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THE QUESTION

I was recently treated for cancer at a downtown facility where there are about a dozen volunteers. One of them took a liking to me and asked me out for a drink a couple of times.

It was nice to have some positive attention and to forget for a minute or two that I had cancer. At any rate, after a couple of dates, we had sex. I wasn't that into him, but the idea that I was desirable to somebody, while bald and pale, was overwhelming.

Having sex, in the shadow of death, was life-affirming.

He resigned from his volunteer position and now wants to be my boyfriend. I told him that I'm not interested, that I'm too vulnerable for a relationship and we should stop socializing. My treatment, which is going very well, is almost over. I feel some obligation to this guy, but I do not want to continue seeing him. What should I do? I'm feeling like a user.

THE ANSWER

You wouldn't be the first person in the history of humanity who has used someone else for sex.

Nor would you be the first to discover that sex is an excellent antidote to anxieties about one's own extinction.

There's a lovely scene in Clea, the fourth book in Lawrence Durrell's sweeping English-expats-in-Egypt quadrilogy the Alexandria Quartet ... well, I thought the scene was so moving in college.

I just reread it and I have to admit that this time around I found it hard to get past the author's baroque, one might even say rococo, word tapestries.

Anyway, the narrator and his girlfriend are walking around Alexandria, when suddenly warships offshore start shelling the city, air-raid sirens go off and everyone starts scrambling for bomb shelters.

The narrator says: "Clea, we should shelter."

She takes him by the lapels and says (don't say I didn't warn you): "I am too fastidious to die with a lot of people in a shelter like an old rat's nest. Let us go to bed together and ignore the loutish reality of the world."

The narrator's up for it: She's gorgeous, he's bookish and while they've been spending a lot of time together lately, walking and chatting and having drinks, this would be the first time they were, uh, conjoined in the throes of consummation. Let the bombs fall where they may, the narrator thinks. Thank you, warships!

They go back to her place and "so it was that lovemaking itself became kind of a challenge to the ... thunderstorm of guns and sirens ... And kisses ... became charged with the deliberate affirmation which can only come from the ... presence of death."

Look past the flowery language, it's a profound sentiment. I'm no Lawrence Durrell, but basically: There's nothing like a little nookie to thumb your nose at the reaper.

A sentiment that certainly applies to your case and makes it hugely sympathetic. Anyone, I should think, especially anyone who has had any first-hand experience with cancer, could certainly understand why you may want to take your mind off the "loutish reality" of disease with some magical stolen moments.

But it sounds like you've beaten it and may outlive us all.

Therefore, let me simply give you the same advice I give anyone who wants to get out of a relationship that he or she may have backed into for the wrong reasons, but feels too guilty to extricate himself/herself from: Remember that you are not only wasting your time, but his, too. Use this counterguilt to catapult you out of this relationship.

He needs to get on with his life. He needs to find someone who will love him and appreciate him not just for sex but for every little facet of his character that makes him unique and special. You're obviously not into him in this way, therefore you will never be anything but a painful episode in his life. Better you should make it a brief painful episode than a protracted one.

He will hate you less when he looks back on it.

And you need to get on with your life, too. What a lot of people don't realize is: When you allow these shadowy half-boyfriends or half-girlfriends to hang around, you're hurting your chances of hooking up with Mr. or Ms. Right.

Think about it this way. Right now, somewhere across town, Mr. Right - a handsome young architect, say - may be talking to someone who knows someone you know, saying (about you): "Gosh, I really like her. I think she's great and attractive and I would love to ask her out. Do you happen to know if she's single?"

And the friend of a friend says: "Nah, I think she's seeing someone. Some volunteer guy or something ..."

And the handsome young architect will shrug and pick up the phone and punch in some other, single woman's digits - and they will wind up happily ever-so-together forevermore.

And the saddest part is you will never know what you missed. ("Honey, did you see my T-square? I need it for that soccer stadium I'm designing in Brazil.")

Which would be a tragedy. For you see, my dear, our lives exist in the nexus of numerous possible destinies, but alas there is only one bittersweet path upon which our wayward steps may tread on this dusty old ball we call Earth ...

Ah, I can't do it. I can't do Lawrence Durrell. Basically, do this guy a favour and dump him. Have the courage to be single, so when Mr. Right comes along you can enjoy not only the transplendent pleasure of turning your backs on the "loutish reality of the world" but also all the other perks of being in a real relationship: love, companionship and, above all, the sense of it being not just you alone against the world, but the both of you together, as a team, taking on whatever life tosses at you.

No matter how much time you have on this Earth, you want to take your best shot at having that, don't you?

David Eddie is a screenwriter and the author of Chump Change and Housebroken: Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad.

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