love and cancer, part 1

my favorite psychic asked me if i've met anyone, "you know, a man who's kind and a bit sexy?"

i started laughing and she did, too.

my answer: "i am bald, i have no eyelashes and very little eyebrows, i weigh about 104 pounds, i am perpetually nauseated and exhausted... i spend half my week in the hospital and the rest too tired to get out of bed, who do i meet apart from irish nurses brandishing chemo needles?"

i should add to that list of endearing qualities, i have 2 out-of-control teenaged daughters and a very clingy almost-11 year-old one.

my mental answer: how could anyone be interested in a repulsive and sexless bag of bones? even my ability to make intelligent conversation is hobbled by shrinking short-term memory. how could someone love me if i grossed myself out?

this particular blog is about dating across cultural and racial divides.

standing in the shower today, after the perpetual shock of seeing myself naked in the mirror, both muscles and fat reduced to stringy flesh and papery skin infused with the strange chemical fragrance of my chemo drugs, i am less a woman and more a feeble asexual alien.

race, religion and economic class are not the only insurmountable rifts that separate human beings - now that i have cancer - illness can be one of the biggest divides there is.

my cousin was on the arranged marriage circuit. he was briefly interested in a beautiful, eligible young woman who was also going blind. "is he crazy?" shouted his mother. "he'll have to drive her everywhere, look after her - what kind of life does he want? and on top of that, she's going bald." thus, no proposal was registered. the poor guy went back on the meeting track.

what shocks me is that it's perfectly reasonable and completely acceptable - and everyone seems to agree with his mum - to dismiss someone sick (god knows what other virtues and qualities she had) on the spot. in fact, there is no taboo at all in dropping someone because she or he is sick. which i am.

have i met anyone? i have vague flirtations online. i smile at people in shops and they often smile back. but am i or anyone else willing to the leap the abyss?

and if someone did cross over, what would be there?

a stick figure.

i find myself thinking i need to wear false eyelashes and make-up and push-up bras and bright colors. all those loud, overstatements of femininity. because there is so little else.

i wonder if i create a garish outer "woman," if the inner one will follow suit?

i used to be married to a man who was a cross-dresser. he longed to be a woman. when he dressed up, he said, "we can be sisters.." in a soft, simpering voice.

i used to be horrified by his over-the-top drag. the bright lipstick, the mascara, the earrings, the scarf, bra and "chicken cutlets" - even the hyper-feminine gestures and the voice - along with the sexy dress, hose and pumps. his costumes and act turned us women into caricatures. jokes.

my femininity was based on confidence. i didn't need frilly polyester underwear or blue eyeshadow or stilletto heels because my being a woman was undeniable. i was petite, pretty, i had breasts, glossy long hair, i could have babies. too many accoutrements would be overkill. like putting a huge painted sign HOUSE on the side of a house. if it wasn't obvious to you, you weren't very smart.

but now that - like my exhusband - i am trying desperately to conjure up my inner woman, that part of me who was pretty and fun and alluring, i wonder if i shouldn't go out and tart myself up. i am wondering if putting on the dog (pun intended, i suppose), wouldn't be part of my healing.

would making the effort to make myself pretty be part of being nice to myself?

the thing about being sick is, you do it alone.

i've been blown away by my family. my brother and my sister-in-law have been my constant companions in the hospital. my mother and father have been back and forth to new york city every other week for seven weeks. my friends have been visiting, holding my hand in hospital, bringing food, cooking food, bringing presents and flowers.

but in the end, they get up and walk out of the hospital and you are still there, hooked up to the i.v. and wearing a dead-ugly blue flower-printed gown and fuzzy socks and bedroom slippers.

they get to go back to real life. have a nap and feel almost normal again.

and you get to live there.

when you're in the midst of cancer treatment, you live there in a big way.

even if i dressed up as a woman, i don't think i could take it on the road.

all the time, i'd be thinking of the tragic moment when i peeled off those false eyelashes and the wig, when the push-up bar came off and the acrid perfume of chemicals seeped through the flowery deodorant, when my the lipstick clung in pieces to my chapped lips and i turned back into a stick figure.

can you fall in love when you have cancer? yes. yes, i'm sure you can. you could fall desperately in love with someone who stood by you. someone who loved and cared for you all along. your wife or husband or long-term partner.

but if you're on your own, "meeting someone" while you're in treatment, while you still believe you're sick, is impossible.

this is the moment to learn to love yourself. all bald, scrawny 100 pounds of you.

i ate lunch alone in a japanese restaurant the other day and, like a teenaged girl, i marveled at how i had become a woman (again). my voice is melodious, my fingers are long and poised, i move gracefully. i was pleased with my company.

my date with myself was a success. i found myself charming. i might even try for a second one.