Member-only story
To the Ones Who Have My Butt
Taking care of yourself is a kindness to others
It’s Halloween and I’m on the F train, dressed as Ziggy Stardust. A woman plants her phone inches from my face, the flash firing before I can protest. Her pupils are dilated and she’s dripping with mismatched tote bags, like an adjunct without an office. She speaks as if we’re mid-conversation:
“It took them five months, but they found it. The cancer. Sloan Kettering kept telling me it wasn’t there, but I insisted it was. Look at all the people here. I’m the most beautiful one. Can you believe I’m the one who gets cancer?”
The woman is a manifestation of my deepest fear, the nagging voice that tells me no one escapes cancer these days, especially those who are genetically predisposed.
She rifles through the contents of her bags, locates a miniature safety pin with a Susan G. Komen ribbon, and stabs it into her jacket. I stand to leave and she grabs my arm, suddenly insistent:
“Do you understand what I’m saying? You need to check yourself. No one else will find it.”
The woman is a manifestation of my deepest fear, the nagging voice that tells me no one escapes cancer these days…
