Ch. 4: Good Boy, Bad Cancer
Laughing at The Horror: On Fatherhood, Cancer, and Horror Flix
No one is in the theatre but Sol and I, which should have been a sign. It just wasn’t the sign I thought it’d be.
We take the best seats in the empty house, and lounge back in the recliner seats, nestling the large popcorn and Red Vines on our tray, now fully prepared to watch another cheesy horror film. This is a tradition started when Sol was way too young, practically from birth; we started watching horror four weeks after he was out of the womb, as I was devouring The Walking Dead, trying to soothe his infant self to sleep on my chest – all at 2am.
Sol was raised on horror.
I often wonder if Sol’s baby subconscious imprinted on horror at the same time he imprinted on me.
The theater dims and the previews begin, starting with Black Phone 2, which features Ethan Hawke in a devilish mask, kidnapping and killing kids. We’d seen the first Black Phone – Corin didn’t approve.
“That’s too much for him. What are you thinking?”
“I watched much worse, like Alien at 5. I had nightmares for days.”
“Exactly my point.”
We’d had versions of this conversation since our father/son horror relationship started. By now with Sol a teenager, she’d basically given up. We had watched our way through Psycho, Chucky, all of the Halloweens, 28 Days Later (and the sequels, except 28 Weeks Later), Saw I and II (too much even for me) and too many Stephen King films to count – Children of the Corn, Pet Sematary and It (the old and new ones).
Now we are ready for something new: Good Boy, the first horror film from a golden retriever’s perspective … but maybe there was a Lassie film with some scares? This feels like it might be a horror version of Lassie, as the brave lab fights off zombies or aliens, a wink-wink combination of horror and schlock; it must be a film that knows this is an inherently silly premise.
Instead, Good Boy is a cancer flick … surprise!
“Goddammit,” I turn to Sol, nearly yelling in the empty theatre. “I can’t believe they’re doing this.”
When the young man in Good Boy walks out of a hospital with a paper medical bracelet, I know it’s going to be a Surprise Cancer Film – and that I’d be watching it with my 13-year son, who knew I had just finished radiation treatment.
It’s all so fresh: my head is still balding in an extraterrestrial pattern, as if my hair is a crop circle, and the trauma and fear is right beneath the surface, right in center of that crop circle. I can barely control the memories from the last few months, which flow at the slightest touch.
Where is my cancer trigger warning?
The worst memory comes to the surface: the car ride home from the hospital on the fateful day when we found out about the extensive growth in the tumor, all after nine months of treatment. We had already called my parents, who Sol was staying with that day. The whole day, the whole family is waiting for the news, as they have done every MRI day for the last 16 years: this amounted to probably 70 – 80 MRIs, hours and hours in the tube, then the hours waiting for Dr. P to deliver my fate, which I then deliver to waiting family and friends. From all those years, they knew if The Text about the Dr. P appointment comes late what the news is …
It’s a bad scan.
“I can tell him, Adam,” my mom’s voice quavers, trying to project strength, as she’s done all these years.
“No, I need to do it.” I gird myself, as if preparing for a cannon to be shot at my stomach.
As we zoom through San Francisco, flying past AI billboards composed in an alien language, I try to compose myself. A long silence as the phone passes to Sol: “Your dad wants to speak to you.” I hear the rustle of the phone now in Sol’s hands.
“Sol, I …” and then that’s it, that’s all I can get out before I weep and weep, I can’t stop, I can’t breathe. I feel as if I’m sucked into a tear in the fabric of the universe, as if I’m light years away from this moment, falling into a different and dark dimension.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I sob, though my voice is returning, reality is returning. I’m back on Earth. “You shouldn’t have to see this.”
“Dad, are you dying?”
The cannon smashes into me, but I hold myself tight. Rigid. The cannon will bounce off me.
I am steel.
“No, no I’m not dying. No, no…” I just pause to catch my breath, as the tears subside. I’m in Dad Mode now. I can’t show the terror, the horror of this moment. “It’s just I’m going to have to go on some new treatments, maybe some difficult ones, but I’ve done this before, many, many times. It’ll be fine.”
I don’t know if it will be. But for 16 years, I’ve never known. It might be fine, as it has been in the past, so I hold onto this hope, a hope not just for me, but for Sol.
My voice dissolves, the memory dissipates, and the theater returns. The Good Boy is chasing a shadow down the stairs, as the owner coughs blood in the bathroom.
I don’t want to see this film anymore.
I want to run out of the theater.
But I need to keep watching.
I can’t stop.
I don’t want Sol to see me this way now.
Todd – the owner of the Good Boy – doesn’t want anyone to see him.
After his lung cancer diagnosis, he wants to disappear from the world even before he’s in the ground. Todd drives out to the edge of nowhere, deep in the dark and foreboding woods. The house is as you’d suspect: cobwebs and creaks, old banisters, and deer’s heads mounted. The land is not a Stephen King-esque Indian Burial ground (as in Pet Sematary and The Shining); rather, it’s a family graveyard, passed down for generations, but one filled with the graves of men who all died young.
Todd is in the grave before he’s in the grave.
But the titular Good Boy is here to protect his best friend from his fate, which is manifested by apparitions which only the lab can see – because, you know, dogs have extra powerful senses beyond human perception. While the hero lab grapples with ghouls, Todd’s descent continues. He refuses all human contact: his family, his sister from the first scene who appears loving, any friends, anyone except some strange hillbilly, who he doesn’t ask for help from either.
Todd dies like a dog going to its death under the porch.
Todd dies silently not wanting to bother anyone.
Todd dies alone, as too many do.
In the climax, he is seized by a smiley oozing mud creature and taken to the creepy basement, one that looks like the entry to Dante’s Inferno, with the labrador following in hot pursuit.
But it is all in vain: the mud creature is a doppelgänger of Todd himself – it’s his own death come to life.
Before Todd is pulled into the cave, he whispers his final words:
“You can’t protect me from this.”
I can’t protect Sol from whatever hand fate might give us.
But that doesn’t mean we’re hopeless. After all, Sol and I have our horror.
As author Sherman Alexie writes:
“I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life…I don’t write [to teens] to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.”
As Alexie observes, horror does provide ways to feel the fear, to contain it, to laugh at it, and even, to befriend it. These are the tools offered by horror, the weapons Sol can carry for whatever terrors come his way. Sol will have trauma and terror, as this is the human condition, but he will be able live with these monsters, finding ways to love, and even laugh.
Most of all, we learn that a life lived waiting for the monsters to attack, for the cannon to strike, for the sword of Damocles to slice us in two, this is Todd’s life.
It is to be dead even while alive.
I don’t judge Todd, as none of us know how we will act in the face of certain death. We won’t know until we are there, and all of us will be there some day. But I know that it takes courage to live while alive, even if we are not facing death, as Todd does.
This is the lesson that I hope Sol gets from having a father with cancer: you don’t need to be scared of the horror of the future, but you can have the courage to live in the present. You should not shut off and shut down as Todd does, but rather, be can strong enough to weep and realize that too is also courage.
I hope to have that strength too.
Back from my existential reveries, the credits being to roll, and I wonder: What will Sol think about Good Boy? Will it trigger his fears as it did mine? What do I to say to him?
The lights come on in the still empty theatre.
Popcorn is strewn across the floor and there is the carcass of the box of Red Vines. Sol pushes out of his seat and says “What a bad movie. At least it was short.”
We laugh.
Thanks so much for reading this work, which was intense emotional labor. If you made it this far and appreciate it (or just have something to say), you can let me know in the comments below. I’m happy to hear from you.
And the labrador in Good Boy is the best animal actor I’ve ever seen — it might be worth it just for the performance.
Dude, this was fucking great.
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing so vulnerably!