Dayno first died that afternoon in October of 1983, at age twenty-nine, down in the belly of a container ship. He grew dizzy, extremities chilled, felt his heart pounding around “like a sack of wet cement inside a Maytag,” as he put it when I visited him two days later at University Hospital, after the triple bypass and the diagnosis.

I’d never heard of Marfans. Neither had Dayno. He shrugged, well, at least it meant no more shipscaling; and he had time in with the union to get enough disability to stay drunk for a while.

They prescribed blood thinners, dietary restrictions; plenty of rest; light and infrequent exercise.

Dayno stayed home lifting bottles, watching TV, eating prime rib, barbecue, ice cream, greasy greens. Now and then sniffed coke; jetted around on a friend’s Harley.

Then the night he hurled the TV out his fourth storey window. Made a satisfying crash down on University. Made us all for a moment a little less pissed off at life; a lot less pissed off at TV.

Last saw him at a reading at the bookstore just up the street from his apartment. He was sober, tall, handsome, lean – every bit his old bull self. Made me listen to the tick the bypass created in his chest. Allowed the reading was not bad, I was improving, especially that one “Spider Fuck.” But was I drinking enough? I looked a little pale around the gills, kinda skinny, insufficient pee in my happy.

Said, out of the blue, over my shoulder to a wall between shelves, “I’m not gonna live to be thirty.” Then grinned, nodded at the blonde in the front row, “I’d sure like to drink HER bathwater!”

The second time Dayno died was in January of 1984. Waiting for champagne brunch in a restaurant just around the block from his place. Fell forward in the chair. Eyes open, dead before forehead banged formica. Aorta, just above the bypass, exploded.

At the funeral I was extremely careful to drink enough. Psychotically hungover next day penned a nice piece about the death of my childhood hamster.

The third time Dayno died was a couple years later. I was at a lawn party chatting with a thirty year old fresh-made doctor. “Doctor of Internal Pocketbooks” I called Miller behind his back.

Miller was a nice guy. Probably nicer than me. I just don’t much like doctors – agents of money and death, symbols of society’s answer to the individual’s plight.

Marfans came up. Mentioned I had a buddy die of the syndrome. Hadn’t even known he had it till four months before the curse struck him dead. Miller went serious, gloomy over his third drink, hunched in a lawn chair.

“Well,” I smiled into my own gloomy drink, “nothing could’ve been done.”

The dark-stubbled hatchet-faced young practitioner glared up, “He could’ve had the bypass at age thirteen. Been made to take it easy. Avoid stress. For goodness sake never do anything like sandblasting the holds of container ships. Could’ve lived a normal life for at least another thirty or forty years.”

I refrained from tossing the bathwater of my gin fizz into Miller’s professional face. Held myself to grumbling, “And never lived to be Dayno.”

Careful not to add: Dayno my buddy, a duke in the yards, a high school dropout with a flair for reciting poetry and sending the one-night-stands home starry-eyed with the knowledge they had tasted – for better and for worse – a bonafide male of the species.

Gulped my fizz, thinking of Dayno’s huge hands and bottomless baritone – only in retrospect symptoms of Marfans. Ambled off to piss on the buttercups beside the compost; knowing I’m not all that much of a man, but once knew one.

He’s dead now. I’m not now. Not yet not now. Everything worked out fine.

By the time I finished feeding the pretty little weeds – shook it off, flopped it back, zipped it up – I was once again able to like Miller.

Even though the poor dumb medical fuck religiously avoided attending any of my readings. Certainly why Miller and Dayno never met. I met Miller because I’m a poet, and poets tend to crawl around all sorts of other people’s lives. Just another kind of death sentence. But not so much worth writing about.

BIO: Willie Smith is deeply ashamed of being human. His work celebrates this horror. He saw BLACK SUNDAY in 1960 and Barbara Steele ruined his life. You can eyeball what's left by visiting youtube.com and there searching under "wmsith49". His novel OEDIPUS CADET is at amazon.com.