Just out ▼ July 7. 1999 V 33
AMAZON TRAIL
I do believe in
fairies
The downside of growing up is confronting mortality:
Peter Pan never worried about cancer
▼
by Lee L ynch
M
iddle age is a very interesting time
He calls the nurse. He asks, when I make notes, if
of life. Here I am iust getting used
I am writing a book. I tell him I’m writing this
to being all grown up, gleefully
column because, well, because I’m not the only
storing nuggets of wisdom, and
one going through this.
suddenly I find myself staring up
The nurse is warm and sweet and careful. She
at strange-looking machines which holds
might my
have
hand as he inserts the needle. We laugh
been designed for the Star Trek sick bay.
and joke through the procedure. She says it will
Lumps, disintegrating bone mass, tendinitis,
feel like a bee sting, but bee stings hurt me a lot and
worn joints, the hormone wars which beset mid
this is nothing—until he tries to aspirate what turns
life women, memory loss (not always a bad thing),
out to be unaspiratable. Then I feel the pain, but it’s
sick and dying peers, failing elders— what a joy.
quick. While it’s not a cyst after all, he’s almost
I’ll bet Peter Pan never lurked about the local
certain, he says, that it’s not cancer, “But we can’t
medical center.
leave it in there.”
But here I am, waiting for the surgeon to poke
I wanted this ordeal to end today. The first
and prod and decide which method to use to
available appointment for the biopsy is almost a
determine if I am one of this year’s breast cancer
week away. “You don’t have cancer,” he tells me,
statistics. Peter Pan never worried about cancer.
and the words will be my mantra, I’m sure, for a
week. I do believe in fairies.
When I first found The Lump it was like, oh,
I don’t cry until l get to Lover’s office. She
that’s what I get for being good and doing self
holds me. Keeps me close. Strokes my knee over
examinations. Of course it’ll be nothing, just some
and over as if to reassure both of us that I am here.
glandular glitch, a hormonal blip, even a dumb
little cyst. The gynecologist will
act as if I’m wasting her time.
Still, I’m a well-trained middle-
class person who works hard
for my health insurance. I’ll
check it out.
I don’t know whether I was
more impressed or scared that I
was able to get an appointment
with the gynecologist so
quickly. Then, as she examined
me, the words I may never for
get: Yes, I feel it.
By the next day I was in X-
ray with a technician who would
be the first of a ridiculous num
ber of middle-aged women with
war stories about Lumps of their
But this is me. I come with a lifetime warranty:
own. (What an absurd and undignified word for
good health, an almost entirely long-lived family.
such potent instruments of mortality: lumps.) The
I am surprised, perplexed, indignant at this stupid
women I spoke to had had Lumps aspirated and
Lump. Surely the surgeon is right and the biopsy
biopsied and sliced and removed. They had scars
will only serve to confirm that. Aren’t I, after all,
and empty bras and seemed generally to consider
a privileged college-educated American?
the whole business a big bore, but they also had
The worst of it is how terribly ordinary it all is.
oceans of empathy for the new kid on the block.
Calmly
discussing cutting the healthy little body
More important for me even than their empathy is
that has served me so well. Knowing I won’t go to
that they are living, walking, talking proof that
Portland’s Lesbian and Gay Pride Day Saturday
cancer does not equal death. At least, not always.
with surgery hanging over my head. Knowing also
Nevertheless, sitting here in the surgeon’s ex
that I will get this column to my various editors and
amining room today, waiting for The Man (there is
do the grocery shopping on Saturday. Life, as the
no such animal as a woman surgeon at my rural
old saw says, goes on.
HMO), my mind roams into all sorts of shadowy
I think I’m not scared, but I keep getting teary-
recesses. Is my will tight enough? Will I ever smell
eyed. I think I’m calm, but I got lost driving over
another honeysuckle bush? Poor Lover’s already
to Lover’s office. I think I’m sane, but in the natural
suffered through the loss of a partner, I can’t let it
food store I find myself reading then buying a
happen again. What did I do to give myself cancer?
nutritional self-help book I’ve been resisting for
Was it my father’s secondhand smoke? Is it the
years. “You don ’ t have cancer,” he said, but he also
stress level of juggling a straight career with writ
thought it would be a cyst. Overreacting or not, I
ing? Should I stop eating salt, my last remaining
won’t be satisfied until the stitches are in and the
dietary sin?
lab report is negative.
Time seems to compress even more when mor
If this is what being grown up is about, give me
tality knocks at a hitherto sealed door. Will I have
back
the carefree days when all I had to worry me
time to finish the rewrite on my novel? What about
was falling in love too often, or getting busted at
the stories clamoring to get written? At least I can
peace marches. Give me back menstrual cramps
stop worrying about my car’s I9th birthday—and
that only felt fatal and the feeling of invincibility
start wonying that it may outlast me!
that
comes with youth. Let me be Peter Pan.
Just as this relentless attack of inner terrorism
By next week at this time all I’ll have to show
gets out of hand, the surgeon arrives. Surprisingly,
for the worrying and the tears is a new scar on my
I like him. Maybe 55, bushy white moustache, he’s
body—one more nugget of wisdom. I’ll be bored
not terribly invasive for a presumably straight
with my own war story, encouraging to the next
male and a surgeon. He explains a lot. He listens.
lesbian with a Lump. This has been too close for
He touches. He confirms. He recommends, reas
comfort. I do believe in fairies.
sures, guesses that we’re only dealing with a cyst.
Finally, a lesbian romance
for the whole family.” m r?
ESQUIRE. Joseph Hooper
NEWSWEEK
First love, straight or gay, M
h has
a c rarplu
h p p n so
rarely been
so
expertly enacted.”
V |g|i
T U k
*
fl
,
David Ansen
BOSTON
Fresh & endearing, as much
a coming-of-age story as a
romantic comedy."
Jay Carr
WASHINGTON
"An intensely romantic comedy
Imagine Pretty In Pink'
with lesbians."
Rita Kempley
m it o n
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