almost as if there was a ghost inside of me who was growing in anticipation of the day that he would take over and be released from my body. Maybe he was already in control, and I was actually being driven and steered by some sex crazed ghost and that the ghost me's afterlife would be better than the current me's normal life. Inappropriate thoughts always seem to strike you in conjunction with moments of big change and uncertainty, but the idea also struck me as humorous. Absurdity could be one of nature's defense mechanisms.

She probably wasn't there for more than 45 minutes all told. Then she got up and smiled sweetly, dressed herself and headed out of my room. As the door closed I wondered why I wore a condom if I really thought I was dying.

I headed out to a cafe. To grab lunch. Thankfully the restaurants near the airports and restaurants had at least to some degree Americanized their fare, because I think if I had to eat whatever it was that the street-vendors were selling I may have starved. I got a bowl of noodles from a lady behind a counter who was again smiling at me ear to ear. I turned around to head out to the outdoor seating area, and saw a female expat sitting alone sipping tea out of a white mug.

“You're dying” I remembered, and without a second thought I went over and sat down at her table and introduced myself.

I told her I had just gotten there that day. She told me that she had been there for a couple of weeks, and was doing service learning for a dental hygiene program at a community college back in the states. I didn't mention that I was dying. But I did tell her that I was a college student, and I confessed about how much of a loser I was back in high school, and alluded to the fact that I wasn't exactly hot stuff nowaday either. She told me that she moved around a few times while she was growing up, and never felt like she could ever be an insider at the schools she went to.

We talked about how formal most of our interactions with people felt. Like there was some layer that we were just never able to penetrate. Our relationships had been shallow, not in the sense that the people we hung out with lacked depth or character, or that they were superficial people. But when I told her about how I always felt that when I was with people there was something that wasn't understood between us, and I wasn't able to really express what that lack of understanding was, she told me that she thought she knew what I was talking about.

We talked a lot about different things, I told her about the first time I rode a dirt bike. I was eight years old, with my cousin and his uncle in their front yard. Going up a hill I accidentally popped a wheelie and somehow landed it, and the look of astonishment on my uncle's face that me and my cousin could never get over.

She told me about her days in middle school, when girls were just learning about how to curate an image on social media, and how her and all her friends went out to the woods to take cute pictures of each other. She told me that she tried to make sure that the pictures of her friends were really good, but when it was her turn to be photographed she was rushed through and no one really put in what she felt to be an adequate effort. The strange things that stick with you and affirm the feelings of worthlessness and isolation.

But despite this she was actually quite happy now, she told me she had a boyfriend. I asked her if she had ever seen After Midnight. She hadn't, and I left it at that. She did have friends, and family. She even told me that her dad would love me. She complained that her boyfriend was a bit of a cad, and that she often felt foolish for loving him. I asked her in earnest why girls love guys who treat them poorly. She instead answered me with why girls tend not to fall for guys who treat them well. Roughly put, she said that kindness and politeness did not lend themselves to excitement, and it wasn't the poor treatment that put them on, but rather the predictability that put them off. She suffered a great deal for her affections toward her beau, and she was aware of it, but at least the affections were there and most women figure that a life without affections is not a life worth living.

“Treat her mean, keep her keen.” I remember saying that verbatim. As soon as the words left my mouth I felt repulsive, Americans don't say keen. I read that phrase online. She didn't seem to notice the profound idiocy of what I had just said, thankfully, and the conversation kept on as well as it ever had. I felt like there was synergy between us, and for a while that one conversation alone seemed like the pinnacle of human experience. I felt vibrant, warm and glowing in the chest. I was almost happy to be dying.

But then I saw another man sitting in the cafe, western, alone and looking despondent. I realized he was dying too, only he didn't know it, like I didn't know it before my diagnosis. And I was filled with regret. My life was cut short, and I hadn't made it a good one. I always assumed that the people around me wouldn't have me. I kept them at arms length. I was inappropriately formal at all times around all people, and as a result I didn't have any friends. I remembered rolling my eyes. When people shared things about themselves that I didn't think were relevant or important, I didn't see the utility in doing that. But it came to me quite suddenly that people doing so was an invitation to be part of their world, and my behavior wasn't dignified – it was churlish.