Update
In case you don’t use Twitter for your trending news, I got the news on my mother: she’s all right for now.
Essentially, the way this particular disease works is that if her blood level of toxoplasms hits 20%, she’s hit what we call the “organ-damaging” phase of the disease, and things start to go downhill really quick. She’s at 10-15%, which is high…. But she was at 10% fourteen years ago, so it just may be that she’s at chronic risk for this sort of thing. This wouldn’t be unusual, in our family. My Uncle Tommy was HIV+ back in the day when HIV was a death sentence, and he lived for twenty years after that.
Now, chances are that she will get a fatal disease in her lifetime. That sucks. And the doctor indicated the presence of a gene that indicates that if and when this turns active, it will be virulent.
But in dealing with cancer, “Not today” is your triumph. She’s okay. And going to be okay for the next six months, at which point they’ll check her blood and see how things are going. I’m pretty sure it’ll be okay.
Now I’m going to collapse.
What's In The Box? What's In The Box?
I envision my mother’s cancer diagnosis as resting inside a blue envelope, even though it’s probably a printout on a desk. Or an email. Regardless, someone knows whether she’s going to die of bone cancer, and we do not. At least not for another ninety minutes.
This isn’t Schrodinger’s cat. There is no theory, here; somewhere, there is a clear answer as to my mother’s future, locked and ready. Nothing we do can affect the outcome. I spent all of last night looking at her skin, watching her as we drank and talked, wondering if underneath that muscle were bones that were festering with tumors or just a healthy set of calcium and marrow.
The answer is somewhere. We’ll know soon.
The uncertainty is grinding us down.
I was always fascinated by the Oscar process, and always looked forward to the annual behind-the-scenes showcase where a small, private company tallies the votes. Two men bring a locked suitcase to the Oscars and stand off-stage, handing out envelopes; only they know the contents. Out in the audience, the nominees try to stay calm for the cameras, soaking expensive gowns in sweat… but their fate is known. Two men have seen the future, a future that will be revealed shortly by a handsome man in a tuxedo, ripping open a blue envelope that was sealed three days ago.
There is no uncertainty here. There is merely a secret that will change someone’s lives, words kept in darkness until the time is right.
In eighty minutes, my mother and I will be seated in a doctor’s office, and at some point after that they will bring us news. I suspect they’ve read the results by now; if I were a doctor, I know I’d want to be emotionally prepared in case I had to drop some bad news in someone’s lap. The doctor may be a little nervous, too, or a little happy; already, the shockwaves from this news or lack-of-news are starting to rumble across our lives, affecting loved ones and strangers alike.
But the news is there. Waiting. Lurking. Freedom or death.
Seventy-five minutes to go.
The Annoyingness Of Me
In our personal mythology, I’m famous for almost having destroyed my marriage with unnecessary freakouts. I used to panic all the time over silly things, needing reassurance and proof of love over the dippiest of interactions. I look back at those days, and I’m actively embarrassed at myself.
I’m still pretty childish, sad to say. Gini deals with it well because she’s known me long enough to handle me, but other partners have looked at the fully-unpacked neuroses of The Ferrett and said, “Nope. I’ll be over here, with a better guy.” Which I can only agree seems like a reasonable conclusion.
Except.
Except when there’s real shit going down, I’ll manage.
It’s noteworthy that our marriage was saved when Gini shattered her shoulder and was in serious medical trouble, needing roofing screws to hold her left arm together… and I shut the fuck up. I became the caretaker, holding off all of my usual bullshit worries until the real trouble was over. In that moment, Gini saw a different side of me, and fell in love with the competent man I can sometimes be.
I’m in a situation where I may have to be that strong again. For a couple of years, maybe. And I guess it’s good to know that when the shit hits the fan, I’ll do what needs to be done – it’s better than the alternative, certainly – but it’s a constant nag on my thoughts: “Why can’t you be that way all the time? Why does your best side only emerge during crisis mode?”
We’ll know tomorrow what the diagnosis is, and I hope all is well. I really do. And if that portion of me is needed, I’ll be as strong as I have to be to see a loved one through the end of their lives. And I know I can do that. I just wish that all of my silly freakouts weren’t indulged so extravagantly during the non-critical times, so that I could be a little less annoying to the ones I love in times of peace.
The Call That Never Came
My friend Cislyn gave me a first-time challenge: “Ferrett, will you write a guest entry for me for LJ Idol?” According to the rules, she’s allowed one “Champion” to come in and write an entry conforming to a theme she hasn’t done. And since I like Cislyn, and I’ve never participated in LJ Idol, I looked at her list of prompts and chose “The call that never came.”
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You have to realize: she’s the only woman who knowingly broke my heart.
You could say it was only fair, because I broke her heart first. I met Abigail when I was nineteen, and the world was so full of shallow and immature women, and Abigail was crazy-deep. She read up on serial killers. She wrote poetry by hand, which she kept in a velvet-bound book. She rented art films from the Sono playhouse and played them late at night, having marathons of foreign film and obscure directors, and occasionally she even took the stage at her school plays.
I was so shallow, back then. I’d read one book by Herman Hesse, but by God I could go on for hours about how it had transformed me. I’d just started listening to Frank Zappa, but before I put the tape on, I’d tell people to hush – this was going to change their life. And when they heard the music, I’d watch their faces intently in the hopes that it would go from mundane listening to goggle-eyed amazement, then a fawning gratitude as they realized the window I had just opened for them.
That never happened, but I kept acting like putting on the cassette tape was escorting someone into the Pope’s private chambers.
I stank of vinegar and water, immune to the stench of my own douchiness. And I think I sensed a fellow bullshitter in Abigail, who I don’t think had watched nearly as many foreign films as she claimed, and she probably read up on serial killers only because she knew other people found it quirky and bizarre.
But together, we genuinely opened up each other’s worlds. Maybe I’d only read one of Hesse’s books, but that was more than she’d read – and encouraged, she read both Siddartha and Steppenwolf. So started an arms race, as I couldn’t admit to not having read Siddartha, so I crammed it in one night and then read the Glass Bead Game just to ensure I stayed ahead. And together we played the “Oh, you haven’t seen that?” game, where we’d pretend astonishment that we hadn’t seen this obscure foreign film that nobody in their right minds would watch.
So, one experience at a time, we stepped away from being posers and became actually educated people.
But I was also dating another girl, her best friend, and after a while I felt I had to choose. (I may not have had to; this was long before I heard of the idea of polyamory, and even though both were aware it felt like cheating.) And I was too addicted to playing the white knight back then – because when I had to choose between the girl whose company I really enjoyed, and the girl who’d never dated before and needed me, I flung myself on Excalibur. I didn’t ask “Which one would make me happier?” but rather “Which one needed me more?” – and I chose the neurotic one whose feelings would be most hurt by my abandonment.
Worse, I told Abigail that. “It’s not you,” I said. “It’s that it would break Alena’s heart for me to leave. You’re stronger, you can get past that.”
Yeah, I was a fool.
So Abigail left, stung, and I dated Alena for another six months until it eventually fell apart in a tangle of mixed neuroses. When it was done, the summer was nearly over, but I still missed Abigail. And I missed our late-night cuddle sessions of watching Philip Glass films and cheap horror flicks, and I called…
…and she was available.
We dated for two weeks, in a flurry of intensity – seeing each other every night, knowing she’d go off to college soon, relishing every minute together because we loved each other and had re-found each other. We drank coffee and discussed philosophers. We exchanged poetry. I fell stupidly in love. I wondered why I’d ever dated Alena. I told her I’d always be there for her. I wondered how I could live without her when she went to college, but she promised she’d call every day and we’d be together for sure.
Then she left for college, and I didn’t hear from her for a week.
Oh, I called. But she didn’t answer. I called her parents to make sure I had the right number, and they answered with a strange exhaustion that yes, you had the right number. So why wasn’t she getting back to me?
My friends told me this was common. First week of college is hectic. Some people get caught up. She’ll probably get back to you. But I curled into a ball, knowing something was wrong, a looming shadow I couldn’t quite make out.
Finally, I got a letter in the mail that I can’t tell you exactly what it said because I tore it up, but it was something like this:
“Ferrett:
“You should know that I’ve spent the last two weeks despising you. You broke my heart when you chose Alena. So I figured I would make you fall in love with me, and now you can know what it’s like to have your heart broken. Nothing I’ve said to you is true, and I’ve already found another boyfriend here at Kent State. So suffer.”
I got very drunk. Very, very drunk. And spent the next two weeks feeling like she’d kicked a hole in my heart. And spent a month where none of my friends dared to say her name in my presences, because I’d go off on a long black rant about that decieving whore, and eventually it sorta healed. But I was always furious at her for leading me on; it was hard enough for me to be happy. Hard enough to trust. She’d just hurt that considerably.
And, eventually, I recovered.
Three years passed. Then the phone rang at two in the morning.
“Ferrett?”
“…Abigail?”
“I wasn’t sure if this was still your number,” she said, icy calm, still holding herself at a distance. The distance she’d secretly had all along.
“So… Why are you calling?”
“Remember when you said you’d always be there for me?”
“…yes….”
“I think I’m about to kill myself. And you’re the last person I know who might talk me out of it.”
Well, that was a conversation starter.
I don’t remember what had driven her to suicidal thoughts so desperate that she’d call me, of all people, but I do remember there’d been some traditionally college-silly set of fights that had alienated many of her friends, and her parents were being dicks, and probably, I don’t know, her grades were shit too, why not? All I remember was in that moment, I had a choice.
I could return hurt with hurt. I didn’t think she was all that serious. I’m pretty sure if I’d hung up the phone, she would have had a very bad night and maybe gotten blind drunk, and perhaps done something stupid, but she’d almost certainly have lived.
But I didn’t want to leave her alone.
So we talked for three hours, me doing my best to counsel her, asking all sorts of questions and explaining how she could dig her way out of this, and telling my signature bad jokes, and doing everything I could to make her feel human.
“You feel better?” I eventually asked.
“Yeah,” she said. She didn’t feel great, but it was enough that she could get up the next morning and feel like there was some hope. “You know we’re not friends.”
“I know,” I said. “Call if you need to.”
“I love you,” she said.
“Love you too,” I said. And those were the last words we ever spoke.
I don’t know where she is these days. I’ve forgotten her last name, so I couldn’t Facebook her, and even if that was the case I don’t think it would actually work. Maybe we’d be friends nowadays, maybe we wouldn’t, but I’ve got no way of staying in touch. And if she was in trouble, that old phone number is long disconnected, and I go by a different first name, and how the hell would she find me?
Sometimes, though, I hope she’s okay. And I wonder if my phone will ever ring again at two in the morning, with her twenty years on, needing me.
If she does, I’ll be there. I could say that for a lot of people who no longer talk to me; I’ve made some odd promises in my time.
But especially her. Always her.
(This story is 85% true.)
How Do You Make Stupid People Actually Safe?
In the wake of the Batman shootings, the AMC theater chain passed a ban: no patrons would be allowed to attend in costumes that obscured their face. In addition, no fake weapons would be allowed into the theater.
A moment’s thought would make you realize how foolish this is.
For one thing, “covering his face” wasn’t the problem: afterwards, he went and waited for the cops to come and get him. If guns don’t kill people, face paint certainly doesn’t. There’s the slight danger of maybe it’d take the cops longer to find the shooter if he’d worn a mask, but chances are that they’d have tracked him down anyway. And any good bank robber knows that if concealing your identity is a concern, you can just stuff a ski mask into your pocket and put it on before opening fire.
Then there’s the weapons ban, which is completely useless. The actual shooter, so it’s said, entered through a propped-open exit door. Even before the ban, the shooter realized that hauling in an armory on his back would have raised questions, so he sidestepped the existing personnel. Post-ban, it means nothing, as I highly doubt the rent-a-cop security guards at the theater would be a serious deterrent to a murderous terrorist.
So why have these bans at all? They won’t stop any prospective shooters, and they punish enthusiastic fans who like cosplay.
The answer is easy enough: because those things would make customers nervous. But those people are stupid. Yes, these bans will make them feel better, but in reality they’re not one iota safer due to the stoppages. I mean, if AMC had said, “We’re having all of our theaters hire emergency security to police our doorways,” then that would be an effective security procedure… But they didn’t do that.
They encouraged the ostrich route: Can’t see any people in masks? Then you’re safe! And yes, that makes people more likely to pony up at the box office, but it’s security theater: if a maniac wants to kill them, that maniac will not be significantly deterred.
So how do you fix that? In a sense, it’s not the theater’s problem, because you know, hey, this is what the people want. But what do you do when what the people want is stupid and shallow and not a real solution at all? How do you train people that no, this thing that terrifies you isn’t what will harm you, and this thing that you could give two shits about would actually keep you safe, if you dared to actually do it?
Because I guarantee you, AMC did the “smart” thing. They could have hired a ton of extra security, for a negligible risk of copycat killers, and still had people freak out over the guy in the Joker costume. The extra security would be mostly non-visible, and the guy in the costume would have caused some people to ask for their money back. So that’s the smart money, doing the thing that does nothing at all.
Yet in the end, feeding those stupid instincts gets us hollow exercises like the TSA – look at how incompetent they are! – where we figure, “Hey, we’re inconvenienced sufficiently, this must be good stuff!” Meanwhile, we’re always one threat behind, searching shoes and making travel so hellish that people don’t want to do it unless they have to.
So how, if ever, can you educate people as to what a real threat? Can you? Or are we forever going to be stopping Batman and letting the Joker slip in through the back door?