It's Not About the Hair: And Other Certainties of Life & Cancer

by Debra Jarvis

  Wes and I had a great sex life, too, and I missed it. But I was still, as Wes put it, “intensely desirous of cuddling.” That was true. I needed to be comforted about the fact that I wasn’t interested in sex.

  I consulted my naturopath. “The only thing I can think of,” she said, “is a dildo to stretch out the tissues.” She started to write it down on my chart and then paused. “I don’t even know how to spell it.”

  My primary care physician nodded sympathetically when I told her the problem. “Okay, what you might try is some kind of—dilator.”

  “You mean a dildo,” I said.

  “Uh, yeah. You may have to start small and work your way up.” She gave me the name of a sex-toy shop on Capitol Hill: Toys in Babeland.

  Oh. My. God.

  Yes?

  I wore sunglasses on the way over and fully intended to keep them on while I was inside. But in my mind, there is no other way to do this kind of thing except directly.

  “May I help you?” She was a sweet twenty-something girl with pierced eyebrows.

  “Yes. I was on chemo and we didn’t have sex for a while and I have no estrogen and my vagina has shrunk to the size of a drinking straw and I need something to get it back in shape.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Pierced Girl.

  Of course? Did she hear this all the time?

  She took me over to three shelves of dildos. “These are silicone, these are latex, and these are blown glass,” she said pointing to the different shelves. I know she said something after that, but I didn’t get it because my mind was screaming, “Glass?! Isn’t that dangerous? Why don’t you just use plutonium?”

  “You can’t use silicone lubricant with silicone.You can only use water based or glycerine, although we don’t recommend lubricants with glycerine because they can cause yeast infections. Now with latex toys you can use silicone lubricant.”

  I should be taking notes! Yeast infections? That’s all I need.

  I looked at the vast assortment of penises.They were like puppies at the pound. All of them seemed to say, “Pick me! Pick me!”

  “How do I know which size to get?” I asked coolly. Never mind the fact that this whole venture had brought on a marathon hot flash.

  “It depends on how many fingers you can get in your vagina.”

  “Oh, yes.” I looked down at my hands and pondered this question. Did she include the little finger? Because that’s a lot smaller than the other three.That could throw off the entire calculation.

  “I’ll let you make your choice and just let me know if you need any help.”

  “Thank you so much.” You would have thought I was buying gloves at Macy’s. I quickly ruled out the glass and latex varieties. But the dildo buffet was still overwhelming, so I ruled out anything that looked real because I had the real thing at home.

  Then I remembered what my doctor said about starting small. There were three that were exactly alike, except they were small, medium, and large. Perfect. I picked up the small one: thirty dollars! Forty for the medium and forty-five for the large. I wasn’t about to spend one hundred and fifteen dollars on dildos! Once I graduated to the large, what would I do with the small and medium ones? Donate them to the church rummage sale?

  I would just have to start big. I grabbed Papa Bear off the shelf and waved at Pierced Girl. “I’ll take this one.”

  “Alright. I’ll be right back.” She returned with two sealed bags. “Purple or black?” she asked.

  “Well, black does go with everything,” I said,“but the purple’s irresistible.” I immediately named him Prince.

  Now I had to get some fancy lubricant for Wes and me. Clearly our common drugstore stuff wasn’t cutting it. There were testers for every brand. On every shelf was a box of tissues so you could wipe off your fingers. So thoughtful.

  So I tried Maximus, O’My, Sliquid Silk, Babelube, Infinity, and Pink. Pink was in a handblown Italian glass bottle so you could leave it out on your nightstand and no one would walk in and scream, “Oh, my God! Lubricant!”

  Instead they’d probably say,“Oh, what a beautiful bottle.” Then they’d pick it up, and because it’s slippery, drop it on your floor. Then you’d have lubricant everywhere and a lot of explaining to do. But what are they doing sniffing around in your bedroom?

  Anyway, I ended up buying a bottle of “Gun Oil” because I liked the way it felt, and I knew Wes would find the name hilarious. Unlike Pink, I wouldn’t keep it on the nightstand but perhaps in the garage.

  I was feeling pretty wild now and decided to buy some erotic literature. I chose a book whose cover looked very cultured and sophisticated. It was a collection of stories. I’ll tell you right now that the stories where they hop in the sack after knowing one another only ten minutes just didn’t turn me on. I got anxious and started talking out loud saying things like,“You need to pay attention to your relationship first!” or “You both have communication issues.” I was doing pre-marital counseling with erotica.

  The stories that work for me are where they secretly love one another for ages, are afraid to admit it, finally confess, and then hop in the sack. So I read a story and then Prince and I would get to work, paving the way for the Real Thing. It really was work at first because there was a fair amount of discomfort. I looked upon it like dental hygiene, although I’ve never once had an orgasm while flossing—yet.

  At night, while Wes read his science journal in bed, I read my erotic lit. After a story or two I would fling the book on the floor and say, “Honey, step away from that journal!”

  Like my taste buds, gradually things came back. Lights were flickering in the house. I’m convinced there is no way to rush it. The best thing to do is pretend you really are a teenage virgin and you will only allow kissing. You might say, “I’m not one of those slutty cheerleader types!” and gently smack your partner. Then think about your parents coming home any minute. Then imagine all the girls at school finding out. Then all the boys. Then . . .

  Well, it worked for us.

  Son Stroke

  Mr. Palmer had prostate cancer. I loved visiting him in spite of the fact that he was a Republican who fully supported the U.S. military in Iraq and thought it was wrong to be gay. He said it took him a while to get used to the idea of women ministers, but now he thought they were okay. As if to prove this, he never called me by my first name, but always called me “Reverend.”

  I tried to view him as perhaps Jesus viewed Zacchaeus, the hated tax collector. He was just a guy doing his job with the wrong opinions. He always insisted we pray together before I left. If his nurse was there, or anybody for that matter, he would grab their hands in his big meaty ones and make them pray with us.

  Once we were talking about all the diseases that were referred to by their initials, like ADD and ADHD and SAD.

  “I think it’s all a bunch of hooey,” he said. “Seasonal Affective Disorder! You know what that is? That’s a bunch of cream puffs sitting around and being depressed about the weather. Snap out of it!”

  “We do have more overcast days in Seattle than anywhere,” I said. “I think some people really need more sunlight, maybe . . .”

  “And all these kids with ADHD! Can’t sit still in class so now they call it a disease. It’s just being bratty, that’s all it is. And the spineless teachers who can’t control their students are probably these same cream puffs who have SAD. They probably . . .”

  He stopped in the middle of his sentence and asked, “Do you have any children?”

  “What?!”

  I was used to this with Mr. Palmer. It was as if someone in his brain suddenly slammed on the brakes. His thoughts would screech to a halt, make a sudden turn, and then take off again.

  He repeated his question. “Do you have any children?

  “No.”

  “You should have children so you could love them.”

  Instead of telling him there was no way I could ever have children, I was able to demonstrate it because a sudden ho
t flash came upon me. I whipped out my fan, smiled at him, and began fanning myself.

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, you should have had children.”

  Wes and I loved kids but never wanted any of our own. Over the years we were constantly asked if we were going to have kids. We rarely came clean because saying,“We don’t want children,” was like saying, “We don’t want world peace.” Most people thought not wanting children was simply wrong. So usually I was silent and let people think we were “trying,” although I knew this ploy wouldn’t work forever. We stopped getting asked when I turned forty-five. Instead they started asking if we were thinking about adopting.

  I cleared my throat and said to Mr. Palmer, “We had a dog.”

  “Ah, yes—a dog.”

  I tried to look a little sad, as if I had been hoping for a child, but I could tell he didn’t buy it. “Oh, no,” I thought, “Here it comes, the sermon on Why You Should Have Had Kids.”

  “I’ve had both children and dogs,” he said quietly. He paused for a moment before saying,“And I will tell you something, Reverend.” I braced myself. “Dogs are more loyal and much more fun!”

  Then he burst out laughing. He was still chuckling and wiping his eyes when he said, “My son was the biggest pain in the ass I’ve ever had.”

  “But what about having children so I could love them?”

  “Well, that was before I knew you had a dog.”

  We were both laughing like jackals when the nutritionist poked in her head. She looked puzzled and quickly said,“I’ll come back later.”

  That just made us laugh harder. My conversations with patients were not entirely about spirituality any more than the nurse’s conversations were entirely about the patient’s health. I was not some mystical ATM where patients made spiritual transactions. I think the best of us chaplains offer a bit of friendship. Perhaps it is a brief and temporary one. It’s a lot of listening, some counseling, a bit of self-disclosure, and sometimes a dash of affection. But the whole of the relationship is greater than the sum of its parts. Sometimes I felt the teeniest bit guilty because most of the time I have so much fun being a chaplain.

  I must admit there were times when I wished like crazy someone would walk in just so they could see I was earning my pay-check. But no one seems to barge in when a patient is crying in my arms, or when we’re praying, or on Ash Wednesday when I’m dispensing ashes.

  Son Light

  What Mr. Palmer didn’t know was every two weeks I got to have an hour-long conversation with a young man who was just the right age to be my son. His name was Miles, and his mother, Eve, died of breast cancer the year before. She was a smart, beautiful, feisty woman who adored her son, even as she sometimes complained about his teenage attitude. She was divorced from his father, and although Miles lived with her most of the time, his parents had shared custody. I loved visiting with Eve because we would compare notes on different Buddhist books we had read. We also talked about death all the time.

  Of course we had all these death talks while she was getting treated, and it looked like the chemo was working. Then, just like Kari, when it was clear the treatment was no longer working, she didn’t want to talk about dying. She focused her attention on Miles and asked if I would just have a conversation with him. She was worried about him.

  This all happened when I had that fabulous office. So we went in there and sat at the little round table and talked. We talked about his mom dying and how he felt about it. I remember him crying and looking at me and saying,“I don’t think I’ve ever been as present as I am at this moment.”

  So when it became clear Eve was dying, that there was no more chemo left, she said to me, “Promise me you’ll see Miles.” I promised.

  Eve died the day after her birthday, a week before school started. Miles wisely delayed entry to the university, and took the quarter off. He flew back East and visited his grandmother. Then he returned to Seattle, worked at Barnes and Noble, and lived with his dad and stepmom.

  He started seeing me about four months after Eve died. At first I met him at Starbucks on my day off. He offered to pay me, but I refused. I think he felt bad about that so he started coming to see me every other week at the clinic. Because I didn’t have an office, I would scrounge around for consult rooms on any floor I could find. I didn’t mind this room hunt, or the “knock and peek,” as Miles called it. It gave a sort of Joseph-and-Mary-looking-for-an-inn flavor to it all. It always felt like a small triumph to find a space.

  We just talked like friends—sort of. I always steered the conversation around to talking about his mom. The first year after a death is one of the hardest. And Miles not only lost his mom, but his home and all his high school friends.

  We talked about school, his girlfriend, and whether or not he would get a summer job. We discussed who were the Buddhas in our lives—those people who drove us crazy and made us see where we lacked compassion or love or understanding or patience. We talked about restaurants and we talked about God. Miles was proud of having had a bar mitzvah, but he never went to temple. I can safely say he considered himself “spiritual not religious.”

  He was refreshingly not self-absorbed unlike many eighteen-year-olds I’ve met. After he talked for a little while, he’d always turn to me and say,“So how are you?” Then I would tell him about what was going on with me. Once he brought me flowers as a thank-you and for our anniversary he made cookies. So I wasn’t exactly a chaplain to him. I, for sure, wasn’t a mom, not really like an aunt, and too old to be a sister. So I was his friend.

  He had a tendency to intellectualize things, and because he was very smart, it was easy for him to do. So I often found myself saying, “Well, how do you, you, Miles feel about that?” Around every holiday, I asked, “What did you and your mom used to do on this holiday?”

  I had asked a nurse if she thought my meeting with Miles was doing him any good. “Are you kidding?” she said, “A teenage boy who gets himself here every two weeks must be getting something out of it.”

  It turned out our regular meeting day was his mom’s birthday, the next day being the one-year anniversary of her death. I wanted to give him something, a card, a book, what? Nothing seemed right.When he arrived that day I greeted him with a hug and the words, “Congratulations. You made it through the first year.” He had gone through a whole year of holidays without his mom.“I’m buying you a drink,” I said.

  We walked over to the Thomas Building and we both got lattes and then sat on a bench at the water’s edge.

  “Do you think something happens physically to a person who witnesses a death?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “It just feels like ever since Mom died, everything is more intense—everything is brighter, louder, softer, harder.”

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said, “but it wouldn’t surprise me. But maybe it’s that seeing your mom die makes you realize how beautiful life can be and how short it is. So now everything seems more alive.”

  We just sat there silently thinking about that.Then a guy in a raft came floating by. He had a long pole and jammed it into the water every so many feet. “Just seeing if it’s deep enough to bring my boat in here,” he said.

  “He’s plumbing the depths,” I said. “Just like dating. Testing to see whether someone is deep enough for you to bring in your whole self.”

  Miles started laughing, “Yeah, yeah, exactly.” Then he talked about his girlfriend and how their relationship was going. And as I sat there a feeling of pure bliss settled over me. Most of my friends who had kids Miles’s age never had conversations like this with them. Miles could be my son, but if he were, would we be having this conversation? If I had my own kids, I probably wouldn’t have the energy for Miles.

  There must be some long German word that means a glimpse of the road not taken, seeing how sweet it could be, but at the same time feeling perfectly content with the choice you’ve made. It was as if Eve was sitting there with us too, saying to me, “Isn’
t it great? I wanted you to have this.”

  Now What?

  So how will my life be different after cancer? Honestly? Not too much different. I’ve stopped going to things like the Turkish Gerbil Harmonica Concert just because the person who has invited us is nice. I keep more white space on my calendar.

  I love myself with the extra ten pounds. The hair I lost came back gray, and it is now sticking up out of my head like little silver wires. I was cleaning out my basement, and in my trunk I found my high school cheerleading uniform (I was not one of the slutty ones), along with a ten-inch ponytail I had cut off when I was nineteen. It was perfectly virgin hair, not highlighted, bleached, or tinted. I showed it to my hairdresser who said, “That ponytail is way more valuable than your present hair.” I tried not to be offended. So I sent off my high school ponytail to become a wig. I hope it’s a big one.