Dying Feels Like Slowly Sinking - Part 2

It's been six months since my mother's funeral. Eric and I haven't talked about his dreams since. Lately though, I've been worried. He hasn't posted on Facebook at all. I know that's not a big deal, but usually he shares pictures from "Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash" or some pseudo-science bullshit from "Spirit Science," and he hasn't so much as commented on something for at least a month.

So after sending him four texts and getting no response, I decided I was going to go to his apartment to talk with him in person. On the way, I called his wife Jess. If she had really left him like he said, and I had no reason to doubt it, I wanted to know what exactly I was getting myself into.

The phone rang twice and on the third ring a male voice answered. "Hello?" "Uh, hi, is this… I'm looking for Jess?" There was rustling on the other end, and then Jess's voice. "This is Jess, who's this?" "It's Patrick. Eric's brother." There was a long pause on the other end. "Why are you calling, Patrick? Did… is Eric okay?" "I, yeah, I think so, I'm just heading over to see him now. I just wanted to know, you know, if it's not too personal… what happened between you guys?" "Patrick…" "It's- I'm not trying to get involved, I just… it's about the dreams he was having." Another long pause. "Oh." More rustling from the other end of the phone; maybe she was leaving the room so the guy she was with didn't hear?

"Patrick, you still there?" "Yeah, Jess, what is it?" "I've got… let me just email you some of the messages he sent me before your mom died. I think you'll… maybe it'll help." "I, yeah, that'd be great Jess, thanks." "No problem. Bye." She hung up.

I pulled into Eric's apartment complex a few minutes later. He answered on the third knock. He looked terrible. His hair looked like it hadn't been combed or washed in weeks, and he had massive bags under his eyes. "Hey Eric. I haven't heard from you in awhile, so I thought I'd stop by." "Thought you might come." "What do you mean?" "I saw your post, stupid. I read nosleep." "Oh. Shit, man, I didn't mean-" "Doesn't matter, Pat. Come on in. There's some things I need to tell you."

He moved aside and gestured for me to come in. As I walked into his apartment, a few things immediately became clear. One; by the smell of it, he hadn't showered in a long time. Two; he had thick black drapes covering all the windows, making the entire apartment look like somewhere you'd expect a seance to be held. He stammered as he started to talk. "Look, I… I know I must look like shit, but I… there's good news, man. I figured it out." "Figured what out, Eric?" "The whole… all of it. The black water." I didn't say anything, I just looked at him. He looked like he had aged five years since the last time I saw him. His skin had patches of discolored skin and his hair looked thin, like it was falling out.

"Eric, I think you need to see a doctor." He chuckled hoarsely. "It's pretty fucking far past that, Patrick. Pretty fucking far." He tried to clear his throat, but it just made him go into a coughing fit. "Eric, are you okay? Do you need a glass of water or something?" He looked at me like I just killed a puppy. Suddenly I realized something. "Eric, when was the last time you had a drink of water?" "I don't… three or four days I think." "Jesus, Eric, you've got to-" "DON'T- I… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to… to freak out there for a second. I'm not really sleeping much." He plopped down onto the couch.

I went to the kitchen and turned on the tap. A few small drops of water fell out. He must have done something to the pipes. I went back into the living room and sat down in a chair opposite the couch. He coughed a little, then spoke. "I found it." "Found what?" "There's this book. It's about ancient civilizations and religions and stuff, and I found it." "Found what, Eric?" "I found the coral." He pushed aside a pile of newspaper and grabbed a large, heavy-looking book. The cover didn't look like anything special, but it had the weight and width of a Dickens novel. He flipped it open to a page he had bookmarked, then handed it to me. "Read it."

I looked at the paragraph that he had highlighted. "One of the few things we have left from the Tayu culture is their conception of the afterlife. The Tayu had many gods, but the god given the right to punish mortals was the god of scales, the hermaphroditic water deity Yetalka. Souls who died without being aligned to one of the Tayu tribal gods were given to Yetalka, who stitched them together as a shelter for all of the creatures of the sea." I handed him back the book. "This is nothing, Eric. It's nothing like your nightmares."

Eric put the book down beside him, taking great care. "I know you don't believe me, Pat, but you need to understand this; when soul's were given to Yetalka, Yetalka would punish ten generations of the sinner's family." "This is ridiculous, Eric. If people got sent to Yetalka if they didn't worship one of the other Tayu gods, then everyone born after the Tayu went extinct would get sent to Yetalka." Eric nodded slowly. "Ain't that a bitch?" There were a few seconds of silence before I tried a new approach. "Well, if you think you're being damned by a water god whose worshippers went extinct five thousand years ago, why don't you just look up how to please the damn thing?" "I did." "And?" "It's not anything I'm going to ever do." "Why not?"

Eric had another coughing fit. After it went on for about a minute, I got up. "I'm going to go get you some bottled water. I'll be right back, are you going to be okay until then?" He nodded, still unable to talk through his coughs.

As I walked down the stairs back to my car, my phone rang. It was Kelsey. "Hello?" "Patrick, hey it's me." "Hey, what's up?" "Are- is… how are you?" "I'm alright, how are you?" "I'm… good. I'm good. You're- you're doing okay though?" "What's this about, Kelsey?" "It's stupid, it's nothing." "No, tell me. I want to know." "It's nothing serious, Patrick, I just had a nightmare with you in it."

My blood ran cold. "Patrick? Are you there?" "What was it?" "What?" "The dream, what was it?" "It's stupid, really." "Kelsey, tell me. I'm not in the mood for getting jerked around. Just say it." She didn't respond for a few seconds, and I checked to make sure she hadn't hung up on me.

"Well," she started, "It started with us treading water, out in the middle of the ocean. I don't remember how we got there, or whatever, but just… we were just stuck out there, and after awhile we started to sink. You tried to make sure I stayed above water, but we just… we couldn't keep it up forever. But then you spotted an island, and even though I couldn't swim anymore you pulled me to it so I wouldn't sink. It was… well, do you know how coral looks? The whole island looked like that, with the little holes everywhere. And every time you tried to grab it, there were these little… I don't know, like centipedes or something, but every time you tried to pull yourself onto the island they'd bite you, and eventually you just held your hand there while they crawled all over it and bit it. You pushed me up onto the island, and none of the things started to bite me. They just bit you, they ate the flesh on your hands away until you couldn't hold on anymore, and you just sank beneath the black water. And then I just… I looked down at my hands, and I saw the centipedes crawling out of every pore. They were everywhere inside me, just ripping me apart. I could feel them crawling up my throat and biting at the back of my mouth. One of them broke through the back of my eye and crawled out onto my face. And then, I don't know what- I just… the island starts to sink into the black water and I swear I could hear Dad's voice. It was so clear, like he was right next to me, and he just said 'It's so peaceful down here. Your mother and I are waiting for you.'"

Dying Feels Like Slowly Sinking

My mother died the day before her 68th birthday. She had made her living as a teacher, which made her dementia even more heartbreaking. My sister Kelsey lived with her the last year of her life, during which she forgot our names, sleepwalked into the woods in the middle of the night, and dug through drawers looking for things she had sold at garage sales years ago. The strangest thing about her dementia though was when she talked about the ocean. She had always lived in Western New York; the closest body of water was Lake Erie. My father being confined to a wheelchair made traveling difficult, and since he had died she hadn't gone anywhere on her own.

I remember one day I was fixing the sump pump for them. It was dirty, disgusting work, and after working on it for a few hours I came into the house to wash up. I walked into the bathroom to find my mother, sitting in the bathtub with her nightgown on. The shower was running, and her nightgown was soaked through. She turned to look at me as I walked in the room. "Patrick, I saw your father in the ocean last night." I reached over and turned off the shower, then helped her to her feet and started to dry her off. She just stared at me, like she didn't understand what I was doing or why I was doing it. "He says dying feels like slowly sinking." I tried to ignore her. It wasn't her fault that she wasn't making any sense and there was no reason to take out my frustration on her. She was probably frustrated too. I can't imagine being confused like that all the time.

I changed my mother into dry clothes and put her in bed, where she fell asleep pretty quickly. After I showered, I went out to the kitchen where my sister was making soup. When I told her about what Mom had said she reacted like I hadn't said anything at all. "She's been saying stuff like that all the time, Patrick. I don't think… the doctor says she probably won't make it another year. Her mind is gone; she keeps talking about Dad and some ocean. I can't make any sense out of it." "Do you think it's- like did her and Dad take a trip somewhere? Is she remembering their honeymoon or something?" "They went to the Adirondacks for their honeymoon." Her voice wavered as she got close to crying. I went over and held her for a minute or two until she had calmed down. She cleared her throat and spoke again. "Eric calls it 'genetic memory,' he says she's remembering back when we lived underwater." "Yeah, well, he fucking would say that, wouldn't he?" We both chuckled a little. Eric had spent most of his time stoned out of his mind ever since Dad died. "Would it help if maybe I got her some books about the ocean? Or like documentaries or something?" She shook her head. "She's not talking about a real ocean." From behind us, my mother responded. Kelsey and I jumped, surprised that my mother had come into the room.

"You two don't understand," she said with alarming clarity, "But someday you will. You'll see it too. The black water, stretching out into eternity. There's fog that sits on the surface so you can't find your way home. You'll wake up there one day, just treading water, until finally you can't do it anymore, and you'll let that black water just swallow you up. I heard that drowning is peaceful, but this… this isn't that. Every night I sink into that black water and I never saw the bottom until last night. Your father's there, and his father and his father. I think everyone's there."

The soup boiled over and my sister quickly moved it off the burner, finally breaking our focus. I went over to my mother to help her into a chair. When I got close, she whispered right into my ear. "You'll be there someday too. And I'll be there, and Kelsey and Eric. Eric's seen it, you know. The flesh coral."

I went to the bathroom to keep from crying or freaking out. Kelsey knows I've dealt with panic attacks before, so within a minute or so she knocked on the door. "Are you okay," she asked through the door. "I'll be fine, just feed Mom lunch and I'll be out in a little bit." There were a few seconds of concerned silence, then she finally said "Okay," and walked back to the kitchen.

I held my hands together to try to keep them from shaking as I started to cry. The one time my mother was speaking in complete sentences and she started talking like HP fucking Lovecraft? And what was that shit about Eric? Did he show her some movie or something that made her think this stuff?

It was only a few weeks later that my mother died. My mother had been well-loved at her school, so we got to hear a lot of stories from her students and the children of her students at the wake. It was really beautiful and cathartic, and I saw Kelsey smile for the first time in months. Eric was there, in those stupid fucking Doc Martens he wore everywhere. I thought it was weird that he didn't have Jess with him, but I figured maybe she couldn't justify to her boss skipping work for her mother-in-law's funeral.

Later on in the night towards the end of the wake, I saw Eric duck out for a smoke, and I politely excused myself for some fresh air. He was lighting up when I got outside. He looked up at me over the faintly-glowing end of his hand-rolled cigarette.

"Please tell me that's tobacco," I said. "No, Pat, I'm getting high at my mother's wake." "I'm not… I was trying to lighten the mood." "Yeah, well, great job." "Can you just- I'm trying to have a fucking moment here. I need to talk to you about mom." He didn't say anything. "About the ocean." His eyes flickered with recognition. "What about it," he said, pretending he didn't know what I was talking about. "The black water." He looked around, checking to see if anyone else was around. "Go inside, Patrick." "Why?" "Because you're going to think I've got fucking dementia, asshole." "Please, Eric, just- I just want to know what she meant. What she was talking about."

He took a long drag on his cigarette, and I could hear his breath waver. "This is…" he stopped, took a second, then started again. "Jess left. Couple weeks back. Cause of this. So just, if you're going to- if you want to hear this, just don't look at me like I'm fucking crazy and don't stop talking to me because I can't fucking take that right now."

I was taken aback, but tried to not let it show. "Eric, I'm not going to freak out, I want to know." He took another drag. "No, you fucking don't." "Eric, I'm-" "I've been having this dream," he said, his voice shaking. "used to be once or twice a month, now it's almost every night. I'm up to my neck in water and I don't know how I got there. I try and float and swim and stay above the surface but I always, I always… I can't do it forever, you know? So eventually I get too tired to swim, and I start sinking, and the water is so dark I can't see anything. And I just sink for God knows how long until I finally start to see light. There's this blue glow from below me, and I look down and there's no floor."

I furrowed my brow. "What do you mean, no floor?" He dropped his cigarette on the ground and stamped it out. "Like no ocean floor, no land at the bottom. There's just this… I don't fucking… It's like all these bodies, but they're not like…. they're all stuck together, but not stuck really, they're just… just together like they grew that way or something. There's all these little holes in them, like in coral, and there's these little things that swim in and out of the holes like they live in them. And I just keep sinking closer and closer to the bottom, which is all just this coral shit as far as I can see, and as I sink I start hearing voices in all sorts of languages. They're all so kind and welcoming and telling me it's beautiful where I am and… and..."

He put his hand over his mouth. "Eric," I tried to not let him hear my voice shake, "Is that… did you tell Mom about that or did Mom tell you?"

"That's not- you're not listening. When I'm in that water, and I'm sinking towards that coral, and I can hear voices, when I get closer they start talking to me. By name. And they start saying I belong there, and that they love me, and that I'll be happy when I'm with them, and all I have to do is stop fighting and I can be with them. And that's, I mean, it's fucked up, but it's… I want to believe them. I want to just drift down and become part of them. And it feels so good to just give up, it feels like coming home, but I just... I can always hear Dad's voice, quietly behind all the others. And he's… he's just screaming the same thing over and over…"

I tried to steady myself. "What's he saying, Eric?"

"'They're lying.'"

Let's review consent, and teach it to our kids.

It's important to understand sexual consent because sexual activity without consent is sexual assault. Before you flip out about how "everyone knows what consent is," that is absolutely not correct! Some (in fact, many) people are legit confused about what constitutes consent, such as this teenager who admitted he would ass-rape a girl because he learned from porn that girls like anal sex (overwhelmingly not true, in addition to being irrelevant), or this ostensibly well-meaning college kid who put his friend at STI risk after assuming she was just vying for a relationship when she said no, or this guy from the "ask a rapist thread" who couldn't understand why a sex-positive girl would not have sex with him, or this guy who seemed to think that because a woman was a submissive that meant he could dominate her, or this 'comedian' who haplessly made a public rape confession in the form of a comedy monologue. In fact, researchers have found that in acquaintance rape--one of the most common types of rape--perpetrators tend to see their behavior as seduction, not rape, or they somehow believe the rape justified.

Yet sexual assault is a tractable problem. Offenders often rationalize their behavior by whether society will let them get away with it, and the more the rest us confidently understand consent the better advocates we can be for what's right. And yes, a little knowledge can actually reduce the incidence of sexual violence.

So, without further ado, the following are common misconceptions about sexual consent:

• An overwhelming majority of people require explicit (i.e. unambiguous) consent for any sexual activity beyond kissing in a new relationship. However, even an unwanted kiss can be fatal if the person being advanced upon feels unsafe due to a large discrepancy in size/strength.
• "Token resistance" to sex is virtually nonexistent, particularly for first encounters. The overwhelming majority of men and women who say no to sexual advances really do mean no. It's never reasonable to assume that when someone says no, they don't really mean it (unless you have previously mutually agreed to role-play and have decided on an alternative safe word, in which case it's not an assumption) even if the person has sent extremely "mixed signals," or even engaged in some sexual contact (as many sexual offenses often entail).
• As in other social interactions, sexual rejections typically are communicated with softened language ("Next time," "Let's just chill," "I really like you, but...") and often don't even include the word "no." These rejections are still rejections, and any subsequent sexual activity is still sexual assault. Both men and women are capable of understanding these types of refusals, and to pretend otherwise is disengenuous. Perpetrators often misrepresent their own actions to garnish support, avoid responsibility, blame the victim, and conceal their activities, and re-labeling sexual assault or rape as a "miscommunication" accomplishes those goals. It may not be a good idea to recommend to someone that they try to communicate more forcefully, because like domestic abusers, rapists often feel provoked by blows to their self-esteem, so encouraging someone to communicate in ways that are considered rude could actually lead them to danger. Sex offenders are more likely to be physically violent, and 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men has experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner, so it is far from outrageous to take precautions against physical violence by being polite.
• Most young women expect words to be involved when their partner seeks their consent. 43% of young men actually ask for verbal confirmation of consent. Overall, verbal indicators of consent or nonconsent are more common than nonverbal indicators. More open communication also increases the likelihood of orgasm for women.
• Consent is not synonymous with arousal. For one, there are common misconceptions that an erect penis or erect nipples necessarily signify sexual arousal. It's also possible for someone to be aroused and still not want to have sex. Women often have a physiological sexual response to sexual stimuli that is independent of desire, and that may serve a protective effect against injury from unwanted sex. Misperception of sexual interest may increase risk of sexually coercive or aggressive behavior, and studies consistently show men perceive women's actions to be more sexual than the woman intends (93% have misperceived sexual interest on at least one occassion, though most correct their understanding before engaging in nonconsensual sexual contact). Men who date women are less likely to accurately label sexual assault when the victim's interest is even a little ambiguous. If the victim has an orgasm, that does not retroactively mean the sex was agreed to. Relatedly, one of the most common reasons women fake orgasms is to end unwanted sexual encounters. Sex with an aroused person who hasn't consented is still sexual assault.
• Consenting to engage in some sexual activity does not imply consent for further sexual activity. The kinds of sexual behaviors one finds appealing is highly individualistic. The law is clear that one may consent to one form of sexual contact without providing blanket future consent to all sexual contact, yet most sexual assaults happen during a hookup when a man forces a higher level of sexual intimacy than the woman consented to. Most women do not achieve orgasm during one-night stands, and are less likely to want to engage in intercourse as part of a hookup.
• Physical resistance is not required on the part of the victim to demonstrate lack of consent, nor does the law require evidence of injury in order for consent to be deemed absent. Women who try to physically resist rapes are more likely to end up physically injured, while those who try to argue or reason with the offender are less likely to be injured. The increased probability of injury may be small, but the consequences serious.
• Consent can be legally communicated verbally or nonverbally, and must be specific to engage in the sexual activity in question. Behaviors which don't meet the bar for communicating explicit consent for a particular sexual behavior (like accepting an alcoholic beverage, going to a date's room, kissing, or getting undressed) are at best indicators of likelihood for future consent.
• Nonconsent can legally be communicated verbally or by pulling away or other nonverbal conduct.
• Submitting to sex is not legally the same as consenting to sex. Some sex offenders kill their victims to avoid getting caught; victims often become compliant during an assault as a protective measure.
• It's possible for someone to be too intoxicated to give valid consent. Contrary to popular belief, alcohol is not an aphrodisiac. (in fact, sober sex tends to be more wanted and enjoyable). Most college sexual assaults occur when the victim is incapacitated due to intoxication or sleep. Deliberately getting a victim too drunk to resist is a tactic used by some perpetrators to commit sexual assault or rape. If someone is blackout drunk, it's a good idea to assume they cannot consent to sex. Here are some easy ways to tell if a person is blackout drunk.
• Intoxication is not a legally defensible excuse for failure to get consent. Heavy alcohol consumption increases the risk of sexual offending in certain high-risk men. Intoxicated men who are attracted to a woman are particularly likely to focus their attention on signs of sexual interest and miss or discount signs of disinterest. Intoxicated predators will also often pick out victims they know to be impaired by drugs or (usually) alcohol and make them have sex even when they know them to be unwilling. If intoxication were a legally defensible excuse, rapists would just have to drink heavily (or claim they were drinking heavily) to get away with rape.
• Wearing someone down by repeatedly asking for sex until they "consent" to sex is a form of coercion. Some forms of coercion are also illegal in some jurisdictions. Genuine consent must be freely given, or a human rights violation has occurred.
• Silence is not consent. Fighting, fleeing, and freezing are common fear responses, and thus not signs of consent. In fact, most rape victims freeze in fear in response to unwanted sexual contact, even though most rapes are committed by someone known to the victim.
• It is necessary to obtain consent from men, too, as men are not in a constant state of agreement to sex.
• Consent must happen before sexual contact is made, or a violation has already occurred. Legally, sexual contact that takes a person by surprise deprives them of the opportunity to communicate nonconsent. There is often a long period of uncertainty described in victim's rape accounts where she felt shocked by the rapist’s behavior and unsure of what was transpiring. In fact, most unwanted fondling, and many rapes, occur because the victim didn't have time to stop it before it happened. Most victims also become compliant during an assault, which is a protective behavior that does not signify consent.
• Consent is ethically and legally required before removing a condom. STIs are on the rise, many people are unaware they have an STI they can transmit to a partner, there is an antibiotic-resistant strain of gonorrhea on the rise that could literally be fatal, there is no reliable HPV test for men, and herpes might cause Alzheimer's. It's simply intolerable in a civilized society to knowingly expose someone to those risks without their knowledge or consent.
• The NISVS includes using lies or false promises to obtain sex in their definition of sexual coercion. For example, pretending to be someone's S.O., pretending to be a celebrity, lying about relationship status or relationship potential are all forms of sexual coercion that cross the line.
• Marriage is not an automatic form of consent. While couples who have been together for awhile often develop their own idiosyncratic ways of communicating consent, laws of consent are just as applicable within a marriage. Marital rape is one of the more common forms of sexual assault, and may more often be about maintaining power and control in a relationship, rather than sexual gratification like other forms of acquaintance rape. The physical and psychological harm from marital rape may be even worse than stranger rape, for a variety of reasons.
• Consent is at least as important (and just as required) in BDSM relationships. It's true that sexual fantasies involving dominance and/or submissions are somewhat common; however, even 'rape fantasies' (which would more accurately be called "ravishment play," snce no one actually wants to get raped) must be carried out within the context of mutually agreed-upon terms. It's never reasonable to assume that a particular person A) wants to be dominated B) by a particular person C) at a particular time. Sexually dominating a kinky person who hasn't consented is still sexual assault.
• Affirmative consent is generally required on college campuses, (and a growing number of legal jurisdictions). For examples, have a look at Yale's sexual misconduct examples, Purdue's consent policy, Illinois', Michigan's, Harvard's, Stanford's, Wisconsin's, Minnesota's, Wyoming's, Indiana's, or Arkansas' university policies on sexual consent (or California's, Canada's, Spain's, Sweden's, etc.). A requirement for affirmative permission reflects the contract-like nature of the sexual agreement; the partners must actively negotiate to change the conditions of a joint enterprise, rather than proceed unilaterally until they meet resistance. Logically, it makes much more sense for a person who wishes to initiate sexual activity to get explicit permission for the particular sexual activity they would like to engage in, rather than the receiving party having to preemptively say "no" to the endless list of possible sexual acts.