it.
It is a strange place to finally say good-bye to my right boob, but this whole situation is so fucking uncharted.
I remember my first training bra and how the hook never stayed closed.
I remember going to second base in the stairwell after junior prom with Flip.
I remember my first red-and-white bikini and how daring I felt when Patrick untied the top so I wouldn’t get a tan line on my back.
I remember when all the girls came back from summer vacation after seventh grade with boobs and I was still waiting.
I remember that I was always the smart girl.
I remember when boobs were not my best feature, clearly not what defined me.
I remember when my breasts were not something that could kill me.
Now I want more. I want the power in this room. I want to have what they have. Now that I’m losing that feature, I am concerned that it mattered more than I thought.
It is just too deep and complicated for me to figure out right this minute, especially with Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” blaring in the background. I know my husband will probably go to strip clubs with his orthopedic surgeon colleagues at conventions. I will sit at home with one boob, thinking of him looking at perfect boobs. Will my brother Paul plan our brother Howard’s bachelor party in a strip club? I look around the smoky VIP Strip Club and I see brothers, husbands, dads, friends, bosses, all leering, and maybe because I am drunk I will admit that I am jealous and want to know they would leer at me, too, even after my surgery.
I leave forty dollars on a twenty-seven dollar tab because I am too embarrassed to ask for change. I stand up to leave the club. I walk past the breasts on parade, past the commotion, and past the testosterone.
The bouncer smiles at me when he holds open the door and I feel a small victory. Because I caught his eye with my smile. There’s a ratty maroon velvet rope outside to cordon off the entrance to the club. I am leaving the world of boobs.
As I hail a taxi at the corner, I start to think about how the excitement in that room did not begin until the tops came off. I have kept my shirt on until now (well, most of the time) and still gotten paid, gotten loved, and gotten noticed. When I lose my breast I will be stripped of part of what I thought made me a woman, made me desirable. But, I think, I will still be me.
Maybe I am like an antique table that is being stripped before being re-varnished. Layers will be peeled away to reveal something beautiful underneath. Actually, maybe the ultimate striptease is ahead of me: First my breast will be cut off. Then my hair will fall out. And when there is nothing left to strip, maybe there will be a revelation of a different beauty underneath, one that I never knew existed.
I will be stripped to the core but I will still be there.
I think of myself on that stage with the strobe light on me: it is the striptease of my life.
I will find a way to exist.
Somehow.
2
Lumps
I knew it was bad news.
Two men in white coats. Both of them crying.
I was in a windowless white room with a tacky nature print on the wall and it felt like the scene in a movie where the woman finds out that she has cancer and she will die young. But it was real.
My husband’s white coat says “Dr. Lucas” across his chest in happy cursive. Maybe Tom Cruise would play Tyler? It is a total stretch, but Tyler is handsome and has amazing blue eyes and fabulous shoulders. He looks like a doctor on a soap opera, but he really went to medical school. But I know that medical school hasn’t prepared him for being thirty-two, married only two years, and finding out that his wife has breast cancer.
The other white coat belongs to my breast surgeon, Dr. B. He had predicted it would never be cancer because I was only twenty-seven, because I had no family history, because I looked so healthy. Bruce Willis or another sexy balding actor would play him. He looks exactly like what a doctor looks
It is a strange place to finally say good-bye to my right boob, but this whole situation is so fucking uncharted.
I remember my first training bra and how the hook never stayed closed.
I remember going to second base in the stairwell after junior prom with Flip.
I remember my first red-and-white bikini and how daring I felt when Patrick untied the top so I wouldn’t get a tan line on my back.
I remember when all the girls came back from summer vacation after seventh grade with boobs and I was still waiting.
I remember that I was always the smart girl.
I remember when boobs were not my best feature, clearly not what defined me.
I remember when my breasts were not something that could kill me.
Now I want more. I want the power in this room. I want to have what they have. Now that I’m losing that feature, I am concerned that it mattered more than I thought.
It is just too deep and complicated for me to figure out right this minute, especially with Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” blaring in the background. I know my husband will probably go to strip clubs with his orthopedic surgeon colleagues at conventions. I will sit at home with one boob, thinking of him looking at perfect boobs. Will my brother Paul plan our brother Howard’s bachelor party in a strip club? I look around the smoky VIP Strip Club and I see brothers, husbands, dads, friends, bosses, all leering, and maybe because I am drunk I will admit that I am jealous and want to know they would leer at me, too, even after my surgery.
I leave forty dollars on a twenty-seven dollar tab because I am too embarrassed to ask for change. I stand up to leave the club. I walk past the breasts on parade, past the commotion, and past the testosterone.
The bouncer smiles at me when he holds open the door and I feel a small victory. Because I caught his eye with my smile. There’s a ratty maroon velvet rope outside to cordon off the entrance to the club. I am leaving the world of boobs.
As I hail a taxi at the corner, I start to think about how the excitement in that room did not begin until the tops came off. I have kept my shirt on until now (well, most of the time) and still gotten paid, gotten loved, and gotten noticed. When I lose my breast I will be stripped of part of what I thought made me a woman, made me desirable. But, I think, I will still be me.
Maybe I am like an antique table that is being stripped before being re-varnished. Layers will be peeled away to reveal something beautiful underneath. Actually, maybe the ultimate striptease is ahead of me: First my breast will be cut off. Then my hair will fall out. And when there is nothing left to strip, maybe there will be a revelation of a different beauty underneath, one that I never knew existed.
I will be stripped to the core but I will still be there.
I think of myself on that stage with the strobe light on me: it is the striptease of my life.
I will find a way to exist.
Somehow.
2
Lumps
I knew it was bad news.
Two men in white coats. Both of them crying.
I was in a windowless white room with a tacky nature print on the wall and it felt like the scene in a movie where the woman finds out that she has cancer and she will die young. But it was real.
My husband’s white coat says “Dr. Lucas” across his chest in happy cursive. Maybe Tom Cruise would play Tyler? It is a total stretch, but Tyler is handsome and has amazing blue eyes and fabulous shoulders. He looks like a doctor on a soap opera, but he really went to medical school. But I know that medical school hasn’t prepared him for being thirty-two, married only two years, and finding out that his wife has breast cancer.
The other white coat belongs to my breast surgeon, Dr. B. He had predicted it would never be cancer because I was only twenty-seven, because I had no family history, because I looked so healthy. Bruce Willis or another sexy balding actor would play him. He looks exactly like what a doctor looks
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