She wasn’t working that day, so we went to the doctor together.
When Dr. P. called me into the room, she asked, “Do you want your mom to stay in the room with you?”
“Yes …”
Why is she asking me that?
“You have HPV,” she said.
“How can I have HPV if I just got the second round of the Gardasil vaccine two weeks ago?”
“It’s sexually transmitted,” she said.
“Yeah, I know, but my boyfriend was a virgin,” I explained. “Mom, can you excuse us for a moment?”
“That’s why I asked if you wanted her in the room,” Dr. P said, as if I were supposed to have been able to see that coming.
She continued, “If you’ve had an STD before, it can hang around and cause a strain of the virus. So, here it is. Now, it causes cervical cancer, as you were made aware, which is why you got the vaccine. So, we’re going to have to take a culture of the abnormal cells to see if they’re high risk or low risk. Then, if they’re high risk, we’re going to have to take a biopsy to see if we need to freeze that part of your cervix and remove it.”
In a daze, I left the examination room and scheduled the follow-up appointments I needed with reception, then turned to see my mother sobbing in the waiting room.
“What’s the difference between this and AIDS?” she asked, sniffling as we walked out of the building.
“HPV, Mom,” I said with a sigh, patting her on the back. “Not HIV.”
The doctor called again to let me know that they were high risk, that I had precancerous cells in my cervix. At this point, I don’t need to draw you a picture of the panic that ensued; and I won’t draw you a picture of what it felt like to go, every three months, for a painful cervical biopsy, sans numbing agents or anesthesia.
* * *
As part of an assignment for my Intro to Journalism class, we were told to “find and cover a protest.” I loved that professor. His name was Sean Elder, he was really tall, and he had snow white hair even though he wasn’t very old at all. He was so freaking cool, being in his class was like hanging out with a beat journalist on his coffee break who filled us in on everything we needed to know about old-school and new-school journalism.
We had read an essay from George Saunders called “The Braindead Megaphone,” and I had copied a quote from it directly into my notebook:
“In the beginning, there’s a blank mind. Then that mind gets an idea in it, and the trouble begins, because the mind mistakes the idea for the world.”
I couldn’t wait to get out there and find that protest, so, that very afternoon, a brisk one for October, I headed right to where I knew I would definitely find one.
Union Square would always remind me of my time sitting on those steps after school my freshman year at Baruch, watching skateboarders with headphones in their ears try and jump the steps. The park had not quite “cleaned up its act” the way other areas of the city had post-Giuliani. It was still a meeting place for druggies, high school drop outs, Hare Krishnas, radicals, and the homeless, who meandered around well-manicured women walking their expensive Pomeranian puppies and hipster couples shopping at the farmer’s market with re-usable hemp bags.
On this one afternoon in particular, some people had stopped to lend an ear to a rugged, red-faced man with a megaphone, ranting on the steps. He had a mane of salt-and-pepper hair and wore a brown bomber jacket. Growing up here, you learned to first be scared of these “street crazies,” then to just ignore them, and, then, maybe, you embrace them for what they are: people with enough balls to try to get people to listen in a city where millions of voices weave in and out of blaring car horns and random music blasting.
John was with me that day, wearing a suit, as he always did. He had met me after work, walking fourteen blocks down Park Avenue South from his office. I told him I was just going to “knock this assignment out” before we headed over to a French restaurant we liked for the French dip sandwiches, frites, and coffee martinis—well, I drank those, and he had a Stella Artois beer.
“Give a man a megaphone and people will stop to listen,” was the takeaway from Sean’s journalism class that day after we read George Saunders’ essay, so this could not have been more perfect. The unique thing about the crowd I’d stumbled upon was its size—I had never seen such a large, captive audience there before. Some “protests” or “rallies” or “talks” were of real political relevance, others were more performances in a concrete, three-ring circus.
I settled in next to John and a pair of smirking, private high school girls in skirted uniforms and watched as a man in a cowboy hat sidled up next to the man with the megaphone, holding a sign that read, I write for Paris Hilton that neither John nor I could figure out the significance of.
In just a month, the 2008 presidential election would take place, and the American people were still watching the damage of the recession percolate, largely unsure about where to direct whatever hope they had left.
“People who believe in Obama are being fooled,” the man barked into his megaphone. “The candidates should be arrested, not put in office.”
When one of the spectators shouted something in response, the man with the megaphone tried to get him to join him up front to say a few words. The spectator nobly refused, repeatedly, while laughing, maybe at himself, maybe out of politeness, maybe at the situation.
I looked closer, and it became clear that the device wasn’t just a megaphone, but a contraption made from what looked like a school bus driver’s hand microphone attached to a megaphone.
Just then, a middle-aged red headed woman with the bulldog-esque mug of a 1940s gangster showed up. Her sweatshirt stated that she was a Yankees fan, and she was, with her cigarette-smoking raspy voice, the anti-American girl, the roughneck. Between two lampposts and pea green trashcans, the three performers set their stage.
She began to talk, and the man with the megaphone began heading for the street.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to John. I couldn’t really follow what this was supposed to be, and I needed more information for my paper.
I ran up to the man with the megaphone and introduced myself.
“Erin Grassi,” he said, shaking my hand and explaining that he was just a guy with a goal to create a new political party based on “sound economic ideas.” He seemed to come up with its name on the spot, “The Liberty Party.”
He asked me to join him as he crossed Union Square East to get a soda, so we walked through the zoo of people and cars and pets that was Fourteenth Street and Fourth Avenue. He smelled of whiskey and cigarettes, which I caught wind of when he removed a bill from his wallet and handed it over to the vendor without looking. He palmed the can of ginger ale, which was wrapped in a thin white napkin to absorb some of the moisture.
John was craning his neck out from over on the steps to make sure the guy wasn’t pulling a “walk with me or I’ll kill you” move with a gun to my side.
“I belong to a movement that nobody officially needs to belong to. We’ve been congregating in Union Square for the past few years but have never formally created a group,” Grassi explained.
“Is there a website I can go to, to find out more?” I ask.
“No” Grassi quipped. “But what we do have is an understanding of the triple rent levels, of 9/11, and why wage levels are severely stagnant.”
Suddenly, a bald man wearing glasses and a stained vintage T-shirt emerged from the sea of cars on Broadway, his nose scrunched up and his mouth open in a weird “O” shape. He was lugging a beat up brown leather bowling bag.
His name was Nathaniel, and Grassi immediately dumped him on me.
“Talk to this guy,” he said before he vanished.
Without any prompting, Nathaniel launched into his bit.
“How old are you, nineteen, twenty? Well, 9/11 youngsters were thirteen years old when it happened, and are politically moot in this time. If you’re from before this time, one would assume you h
ave more perspective. Democrats were called leftist. This generation is being brainwashed.”
What?
I looked to the left, where MTV was setting up their cameras about a hundred feet from the makeshift stage. Those crews had been prowling through Union Square for the past month to interview opinionated and bitter young New Yorkers about the upcoming election, and they were most likely getting some of this for b-roll footage. Grassi was winding through the audience of onlookers, moving in dangerously close to their faces.
“Our generation is full of doubters, of paranoid middle-class workers, of unsure voters and the people who choose ignorance over anxiety,” Nathaniel said. “Without access to media, elections are pointless. The only people allowed on TV are the third floor of Goldman Sachs and the fourth floor of Goldman Sachs.”
I allowed his voice to fade as I looked down at my notebook and wondered just how willing people were, at this point, to listen to any voice that broadcasted skepticism or confusion when it came to the state of our country.
I concluded my paper:
Only time would tell if we will see “The Liberty Party” on the ballot in our lifetime, or if Nathaniel will be the next president. What I know for sure, now, is that yes, if you give a man a megaphone, people will listen—luckily for people like Grassi and Nathaniel, who, when asked what his role in the rally was, answered simply, “I like to talk,” before descending back into the crowd.
* * *
Like every other party girl, I was always in search of the perfect New Year’s Eve. I rang in 2009 at a club on the Lower East Side with John; my new friend, Marley; and John’s friend Gary. I had met Marley in an English class; she lived at the dorms down on William Street, a few blocks from Southbridge. She answered my texts and met me for coffee and we even went to a movie together once. I would visit her at the dorms, and she understood whenever I’d have to push the time back because I had a migraine.
On December 31, 2008, champagne rained down on all of our heads at midnight as we stood on a dance floor spilling over with clumsy, well-dressed people and vodka. I had always been searching for this feeling of euphoria, and I had reached that beautiful point where I was slightly tipsy but not yet drunk. I vowed to stay there this time.
Marley wasn’t having as much luck—I followed her to the bathroom where she hovered over the toilet, but nothing came out. What a good friend I am. We put her in a cab—which she later got kicked out of for throwing up in—and John and I got in one ourselves.
Somehow I managed to talk John into hitting up one more bar before we headed back to my apartment (my parents had agreed to let him stay on the couch). And somehow, I managed to down another drink, then another, despite his hand reaching out to stop me. The bartender slipped a bracelet on my wrist which meant I could “drink all night,” a gesture that caused John’s face to contort in horror.
“Another White Russian!” I cried.
The bartender set it down in front of me, and John moved it away, and the bartender put it back in front of me.
“The lady gets what she wants,” the bartender said.
I remember flashes of dancing, and then stumbling home down Gold Street, screaming something about the “golden-haired prince,” a waiter I just knew was flirting with me.
When I got home, I ran to the bathroom to throw up, and then came back as if nothing had happened. I did this multiple times before passing out, mascara smeared all over my face, one heel on and the other off. I was still wearing my glittery dress.
A week later, when John was stuck underground in the subway, I sat in my room calling, and calling, my panic escalating to intolerable levels every time I got his answering machine. I called Marley and asked if she would call his house because nobody was answering at the house number he gave me.
“Ok, ok, calm down, I’ll call,” she said.
It turned out John had changed his house number in my phone after all of the crazy drunken threats I’d made on New Year’s Eve.
What threats? What the hell did I say?
A few days later, Marley sent me an email telling me:
My therapist said I can’t be dragged into other people’s crises, so if you want to still be friends, I guess that would be okay, but that can’t happen again.
I didn’t answer—but I forwarded it to Dr. A, who explained why maybe it would be overwhelming for Marley, and that if I could take a step back, I would likely see it too.
“Well, I’ll have to be a better friend and resolve not to do that,” I said.
“Actually,” said Dr. A. “She’s kind of clearly telling you that she doesn’t really give a fuck either way.”
Excuse me? Here I was trying to hold on to the friends that I could, and she was telling me not to bother.
“So I should say nothing?”
“Not everything needs a response.”
Filled with this new sense that time was limited because of the pre-cancerous cells, I quickly shifted gears and presented her with a list of all of the qualities I wanted, of what the girl I wanted to be looked like.
“I want to be calm. I want to be able to get from one place to another like a normal person. I want to be a cool girlfriend who doesn’t start fights and worry all the time. I want to be a happy daughter. I want to be someone who’s fun in social situations instead of feeling like I’m in a pressure cooker. I want to be able to hear a truck go over a bump outside and not lose my shit.”
“I’m going to give you two big suggestions, and we’re going to work toward these. Ready? Write these down.”
I took out my notebook.
“One, act the opposite of how you feel. Fake it ‘til you make it.”
“Got it,” I said, writing that down.
“Two, learn to be where you are. Not worrying about what happened before, or what will happen tomorrow or next year, or what’s happening after hearing a sound or a threat on the news without knowing exactly what’s going on. Stay in each moment.”
She smiled at me and took a deep breath, like there was more.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Well … I’m pregnant,” she said.
“Wow, congratulations!” I said automatically.
“I’m going to refer you to someone I think you’ll do really well with,” she said. “Her name is Jennifer, she’s a really cool therapist who’s on TV and specializes in young people. She knows CBT and also something called DBT, which is like what we’ve been doing but with mindfulness skills.”
Mindfulness, I wrote down, reminding myself to look up the definition.
“I know you feel like I’m leaving you. But we can always pick it back up, if you want, later on.”
“Okay, I understand.”
Remember what happened when your last therapist referred you to someone else?
Part of me did think, not again, but outside of that worry, I really felt happy for her and her new baby.
“I want you to know that I’ve really enjoyed working with you,” she said. “You’ve taught me more than any other patient I’ve worked with.”
I must have made a face, like, yeah, right.
“I’m serious! You came in willing to embrace change, and to make that happen for yourself, even with no immediate results. You’ve had faith in something. You were brave enough look at what’s not working and try to change that. Some people spend forty years doing what’s not working.”
I hugged her, and I thanked her, and on the subway ride home, I bit back tears, more afraid than I wanted to be that this next person would not understand me at all, that I was going right back into the dizzying vortex of trying someone new out again, who was just going to leave, or who was going to help me, and then leave.
The paper I had gotten back from Sean on the rally in Union Square was sticking out of my bag, marked up in red pen.
I had begun with one of George Saunders’ quotes from his essay, and next to that quote was a grade: A.
“No, war will not be stopped. But it is
a comfort, in the midst of a war, to read an antiwar book this good, and be reminded that just because something keeps happening, doesn’t mean we get to stop regretting it. Massacres are bad, the death of innocents is bad, hate is bad, and there’s something cleansing about hearing it said so purely.”
* * *
It was the beginning of junior year, and I had just left my Intermediate Journalism class to head uptown in a downpour. My jeans were five shades darker than they were when I left the school building and getting darker by the minute as I got lost on Twenty-Fifth Street and went back the way I came, all the while fixing my umbrella, which threatened to blow inside out with each small gust of wind. I still had a stupid flip phone, so the way I tried to find addresses was simply by walking in one direction, seeing which way the numbers went for long enough to know, then either continuing that way or doing an about-face. Breathing quickly, I started to panic as time ticked by.
I cursed myself as I ran through a puddle, causing it to splash with even more force than if I were to have stopped for a second to find a way around it, or over it, or gently touched it with my toe.
Finally, I squinted and saw building 226. The lobby smelled musty, like cardboard and mothballs. The elevator was old, with black buttons that did not light up. The door to 3B was unlocked, and I barreled through it, noticeably flustered, trying to cover up the obvious fact that I was panting.
A red headed woman dressed casually in a cute flower top and jeans smiled at me and held out her hand. She had an ease about her that contradicted everything I had ever associated with a “therapist.”
“Helaina?” she asked.
“Hi,” I said, almost throwing myself down against the back of the green couch.
“Hi there, I’m Jen …” she trailed off looking at my expression. “Why so anxious?”
“Well, I couldn’t get a cab, so I had to take the train, and I couldn’t find the building, and I worried that if I was late, you’d get a bad first impression of me, and that would ruin everything we tried to do after because you wouldn’t like me …”
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