It's like an Airplane

Some naive and potentially offensive thoughts about breast cancer

For some reason, probably related to the news I received recently that my co-worker has a three centimeter lump and lymph nodes so swollen that her breasts are turning red, I have been doing self-exams in the bathroom at work.

This practice kind of makes me nauseous.  I am a big fan of breast contact of most sorts.  And when you're in the shower, it can be a little more pleasant.  But there is something about applying finger pressure to softness that gives way to vein and then muscle and bone that makes me so squeamish.  Especially since it is supposed to be normal to feel all sorts of lumpish clumps of veins and swelling that is only tissue, but who knows how normal really?  Jesus, get me out of my body right now!

On a more thoughtful note, there's nothing like breast cancer, and many other sicknesses, to suddenly cast a blinding spotlight on the amount of intimacy in your life.  Although not a particularly good example of this, breast cancer nevertheless seems so exemplary because it is apparently about breasts, something that are supposed to be intimately treasured.  (This is of course, really only about women who survive breast cancer.  You're lucky if the only thing you lose is your breasts.)  I mean, how much does finding a huge lump in your breast mean that no one (you included) has been paying any attention to those things?  Is breast cancer supposed to be such a calamity, on top of the thousands of women's deaths, because no one is paying attention to breasts?  This would sure be ironic. 

[At this juncture, how could I possibly pass up on an opportunity to recall those stupid email flyers that some Harvard undergraduate group sent out, about how "everyone likes breasts" and therefore you should attend their ridiculous event whose proceeds happen to go to breast cancer research.  Probably the group should have invited a breast cancer patient to the event so that everyone who "likes breasts" could feel her up and then drop some money into the pot.]

Did you know that breast cancer survivors who have undergone mastectomies often suffer from phantom breast sensations post surgery?  Breasts are so important that when we lose them, we have ghost breasts!  Aside from the pain and suffering associated with breast cancer, and the dysphoria and depression women often experience after having mastectomies, how much should we care about breasts?  For many women, breasts help them define their sexuality and their identity, and I think this is awesome.  But wouldn't you be pissed if, after all of that time you and others spent doting on your breasts, that you then had to lose them?   I think I would feel sad about losing such a big part of me, and then I might feel angry that breasts are such a big deal to my identity after all. 

What is perhaps really at stake is whether women can get over their bodies.  I don't mean reject them, I mean more just being less scared of them.  Of course, there will always be squeamish people like me.  But if women started touching themselves and each other (ahem) more, a lot would be a whole lot less mystical and scary.  Take home message: breast cancer kills, don't forget your monthly self-exam, and while you're at it, masturbate more too!    

Scranton is for Lovers

It's another one of those weeks. It rains. I bike to work, and when I'm not biking I walk on unfamiliar legs and mistime street crossings, imagining I can zoom in front of the oncoming car or swagger in the street corridor like a bike that takes up space.

Last year at this time I was running around fever pitch for MoveOn (and, of course, my country) in Scranton, Pennsylvania for the prez campaign.  By this time, I had set up shop in the attic of this nice house in the hill section, where the college professors and the liberal Scranton gentry live. 
Every night at around 9pm, three Dem volunteers would arrive in my "office" and try to talk shop with me. That was because they were sleeping there. Little did they know that MoveOn organizers operated on the Karl Rove Theory, which, summarized, meant that we were not supposed to tell Anyone about Anything, and if a volunteer was ever disorderly or drunk, they were a spy.  In fact, if my boss had known I was leaving them to sleep in my "office" every night, I would have been sacked definitely.   

I didn't sleep there, though, which was also against the rules.  I slept a few blocks away, in an old
beat up Victorian that someone built when the coal  was still flowing.  The whole neighborhood was like that.  Apparently the area had a lot of deadbeat drug dealers living in those drafty Victorian houses.  I bet you can imagine how cold that house was, despite the layer of cat and dog hair that lined the rooms.   But it was still pretty dreamy.  In Peter's bedroom,  if you lay on the bed with your head on the pillow and looked out the window, you could look down over tipping cupolas into the town. 

The job had terrors.  My boss made me do jumping jacks on my cell phone from my satellite office of one (which gives you a sense of my conscientiousness -- you don't have to do jumping jacks alone when no one's watching, but I did).  There were nightmarish early mornings in Allentown when we would sleep in the rental car outside the office waiting for our delinquent boss to arrive.  There were also, of course, the billion times that people hung the phone up on me or said "I'm voting for my president!" and the times I would canvas and people would literally start foaming at the mouth with their Kerry hatred. 

All of this notwithstanding, the hell of it was part of what I fell in love with, because nothing would have been so good if some parts of it hadn't been so goddamn bad.  Scranton is a shithole, but I loved it.  And I liked knowing every inch of it.  It made me want to get embroiled in county politics, shake up the complacent union members, end the Irish-Catholic cronyism, walk the precincts myself.  Every week we would have NE Pennsylvania volunteer conference calls, with people identifying themselves by precinct, "I'm Betty Sue from Troop Precinct, Lackawanna County," "I'm Miles from Allenton 2-3."  The sense of place was suddenly so much more grand than I had ever really understood before.

In case I jinx myself with this new posting spout before it begins, I'll end now.  Maybe I'll have more to say on the subject before Halloween.