Nice Shootin', Tex! or, Crossing Off #18 on the Bucket List

When I was a kid growing up in the 70s, a bunch of us in the neighborhood used to play a game we called "Guns." Not very imaginative, but neither was the game, really. We sorted ourselves into teams, and everybody picked someone to "be" from TV. Tony Cruz, who lived two doors down from me, was Baretta; Scott Reed, my next door neighbor, was Hutch; his sister Debbie, the only girl who played, was Pepper Anderson (from Police Woman); and Steve Kafka, who lived on the other side of the townhouse unit from me, was Hondo Harrelson (from SWAT). He took this role only grudgingly; because Steve had a pair of nunchucks, he wanted to be Bruce Lee, but that kind of went against the whole spirit of the game. Me, I was always Starsky.

The objective of the game was to disperse, hunt each other around outside, and shoot members of the opposite team with the capguns we had. I'd saved my money and bought a beaut--a black-and-silver .38 snubnose with a real cylinder that spun around. While some of my fellow players used big rolls of red paper caps, my gun had special ammo--a plastic ring of caps that fit onto the back of the cylinder and rotated around so that the real-action hammer could hit and pop each cap.

We played lots of games, my neighbors and I, but Guns is the one that I remember best because I really liked those shows we imitated, and I really liked running around and shooting my gun.

And somehow, I made it to age forty-six without ever firing a real one.

Until a couple of weeks ago.

Once word spread of my cancer, offers of "Let me know what I can do" came pouring in. When it was made by one of my former students--a vet who'd served in the Air Force and had posted a few of her firing-range escapades on Facebook--I told her that I had an interesting request for her. Take me shooting.

Now anyone who knows me well knows (or can guess) that I'm in favor of much stronger gun control laws, and that I consider the NRA's leadership and lobbyists to be among the biggest douchebags on our political landscape. But, I've always wanted to fire a gun, if for no other reason than to see what the excitement was all about.

My former student--let's call her Annie (as in Annie Oakley)--and her Glock 27 met me at an Oceanside firing range. It was crowded with both people and guns--long glass cases filled with revolvers and automatics, and wall racks holding up various rifles, shotguns, and assault weapons. I was asked to sign a sheet stating that I was not a felon, did not abuse alcohol or drugs, and was mentally stable. There were four people on staff--three men and one woman--and they were all professional, courteous, and extremely safety-conscious. When Annie was showing me how the magazine fit into her Glock, one of the staff members shouted at us to make sure that we weren't loading a weapon in the lobby (we weren't).

When our turn came, we were given a couple of targets and two heavy-duty pairs of headphones for noise protection. The rules required that we put them on before we entered the firing range. I should point out that even in the lobby, the pops of the guns from beyond the thick glass wall were loud. To get to the range, we even had to go through a "sound lock," where we opened and closed one big, padded door before we could open another one.

Inside the range proper, two things were immediately noticeable--the smell of gunpowder and the pops that were now BANGS. Annie and I had to shout at each other from two feet away, but those gun blasts had no trouble getting through our ear protectors.

We went to the far lane, where Annie hung up a target and then showed me how to load, hold, and aim the Glock. She fired a few shots to demonstrate before handing the weapon to me.

I don't want to make too much of holding the gun, but at the same time, I do. Without trying to be overly metaphorical, I would describe it as heavy. The gun itself looked like a toy; the Glock 27 isn't very big and has a short grip, so its weight was surprising to me. But more than that, holding the gun didn't provide that rush I'd felt as a kid. In truth, it was a little scary. This was an awful amount of power to hold--the power to do some serious damage to another human being. Maybe a lot of people buy these things with the sole intention of shooting targets, but I don't think so. At some point when a person buys a gun, he or she has to imagine pointing it at another human being. The idea certainly passed through my mind as I held it in my hand, and it made me feel a little sick. Part of this feeling, I'm sure, came from the chemicals lingering in my system. But part of it also came from the close proximity I've felt to death since mid-October in my thoughts, sure, but also in being around lots of other people in much more dire stages of cancer and chemo than me. I wondered if wanting to fire a gun was an effort on my part to exercise some control over death. If so, it was a failed effort; holding that Glock felt like shaking hands with someone I didn't want to meet, not ever.

All of these feelings were intensified when I fired it. Even though I'd watched Annie fire a couple of rounds, the force of that kick surprised me. And the noise, now exploding from about two feet in front of my face, was even louder.

I emptied the gun at the target about twenty-five yards away, and there was another full magazine waiting for me. Annie had told me to aim "center mass," and that's what I did--or tried to do.

"It's a stress reliever, right?" she asked as she passed another full magazine my way.

"Not really," I said, but I'm not sure my reply made it through the headphones.

I kept waiting to get into some kind of rhythm or comfort, waiting for the excitement that I'd felt as a kid running around on those summer days with my fake .38 to kick in, but every time I pulled that trigger, the noise and jerk were sobering, and I couldn't help thinking that all of those cop shows and action movies that transform the noise, smell, and feel of shooting into entertainment are bullshit.

I walked out of the range glad that I'd finally done this thing but convinced that I wouldn't return.

But here's the weird thing: the further I get from the experience, the more that I think it might not be too bad to try it again.

Voices from the Road

I'm working on a longer, more text-heavy post (teaser: it might have the words "bucket list" in the title), but in the meantime, I wanted to share some of the comics from my recently-completed book, That Hidden Road. The images below represent a sampling, and they are sprinkled throughout the manuscript. I decided to draw and write these comics because, when I bicycled across the country, I had a lot of encounters with people that stuck with me, but they didn't seem substantive enough to warrant space in the narrative proper. These comics seemed like a good solution, especially because I've always thought that the medium excels at amplifying quiet moments.

Here they are:

To any publishers and/or agents out there, the book is finished and clocks in at 100,000 words. And if the fact that I have cancer makes you interested out of pity, I'm totally okay with that...

Numbers Don't Lie

Good news to report: I got the results of my blood tests back after the first week of chemo, and my two tumor markers--alpha Fetoprotein (AFP) and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG)--are dropping. So, the evidence is strong that the chemo is doing more than just turning me into a naked mole rat.

Also dropping, unfortunately, are my white blood cells, which apparently are important in fighting off germs and bacteria. That means some changes for me: I'm carrying a little bottle of Purell and squirting it on anything and anyone I come in contact with, I'm not driving on any roads where there's a Taco Bell, and I'm no longer honoring the "Five Second Rule" (although truthfully, I've always stretched it to more of a "Five Minute Rule," especially if the fallen object was candy. Or bacon.)

In other news, with some help from my buddy John, I've got all of the comics done that are going to go in my second book, That Hidden Road. There are about 35 pages all together that will be intercut with the larger narrative, and I may post some of these pages here if there's any interest. That, by the way, is my non-subtle invitation to any readers out there to express some interest.

Hair Today...

Well, the time has come. For the last few days, I’ve stepped out of the shower to find my neck matted with hair. Yesterday, all that hair loss became--at least to me--noticeable; I looked like I’d had a haircut. This morning, I could gently pinch the hair on my head and come away with this:

So, here’s where I started:

I don’t know how many people have shaved their heads before, but it has to be done in stages. Stage one is with the electric clippers, starting at the third-lowest setting and working down to the lowest. And perhaps it goes without saying that this stage demands a Mohawk:

I post this picture in part as a shout-out to one of my students this semetser (you know who you are, and thanks again for the book!)

Next, I lose the Mohawk:

Up to this point, I’ve been using only my electric clippers. Now it’s time to get serious, so out comes the shaving cream:

The result? A head as smooth as a baby’s bottom:

So is this how I’ll venture out into the world? Probably not; I think I’ll make my initial appearances with a little more flair:

For now, I'm going to leave my facial hair. It's falling out, too, but I'm content to let it come out on its own. As for the new look, I don't think that “Heisenberg” will work as an alter ego—I don’t know enough about science. Maybe…Hemingway?

I’m open to suggestions.

Mailbag!

I’m a little more than a week removed from my first chemo treatments, and I’m happy to report that my appetite is strong and my energy is up. I was afraid that I’d be too cashed to teach, but last week went really well—so great to see all my colleagues and students again—and I’m looking forward to one more week of rest before I head back for my infusions on the 2nd.

So what does all of this mean? Another post, of course.

Readers of my last blog (the fun one, the one I kept when I biked across America), might remember how I received a fair amount of reader mail while on the road and how I took the time in a couple of posts (here and here) to answer this mail.

Incredibly, it’s been happening again—letters from all over. Since they’ve been piling up and Shannon’s been complaining that they’re taking up too much space, I figure it’s time to answer a few. So let’s get right to it.

Joe from Pratt, Kansas, writes,

          Are you related to the designer?

Lots of people ask me that, and my short answer is, “Not that I know of.” However, my grandfather believed that we were distant cousins. It turns out that the original spelling of our last name is with an “e” (Versace), and his—my grandfather’s—family came from Reggio Calabria, which is the same part of Italy that Gianni Versace is from. So who knows?

Alex from Oceanside, California, writes,

          Dude, how can you write about this stuff? It seems
          crazy personal.

Alex, I wonder about that myself. I’m from the Midwest, and I come from people who value privacy, so it really doesn’t make a lot of sense. However, I’m also a product of what I’ve been doing for the vast majority of my life—studying, reading, and teaching literature—and from this I’ve learned that there’s a healing power in writing. This blog has helped me work through experiences that would be tough to deal with if I just kept them locked up in my head.

Marie from Ames, Iowa, writes,

          Did you lose your hair?

As of this writing, I still have a full head of hair. However, I noticed this morning that I can pull out tufts of it pretty easily. It’s just a matter of time before I start developing little bald patches and look like a post-Apocalypse refugee. When that happens, I’ll shave it off (and, of course, post pictures).

Ken “Buster” Carter from Stillwater, Oklahoma, writes,

          Been reading your blog and it made me think of back
          when I was in high school. We had a science teacher
          there named Mr. Benson. He must have had what you have
          because word got around that he was “missing”
          something. People started calling him “One Ball
          Benson.” If I’m being totally honest here, I guess I
          kind of started it. A few of us broke into the gym one
          weekend and we started leaving things around for Mr.
          Benson. A golf ball on his desk. A basketball on the
          hood of his car. One guy slipped a baseball into his
          lunch bag. He ended up leaving a month before the end
          of the school year. Someone said he got a job at
          another school. Anyway, do you think I’m going to hell?

Buster, I don’t believe in hell. But if I did, there’s probably a special seat with your name on it there.

Louise from Bolingbrook, Illinois, writes,

          My father (never smoked a day in his life) died of lung
          cancer when he was still a young man in his 60s. My
          sister has survived breast cancer twice. My mother-in-
          law wasn’t so lucky. Breast cancer took her in her 50s.
          A friend of mine sent me the link to your post on your
          surgery. She liked it, but I just can’t see what’s so
          funny about cancer.

Louise, let me first tell you how sorry I am that your family has been hit unusually hard by this disease. Believe me when I say that I don’t think there’s anything funny about cancer. But we all have different ways of dealing with the challenges that we face. I guess I like to look for the funny when I can; I don’t see much profit in dwelling on how awful things might seem or how awful things might get. Of course, it’s a big help that my prognosis is good. I might tell the story a little differently if I was looking at a dimmer future. I hope I wouldn’t, but I might.

George from Lansing, Michigan, writes,

          What’s it feel like to have one ball?

Not that different, actually. A little roomier.

Sara T. from Tucumcari, New Mexico, writes,

          Are you still biking?

No, and it’s killing me. I hate driving to work, I hate being stuck in traffic, I hate walking past my bikes while I avert my eyes. I imagine them wondering why I’ve been ignoring them.

Mike from Huntsville, Alabama, writes,

          You told Buster that you don’t believe in Hell (I
          always learned it should be capitalized). Why not?

What’s the point? Does imagining that there’s some horrible place waiting for bad people make life better? More comforting? I think people spend too much time imagining what’s waiting for us after we’re gone and they lose sight of what’s going on right here, right now. If you want to believe in heaven and hell (sorry, not going to capitalize, Mike) and it makes you a better person to those around you, then go for it. I’m not wired that way, though. When I think of hell, I always think of a description that one of the priests gave to my Sunday school class when I was in fifth or sixth grade. He told us to imagine a giant pile of sand as tall as the Sears Tower (a good point of reference for us since we were in Chicago). Then he told us to imagine that every thousand years, a bird would fly to the top of this pile, pick up one grain of sand, and fly away. When the entire pile is gone, he said, you will have spent a single day in hell. It scared me at the time, but it wasn’t until later that I realized fear was the whole point. And I say to hell with that.

Arnold from Grand Junction, Colorado, writes,

          I’m a college student, and I got a call from my

          parents about our neighbor, Tim. He has some kind of

          cancer. He was a really cool guy. When I was a kid, he

          used to take me fishing with him all the time, and

          when I was applying to colleges, he helped me with my

          essays (he’s a teacher). My parents said that I should

          give him a call, but I don’t know what to say. I’m

          getting ready to head back home for the holidays, and

          I feel really weird about seeing him, and I’m afraid

          I’m going to say something stupid. Do you have any

          advice?

Arnold, I certainly can’t speak for everyone with cancer, but I don’t mind talking about it. In fact, talking about it openly makes me feel a little better. I’ve had people that I don’t really know that well reach out to me, and those acts—little and big—have moved me beyond words. What’s bad is when I get the feeling that my illness makes someone uncomfortable, particularly if that person is someone I feel close to. It sounds like you have a really good relationship with Tim—who, by the way, still IS “a really cool guy”—and I can guarantee that he’ll appreciate anything you have to offer him. By the way, where our friends are concerned, “not knowing what to say” does not relieve us of the obligation to try.

John from Portland, Oregon, writes,

          Are these letters even real? Am I real?

You would know, John.

Okay, so that wraps up this edition of “Rocco’s Mailbag.” If I didn’t get to your letter, I sincerely apologize, but please know that I read every single one of them and will eventually provide every sender with a personal reply and a signed photo of my completely hairless body.

Scenes from Week One

Well, I made it through my first week of chemo and now have two weeks off to recover before I go back. As the days have passed, I’ve been feeling more and more disjointed, so I thought that instead of imposing a false sense of order on everything, I’d try to mirror how scattered I’ve been feeling.

Some basis facts:

I receive my treatments in a large room that sits at the back of my oncologist’s office. From above, the room would look like a wide smile. The teeth, in this case, are cushiony recliners where patients sit as they’re infused.

There are many props in that room, but for some reason I fixate on one in particular.

    

     

Each day I’m greeted by the nurses and medical techs there—Sue, Heidi, Maria, and Beth—and invited to pick a seat.

“The 70s on 7”—this week’s preferred XM radio station. One of the nurses—Heidi—has so far known all the words to every song that’s come on. Really good voice, too.

“The Night Chicago Died” on Monday morning. When I was a little kid, my cousin and brother once used this song to make me cry; I can’t remember how, exactly, but apparently it didn’t take much.

Englebert Humperdinck’s “After the Lovin’” on Wednesday morning XM. My mom was a huge Humperdinck fan; I remember summers as a kid when she’d play album after album of this guy. According to my brother, my dad hated this song in particular because he misheard the title as “After the Love-In,” and thought it was about an orgy.

Sue, who’s been handling my chemo all this week, is a cancer survivor herself. Like me, she's Italian but doesn't speak the language.

The port is working out well. I didn’t get one last time, and getting stuck with IV needles over and over again in my hands and wrist really took a toll, physically and emotionally. I wasn’t sure what to expect with the port, and just before Sue hooked me up for the first time on Monday, she asked, “Do you want some numbing spray?”

     I had no idea that this was even an option.

     “Um, YES.”

     “Some people don’t like the spray,” Sue said. “It’s a little cold.”

     A little cold? In my mind, the choice between “a little cold” and a needle is not much choice at all.

     And it wasn’t. The spray was kind of refreshing, and I didn’t feel the needle go in at all.

The nurses have a weekly football pool that I horned my way in on. When I turned in my picks and five bucks on Wednesday, I asked if I could get a handicap since I had cancer. Heidi’s immediate reply: “Nope.”

My infusions last about four hours. I try to keep myself busy. Writing, reading, sketching. I do this last one quickly because it has the potential to unnerve others. Also, it's a convenient excuse for my sloppy drawings. 

The side effects don’t waste much time.

Tuesday morning, and I’m wide awake at 2:15 a.m. I’m not anxious, or feeling ill; I’m just awake. I get up and write for about an hour. Then I go back to bed.

The next night, the same thing. This time I read. Maria Semple's Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

On Wednesday, a definite drop in appetite. This feeling is manifest in what I see and feel as a little ball of “queasy” lodged just under my sternum. When I imagine eating—or making one of the juices that I’d planned to make each day—the ball throbs a little and my jaw gets tight. Eating anything becomes just about the last thing I want to do.

I perk up a little on Thursday with the anti-nausea meds, but when the weekend rolls around, I’m just not hungry. Perversely, I can’t stop thinking about eating, which makes that little ball of queasy jump around.

I feel like I’m walking more slowly, more carefully. As if waiting for something to happen. I don’t like this.

This line, from a story by Tobias Wolff: “That room—once you enter it, you never really leave.”

That may be true, and it’s maybe also true that when you’re in that room, it’s easy to feel alone. But that’s not always the case.

On Friday, as Sue inserted the needle into my port, Beth rested her hand against the side of my face, and I thought of this.

Different friends from work have sat with me for a little while each day.

Students have sent me messages. Hope you’re feeling well and  I’m enjoying your blog and Is it okay if I turn the homework in a day late?

Calls, emails, texts from friends. Each morning of chemo, a text from an elementary school friend who—before this last summer—I haven’t spoken to since high school.

Cards in the mail when I get home.

A long, cardboard box. Inside, a giant stuffed T-Rex from my crazy cousin (the same one who helped my brother make me cry). She knows how much I love monsters.

Who else is in that room? The world of the unwell has many citizens:

Melinda (not her real name) is a mother of three who has ovarian cancer. She’s younger than I am and sits quietly through her infusions, which take up even more of the mornings than mine do.

Jack (not his real name) is an older guy and veteran who has multiple growths around his esophagus and in his liver. He told me that he’s been “fighting an uphill battle” since April.

Sam (you get the point about the names, right?) is another older guy who speaks barely above a whisper. Not sure what’s wrong with him, but he’s in for about an hour each morning and reads on his iPad.

In that room, age and wisdom don’t always correspond the way you'd think.

I overhead a young woman patient of about thirty (who has clearly been doing this for a while) comforting her seat-neighbor, a woman of about seventy (who was clearly just getting started).

When Sue was getting me hooked up one morning, I said that ten years ago I was the youngest person in the room. Not so much this time around. She told me there were quite a few young regulars, including a nineteen-year-old who, according to her, “probably won’t see twenty-five.”

Tomorrow I’m back to teaching. I’m a little nervous about my energy level, but I know that being back among my friends and students is infinitely better than sitting around at home and thinking about being sick, about being back in that room.

The iTunes Syndrome

So I decided to take a self-shot every day for the duration of my chemotherapy and recovery (by which I mean the time it takes for the most visible side effects—puffiness from the steroids, baldness from the drugs, etc.—to fade away). My plan is to then turn them into one of those high-speed animations that love to go viral.

Anyway, I took my first selfie on Monday, and I couldn’t figure out how to move it from my phone’s camera roll into the album I created. It’s probably easy to do, but I was getting a little pressed for time; I had to be at my first chemo session in half an hour. One solution that I turned up on Google was to move it by using iTunes.

I read this, sighed, reluctantly opened up iTunes on my laptop, and was not at all surprised by what I saw next.

“A new version of iTunes is available. Would you like to download it now?”

Well, shit. There went the next twenty minutes.

“Now, Rocco,” one might have said (if one had been in my house and creepily peering over my shoulder), “Just decline and do it later.” Yes, that would be the way to go, assuming that the person sitting at the computer is not obsessive-compulsive about these kinds of things. Which he (I) is (am).

This particular situation—what I’ve come to call the “iTunes Syndrome”—is something with which I’m well-acquainted. Sometimes I just want to hear a specific song that’s been in my head; sometimes I just want to sync something up on my phone; and sometimes I just want to check out one of my playlists. But instead of the quick trip to iTunes I envisioned, I’m suddenly involved in watching a progress bar fill at near-glacial pace.

The “syndrome” is essentially this: my day grinds to a halt because of the well-intentioned programmers at iTunes. And by “well-intentioned programmers,” what I mean is “soulless asshats.”

And to make matters worse, after each and every one of these installs, I have yet to see any discernable difference for the better in how iTunes runs.

So where am I going with all of this?

Naturally, to cancer.

Here’s a fun fact: we all have cancer cells in our bodies. If we’re lucky, our cancer cells are lazy stoners who lie on the couch all day with a big bowl of Cheetos on their laps. If we’re unlucky, our cancer cells are industrious iTunes programmers who work nonstop (until the chemo or radiation hits) to create disruptive changes that no one but them sees any value in.

I don’t know; maybe I’m overthinking all of this. I do have cancer on the brain. Which is better than cancer of the brain—and I hesitate to even write those words lest my little iTunes programmers get going on yet another project.