It was a month since I’d finished chemo and my hair was coming in, wispy as a baby chick’s. I wasn’t bothering with wigs, they were itchy and hot and laborious. My nipples were gone. Where once was soft flesh, there was now thin skin stretched over hard rubber placeholders for eventual implants. My double mastectomy scars were healing. I’d go through radiation in a month, and the doctors were optimistic. I’d never felt so lucky or ungrateful, so ugly or so ashamed of myself. Cancer would dog my steps for the rest of my life, and I was worried about beauty.
It wasn’t just the scars, or the amputated nipples, or the hair loss. It was what they represented: a body I’d never get back from a disease I would have to try to keep from killing me for the rest of my life. I’d never wanted to live more, but since the diagnosis and treatment, I felt like an albatross. What could be beautiful about a body at war with itself? It wasn’t about vanity. I just wanted to be wanted, and I couldn’t fathom being wanted ever again.
I tried to tell myself it was freeing, to live beyond the limits of desire. After all, I wasn’t dead yet and I still had my friends and my family and my cat and most nights I could find a bar with live music, tuck myself into a corner and lose myself a while.
One night, I was coming from a jazz club to a folk night, figuring I’d end the night with some sad songs, tell my oncologist I’d drank less than I did, not mention the cigarettes. I’d done a heavy Edie Sedgwick eyeliner job to mask the fact that I didn’t have eyelashes and drew on some eyebrows. In the dim light of the bar, I could pass for someone who’d shaved their head for fun, instead of a cancer patient who needed a fucking drink. If I wasn’t going to look beautiful, I sure as shit wasn’t going to look sick. The musicians were playing a ballad about drowned lovers and I was drinking whiskey.
A lanky man slid onto the stool beside me and I felt a wave of irritation. His head blocked the band. When he turned and grinned at me, my irritation rose when I saw he was handsome, with tousled hair and a little gap between his front teeth. He wore a white shirt unbuttoned to the third button under a suit.
Where were you before, then? he asked. He had an English accent, mumbly and gravelly.
I debated moving, but I had the best seat in the house. I eyed him. Jazz, I said finally.
Oh, did you play? he asked.
Nope, I said.
Hmm. He tilted his head. Where?
Brooklyn, I said.
Where in Brooklyn? he asked.
What, are you a cop? I said. He laughed.
A year ago, I might have pounced on him. But even though the prospect now seemed humiliating, I couldn’t help my curiosity. What the hell did he want? Meanwhile, he was leaning forward, smiling impishly, asking questions. What did I do? Did I live nearby? Could he read some of my poetry? No, he could not. What did he do? He was a musician. He split his time between here and England. Was the accent real or just some witness protection thing? Was I always this friendly, or even less? As the band played, we went back and forth, doing terrible impressions of Jarvis Cocker, making each other laugh so hard I forgot I was sick and before I knew it, it was last call.
You know, he said, you have a very nicely shaped head.
Thanks, I said. Yours seems all right.
All right? he protested. Just all right? He scooted closer and then I remembered my eyelids, lashless and swollen, my cheeks still puffy from chemo. I tried not to recoil, afraid of him seeing me more closely, furious with myself for caring.
Can’t really see it under all that hair, I said.
Right, he said, and rolled up his sleeves. Let’s do it.
I squinted at him.
Let’s shave it off, he said.
Yeah, I’m sure there are some scissors behind the bar, I said.
Or we could just do it at mine, he offered.
I snorted. If you want me to come over and shave your head, it’s going to cost you. And it’s going to be bad. I’m not a barber.
He pressed his leg against mine and laid a hand on my knee. Well, we could do something else, then.
I finished my drink and stared into the empty glass. I hadn’t been touched since well before the diagnosis, and after the mastectomy, being naked was excruciating. I couldn’t shower without weeping. I imagined myself slipping out of my dress in front of him. I imagined him seeing what I saw. I imagined his face before he’d have a chance to control his expression. I didn’t know what I dreaded more, disappointment or disgust.
But he made me laugh, and his thumb was making slow circles up my thigh. The sensation bloomed through my whole body, so unfamiliar it felt almost new.
Let’s have a cigarette, I said.
We smoked in silence for a few minutes. I ruminated. What did I really have to lose? If he was grossed out, he was an asshole. I mean, shit, hadn’t I been through worse?
I finished my cigarette. All right, I said.
All right what? he said.
All right, let’s go back to yours. I turned to look up at him. But just so you know, I don’t have any nipples.
He gaped at me. I shrugged. Just so there are no surprises, I said.
He regarded me a moment, then grabbed my hand. Well, who needs ‘em? he said. C’mon. He led me down the avenue.
What happened, then? he eventually asked.
Duel gone wrong, I said. You should see the other guy.
He laughed. But – were you – did they – He didn’t seem to know what question to ask.
I lit another cigarette. Cancer, I said.
He was silent for a moment. Then, he plucked the cigarette from my fingers, took a drag, and handed it back.
Shit, he said. I’m sorry.
I took a long pull. Pity was the last thing I needed. It happens, I said. Where the hell are you taking me, anyway? I’m wearing heels.
He smiled. Just around the corner, darling.
In his bedroom, he killed the lights, but moonlight still spilled through the window, cool and bright. I squared my shoulders and shed my dress. He reached for me and kissed me, kneading his thumb into the back of my neck. His other hand roamed over my chest, the makeshift breasts full of severed nerves gone quiet where ghosts of feeling gathered, reminding me what my body once did, what it was still trying to do, despite everything it had been through. He tipped me gently back and we moved together slowly at first, then more urgently. He rolled me on top and I hesitated, but when he gripped my thighs, my hips moved for me. I came then, and he did shortly after. I was surprised. I’d forgotten I could.
Afterwards, he pulled me to his chest and fell immediately asleep. I waited a few minutes, then gingerly untangled my limbs from his. I dressed and tiptoed out with my boots in my hand, put them on the stairwell and stepped into the light. I wasn’t ready to wake up with a stranger, or anyone, and I knew no one could cure what I felt except me.
In the glow of the winter morning, the wind gusted, cold and clean and the sun fell like a warm hand on the back of my neck. I pressed my palm to my chest and felt the insistent throb of my heart. In that moment, for the first time in my life, I loved my body. I loved its tender machinery, its thankless labor. It wasn’t about him. This body had been carved open, sewn shut, pumped with poison, and even as it labored to keep my wounds shut tight and my rogue cells at bay, it tried to offer me pleasure: the sweet hum of a fiddle, my skin come alive against another’s skin. What could be more beautiful? I warmed my fingers with my breath, pulled my coat tight and let my legs carry me home.
Thank you for this beautiful tenderness, Theo
amazing, amazing.