A Big John World

My fourth and last round of chemotherapy ended on Friday (the 17^th), and the numbers are excellent: my tumor markers are at zero and have been for several weeks. As far as cancer goes, I’m lucky to have been stricken with one that has a pretty effective treatment. As a good friend messaged me, “Better living through chemistry.”

Well, almost.

Now I’m caught between two states—No Longer Sick and Not Yet Normal. Ten years ago when I went through this, I had a total of three rounds. This time I had four rounds, and let me tell you, there’s a universe of difference between Round Three and Round Four.

For one thing, I never felt a full bounce-back after Round Three before I had to go back in again. The side effects were fewer, but the ones—or, rather, the one—that was there was pretty intense. Nausea.

From nearly the get-go of Round Four, I was getting sick. As the week progressed, it intensified to the point where, for the three days following my last treatment, I couldn’t keep anything down. No solids, no liquids. I was down to bile, and that was running out fast. Every thirty minutes or so would find me heaving over a toilet and looking like I needed an exorcist.

All of which is to say that Round Four put me on the business end of a serious ass-kicking.

It’s not that I wasn’t getting anti-nausea meds; the problem was that I couldn’t keep them down.

I finally realized that I wasn’t going to pull out of this on my own; my body was becoming dehydrated, and I couldn’t do anything about it. Shannon drove me to the chemo center, where the nurses took one look at me standing there all pale and woozy, told me to sit down, and began pumping fluid into me.

They threw in some anti-nauseants while they were at it, and they changed up my prescription a bit. That was Tuesday, and I’m happy to report that I’ve most definitely turned a corner. The idea that I was somehow going to make it in to teach this week is laughable to me now.

In the wake of this somewhat rough landing, I decided to go to a support group. I went to one ten years ago and found it very peaceful and affirming. A few weeks ago, I picked up a flier for one being run out of my oncologist’s office on Wednesday nights, but I’d forgotten about it.

I’m glad I went. There’s a poem by Tom Wayman that I like to teach in creative writing called “Did I Miss Anything,” and it’s a teacher’s snarky response to that inevitable question that an absent student will unthinkingly ask upon his or her return. The final lines go like this:

“[Did I miss anything?]

Everything. Contained in this classroom

is a microcosm of human experience

assembled for you to query and examine and ponder

This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered

but it was one place

And you weren’t here”

I remembered this ending during the support group meeting. I could have blown the meeting off, telling myself, Well, I’m through this now, time to get on with my life, and by the way, what’s on TV? But then I would have missed out on meeting Sam (again, no real names here), a guy who’s survived esophageal cancer, and Gladys (a lymphoma survivor and widow who was diagnosed just weeks before her husband died of stomach cancer) and Fred, an octogenarian who’s still waiting for a clear diagnosis of his condition.

And I would have missed out on the meeting the incredible Valdez family, whose patriarch, Rudy, is now facing colon cancer. He’s had his surgery, and now he’s steeling himself for a stretch of radiation and chemotherapy. He didn’t come to the meeting alone; instead, Rudy was flanked by no fewer than a dozen family members—sisters, brothers, nephews, sons, and even his ex-wife—all of them there to support him and ask questions of what to expect. It was an emotional hour and a half, but all of the family members looked visibly relieved—or at least less shell-shocked—than at the meeting’s start.

I don’t envy the journey they’re about to embark on together—for obvious reasons—but I also don’t envy the obvious love and support that Rudy will be surrounded by on this journey. I don’t envy any of that because a person can’t envy what he has.

I can’t even begin to catalog the acts of love, kindness, and support that I’ve been the grateful recipient of these last several weeks. So rather than try, I’m instead going to tell a story that, for me, can better capture what I’m trying to say.

The story comes from my cross-country bike trip back in 2010—a part of my past that seems like a long, long time ago. One leg of the trip took me through Metropolis, Illinois, a small town on the Ohio River. On its outskirts, I passed through a tree-lined section of Highway 45 with a huge factory to the right and a lot of activity going on in front—people, cars, canopy tents, lawn chairs, a big American flag or two, and a large gray shape on the left that looked like one of those gorillas that car dealers use to advertise “King Kong-sized Savings!”

But what I thought was some kind of party or picnic turned out to be something else. As I rolled closer, I saw people holding signs that read “LOCKED OUT,” “HONEYWELL,” “CORPORATE GREED,” and “USW Local 7-699.”

I immediately slowed down.

The members of United Steel Workers Local 7-699 were happy to have someone to talk to. They were all employed at the Honeywell plant—the gigantic, chain-link-enclosed compound behind them—which happened to be the only uranium-conversion facility in the U.S. I didn’t understand the physical or chemical principles involved, but I understood enough to know that it was hazardous work and that the people who do it should have some health protections, which is the very issue that stalled labor talks between the workers and Honeywell and led to the lock out.

  The shape that I thought was a gorilla was actually a giant inflatable rat. It had a sign around its neck that read “SHAW,” a company that was providing scab workers to Honeywell. While business more or less continued at the plant, these workers—and their spouses, sons, and daughters, who were also out there holding signs—had to make do on savings and whatever support the USW or local residents could provide. Mainly food, one of the workers told me.

  Lockouts and strikes are awful things—weapons of last resort that test each side’s will and resolve, and the longer they go the more reluctant the warring sides are to blink. As I looked at this group of people, I knew that they represented just a fraction of the total workers; if a union is going to pull off what might turn into a long-term protest, you need to work in shifts. I could see in their plain t-shirts and torn jeans and scuffed boots that they were going to be harder hit than the Honeywell executives. No one on the other side would go without meals or water or electricity during this struggle, but I could see a future of letters from banks and first- and second-notifications from utility companies in the mailboxes of these workers. I could see boxes packed with loaves of white bread, macaroni and cheese, and cans of soup being dropped off door-to-door or handed out at some parking lot. I could also see that they were in it together.

  One of the kids asked about my bike, and when I said that I rode from California, I was bombarded with questions while a couple of people took pictures of me with their phones.

  “Where to from here?” one man asked.

  “Paducah.”

  One woman in the back looked at me with wide eyes. “You’re not taking 45 over the river are you?”

  I was pretty sure I was, and I told her so.

  A couple of them exchanged looks while she shook her head.

  “You need to flag down a truck and have them drive you across,” she told me. “It’s dangerous.”

  “Someone got hurt real bad out there just last month,” another guys added.

  I told them that I’ve been through some pretty rough terrain already, and even though a few nodded and laughed and one guy even said, “I’ll bet you have,” the woman in the back looked unconvinced.

  “You get a truck to stop for you, hon,” she said again before I pedaled away.

When I finally made it to the bridge, I knew why she was so worried. It looked long, narrow, and had no discernible lines painted on it. There was also a sign warning motorcyclists to keep off. There weren’t any trucks to flag down for a ride; by the time I hit the bridge it was late on a Sunday afternoon, and the few people who needed to cross the Ohio River were probably doing so by way of nearby Interstate 24.  Even though it was drizzling and had been ever since I left the Honeywell workers about an hour and a half earlier, I took a minute to appreciate what I was about to cross.

The structure known informally as the “Brookport Bridge” and more formally as the “Irwin Cobb Bridge” stretched out high above the Ohio River for over a mile before it hit Kentucky soil. Aesthetically, its ten-truss, no-frills, blue steel construction looked strong and solid, just like the people I met from this area. I took a deep breath, started across, and immediately understood the posted warning. If the sign-makers thought for a second that someone would be crazy enough to cross this bridge on a bicycle, they would have extended the warning to them as well. But what biker in his right mind would attempt to ride over a bridge whose floor is made of steel grates large enough to reach an arm through and touch the girders beneath? The sound my tires made on the surface was just awful, and at any moment I expected to get thrown from my bike as my tires shredded and my front wheel locked between the fierce metal squares.

  As much as I wanted to just cross and be done with it, and even though I could feel the drizzle gathering up into a bona fide rain, I stopped halfway across. It was soupy and humid out, and there was little activity on the water except for a couple of long barges that crept across the brown surface. The bridge was empty, so I dismounted my bike and leaned against the side. I could just make out the edge of Metropolis, jutting into my line of sight downriver.

  After I left the workers and biked into town, I was thinking more about what they were going through than the reason that brought me to Metropolis in the first place—Superman.

  The town made sure that I wouldn’t forget for long. About a half mile past the Honeywell plant, I was greeted by a big fence that read “Welcome to Metropolis” below a picture of the Man of Steel in flight. As I rode further, several signs directed me to the Super Museum, and I wheeled my bike inside.

  The museum was at the back of the building; to get to it, I had to first pass through the gift shop. I promised myself that I’d sift through all of the shirts, books, stickers, magnets, cups, postcards, pencils, and anything else they could slap a giant “S” on after I’d checked out the museum.

  I paid my five bucks and went in.

  It was a funhouse of relics and kitsch. Costumes from the movies, action figures, dolls, board games, puzzles, card sets, buttons, and even lamps. There were plastic 7-11 cups from the 1970s adorned with superheroes. My brother and I used to beg my mom for Slurpees during hot Chicago summers when we were kids, and we fought bitterly over the best cups. I would always lose. While he’d get Mr. Mxyzptlk, Braniac, and Clark Kent tearing off his Daily Planet garb to reveal the Superman costume beneath, I’d be stuck with Ma and Pa Kent and Jimmy Olsen.

  There was also a framed photo from the first Christopher Reeve movie, where he saves a train that’s heading for a gap in a bridge. One of the rails is bent down and the other is gone completely. In the photo, the Man of Steel holds one of the rails with his arm and lets his back serve as the other so that the train will pass safely.

  Outside the museum was the town square, and smack in the middle of that was a big statue of Supes. I had a stranger take some pictures of me standing beneath him, striking a similar pose.

  And what is that pose?

  He stands alone, hands on hips, barely the hint of a smile on his face. A generous onlooker might describe him as searching the distance for some wrong to right, but what I saw was someone posing impatiently for a photograph. His expression isn’t the least bit friendly; it’s more like resignation. Or disdain. Something along the lines of, Here I stand above and there you are below. He might have even been counting the minutes until he could soar back to his Fortress of Solitude to sit quietly and stare at Kandor, the shrunken capital city of Krypton that now resides in a bottle, the last remnant of the home he’s lost.

  I wondered what the United Steel Workers of Honeywell—those very real men and women of steel—think of this statue or of the image of Superman’s body, stretched in mythic flight on the “Welcome to Metropolis” sign. Superman isn’t going to make the Honeywell executives do the right thing. He’s not big enough to combat greed.

  Hell, he’s not even the biggest guy in Metropolis; that honor goes to Big John, who stands at least ten feet taller at the other end of town, towering over the parking lot of Big John Foods. John lacks Superman’s classic good looks; yes, the square jaw is there, but his eyebrows are way too thick and his nose bulges across its bridge as if it’s been broken a few times. When I saw him as I left town, I took one look at his mug and those thick arms filled with grocery bags, and I thought he was probably a punchy ex-boxer working the only job he could get—bag boy at the local food store.

  But John’s a member of the community; he’s integrated into the ordinary and necessary ritual of shopping for food. Superman, on the other hand, is exotic, a destination for tourists and curiosity seekers like me. While Superman parks his hands all mythic-like on his hips, John’s using his to deliver food somewhere—to his family, to a customer, to a neighbor in need. Really, if you’re a locked-out worker who’s wondering where the next meal is coming, who would you rather see at your door—Superman with his x-ray vision or Big John with ground beef, bread, apples, and milk?

  The rain started to pick up, but I didn’t move. Because of the bridge, I could head into Kentucky whenever I was ready. But before there were bridges, crossing rivers was a dicey operation. Native Americans and then pioneer explorers would have had to cross the Ohio by canoe. As I looked at the current below, I knew that I wouldn’t want to have been them. Later there were ferryboats, and before the steam engine, those ferries were towed by rowboats. It was a group effort, and even with several hands helping out, people died. Building this bridge was a group effort, too, from the people who designed it to the miners who dug the ore to the millworkers who forged the parts to the workers who riveted and welded it into existence. Anonymous faces working together so that I could cross this river in a few minutes.

  When I was younger, I saw myself as indestructible; when I was building a family and profession, I saw myself powering through any and all challenges; when I had cancer the first time, I felt vulnerable and lost; and when I left on my bike trip, I felt the need to feel strong, to be found.

  We like to romanticize our journeys as solo adventures—I know that I sure did—but the fact is, they’re not. Not even close. Biking across the country reminded me of the connections that give my life texture: the memories that filled my head as I pedaled, the people I met along the way, the ache I felt when I called home, the blog updates that I sent out like a beacon to others, the rush I felt whenever someone left a comment on what I’ve written.

  Cancer—both times—has been more of the same. The phone calls and cards. The visits during chemo, friends sitting with me quietly, holding my hand, making me laugh. The surprise dinners. The never-ending offers to do something—anything—to lighten my burden. When I was still planning to teach this week, my friend called and told me that she was ready to take my classes for me. It wasn’t really a request; there was something in her voice that said, I’m doing this for you, and it broke me. Yes, she was going to do this for me and I would let her.

  Back on that bridge, I hopped on my bike and continued across the river. I was wet, my legs ached, and as soon as I heard that awful sound of bike tire on steel grate, I wondered if I was going to make it to the other side. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to fly? I thought. After all, what’s a river to Superman? If he didn’t feel like flying, he could still leap over the wide expanse without breaking a sweat. Or maybe alter the river’s course with otherworldly strength.

But nobody is more powerful than a locomotive or faster than a speeding bullet. We owe a huge, un-repayable debt to all of those anonymous others who build our bridges and drive our ferries and develop the drugs and treatments that can extend a life. We also need those others who aren’t so anonymous: the people in our lives who remind us where we’ve been, help us imagine the future, and stay with us for a little while along the way. We might think we’re Superman soaring across the sky in magnificent solitude, but it’s a Big John world out here, and none of us is going to make it very far on our own.

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.