Simon Dount

"Everyone wishes they could find the right words, imagine the scene in a way that would resonate with many people, tell a story, probably their story, for others to read," I said. "Really it's not easy and it's not fun; it's an endless battle. A lot of work."

"Yeah, what you do, making it look easy," she said between forkfuls of macaroni. We were in a diner, near to the bathroom. People constantly walked past, often asking if they were near the restrooms.

"When have you ever seen me write?"

She shoveled several bites quickly into her mouth, then said something I could not understand. A few noodles squirted out from her lips.

He played bass guitar, even though he was not any good. He played with his eyes closed and sweat on his face. Simon did not mind that he couldn't play worth a damn. He worked the strings with intensity, plucking with all his might. His finger tips hummed for hours after he was done.

His friends watched with hands over their ears, but smiles on their faces. The spectacle was worth the torture.

"So good, yet so awful," someone would lean over and yell into their neighbor's covered ear.

"That's his point, I think," they replied, just barely audible over the thumping riffs.

Simon jumped and swayed and moved in rhythms no one else heard. It was intoxicating.

Simon liked to ride his motorcycle. The feel of the wind in his long hair and on his face. He never wore a helmet, defying the statistics. Weaving between cars on the freeway, charging around lines to run through red lights: you could say he had a death wish, but you would be wrong. He was 28 and had been carrying around a terminal brain tumor for 13 years. So much for the doctors giving him only weeks to live, refusing him treatment because there was no chance for survival. That was how he was going to die.