A Chest To Die For.

Monday, Nov. 08, 2010-3:48 pm
I.

The skin is the largest organ in the body. It protects us. Holds us together. A source of pleasure, when it is touched, it can change our emotional state. The skin can be soft and vulnerable. Highly sensitive. Easy to break.

Skin is a powerful erogenous zone I love the sensations and the feel of his skin with all that muscle and sinew beneath , pressed against my body. There�s not a person in the world who's skin created such a reaction .

Once in a while you feel at home with someone from the first time you met them, and realize that there is something between you that no other relationship could possibly touch, beautiful - in small, private ways.
One person is the object of another's desire and is contained soley in a single skin, one packet of flesh and the being inside it.

He always smelled good; not like cologne, but like fresh air and cotton. He was handsome . He reminded me of J.F.K. With beautiful hair -" Kennedy hair" , as I always teased him. It called out to fingers for a run -through.

....And, he had "a chest to die for".

II

 It was another weekend night at my house . There is a reason why we always prefer to stay in.

I cut the skin on my finger with a knife making salad . It was nothing really, bu Jay went into the bathroom and got me a bandaid , opened it , stood behind me and wrapped his arms around me, and put the bandaid around my finger for me. It was a minor cut to the skin, but what he did felt enormously comforting. I could never describe its gestural eloquence.

Later that night I touched the skin on his neck and his chest where his shirt was open and pulled away a little. I always unbuttoned his white shirt like I was a child unwrapping a Christmas present, and I laughed as I always did, about how I was still enthralled every single time I did this. I slid my hands inside the shirt . I felt a small rough spot on his skin. I dismissed it for the moment. When I asked him about it later, he said he'd check it out , and thought it was an insignificant solar keratosis

People sometimes put things off , believing despite every scientific indication, that they are invincible and that anything in this lifetime is permanent. Every now and then , against our better judgment, we ignore something and it turns out it was a mistake. I reminded him a few times, and he eventually saw a dermatologist  who said the spot on his chest was in fact, only a solar keratosis.

That was a relief. Better safe than sorry, as they say. We live in a world of worse case scenarios especially when it comes to things like skin cancer. I was expecting the best , but secretly thinking that too many times , the best doesn't happen.

III

I went to a dinner party at my brother's house and someone there had a family member dying of metastatic stage 4 melanoma. It had started as a tiny innocuous looking spot on a healthy 45 year old man. Within a year, by the time he got his dermatologist appointment, it had spread into the lymph nodes. Treatments were too late. It was in the liver, spine and brain . It was terminal.

He had been a runner, and a vegetarian. Sometimes, despite all your best choices and all your best intentions... Fate takes over. Life as you knew it fades into the distance and you are saying a long goodby to the world and the people in it that you are about to leave behind.

It's all so clear to the dying. The beauty that will never be unveiled, the mysteries that will not be uncovered. People who think they are invincible so rarely stop to take a look, they just keep moving. They don't realize that there�s not enough time to waste, and that they will not live forever. They don't realize that fear slows us down and keep us from enjoying a journey that will be over too soon.

This victim will now surrender the parts of himself that are no longer necessary. His desires, hopes for the future, ambitions , practical exigencies , such as money, and finally his physical capacity, until every trace of his humanity was taken away from him.

IV

Whew ! It was nice to know that Jay's spot on his chest was only a keratosis.

What I did not know , what he could not or would not tell me, was that while he was at the dermatologist to check out the keretois , a melanoma was accidentally found on his leg. It was merely by chance. He did not tell me that he might be facing a frightening prognosis. He did not tell me that he had two different excisions to remove enough of the cancerous border. The strong implication was that it was just another keratosis. It didn't take Jonas Salk to realize that the raised area under bandage, the number of stitches, the palpable emanating heat and his discomfort, didn't make any medical sense . I questioned him , knowing he had to be hiding some of the details.

Then I heard the word. The M word, melanoma, followed by a few eternal seconds of silence. This burden of fear and adrenaline flooded over me , like an engine that couldn't be turned off. My mind was racing ahead. I had to make a conscious effort to keep steady..calm..positive.

V

Death is a promise made to each of us at birth. But before that promise is kept, we all hope some wonderful things will happen to us that are meaningful and memorable and give us an intangible immortality. Jay and I had met along the way, later in life, under unusual circumstances. Four years is a long time , but I some ways it seemed as if we were just getting started. I thought we had not yet had our best times together. How could it be possible that he was facing something unexpected and horrible? My thoughts ran to his hands, his blue eyes, is shoulders, the smell of his skin. I thought of how bread tasted better when he sat next to me at the table . I had to stand up, and I had to sit down again and I had to bring the phone up to my ear only to put it down again.

I looked out at the pond behind the house as the sun was setting. The dark water mirrored my soul. It was filled with eroded branches leaves and sediment It was a natural litter of broken life scattered and becoming part of the earth once again. Just like a funeral. I realized that had forgotten to breathe ..

There would a few days waiting for the lab work. I put on a good front, but waited with my heart longing, impatiently, for Tuesday. I can stand on the line between emotional life and death and wait for a strong symbolic wind to sway me one way or the other. Or I can stay strong .

VI

We look for comfort where we can find it. And we hope against all logic, against all experience, like children, we never give up hope. Hope lies in the space between what we can control and what we can't. Between the battles we can and can not fight.

Of course the toughest battles are the ones we don�t see coming. When we don�t have time to come up with a strategy to cope�.or to measure the potential loss. When that happens, it is when the battle chooses us.

We all think everything is supposed to be great and we feel robbed when our utopian expectations aren�t met. Those expectations sell us short. Sometimes the expected simply pales in comparison to the enormity of the unexpected. The unexpected is what alters our lives , for the good or bad.

In the face of everything, in the face of life, or death, the true dream come true is being able to have had a dream at all, even if it didn't last.

VII

There are medical miracles. Being worshippers of the altar of science, we don't tend to believe miracles exist. But they do. We can't explain them, we can't control them, but they do happen. They happen everyday,

Here is one : It was "in situ" , literally meaning "in place" in Latin, confined to the top epidermal cells, a stage 0 on a scale of 1-4. Pre-melanoma. It is a known medical fact that if it had gone undetected any longer , perhaps even just a few weeks, he would have needed more radical surgery, and there is every chance that it could have spread to the lymph nodes, and beyond.

In an instant, just like that, life returns to normal. I would see him next Friday night and we would be happy and light and frivolous and unburdened. I would make my usual joke and say " I saved you"..."If that makes me the hero, then so be it"... That�s as far into the future as I need to look. Normally I'm just fine with that. . But right now, hearing his voice and looking at his picture , feeling relief, having escaped disaster, I have all kinds of future plans...

.

go to the prior entry * +