Live Strong, Die Like A Pussy

For years I wore one of those yellow, LIVESTRONG cancer bracelets that you think went out of fashion in 2005. Not because I look good in yellow, and not because I want to draw attention to my freakishly small wrists. No, I wore it despite your snickers, Johnny Fashion Ass, because I've got a case of the cancer, and I was too afraid I'd die if I took it off. If you live your life at the mercy of symbolism, there are certain commitments you just don't want to break.

The details of how I received the bracelet are inconsequential. Well, I'm making them inconsequential. Because if I told the story about the girl who gave it to me, and how we used to be friends, except one night we all got really drunk at Townhouse Tavern, and they pulled some kid out of one of those terrible clubs next door on a stretcher, and my friend and I were laughing at the pathetic thought of the kid ODing on some horrible club drug at one of the most horrible dance clubs in the city, and the girl who gave me the bracelet started giving me shit, and I explained that we were just kidding, but she was drunk and she wouldn't let it go, because that's what she does- she gets drunk and doesn't let it go, and I just couldn't stand it anymore, so I shouted "Becky, shut up you fucking cunt!" in front of all of our friends, all of the onlookers watching shirtless club boy getting put in the stretcher, the paramedics, and half of the Dupont Circle neighborhood, and that pretty much ended our friendship- if I told that story, I'd look like a real asshole. So instead, let's just say I got it from a friend.

Because I'm a slave to both superstition and symbolism, I never wanted to take it off. Unfortunately, I'm also occasionally batshit crazy about germs, too, so there were times when I did actually have to take it off. The bright yellow would fade to a sort of fake butter color, the little engraved letters would fill in with some class of schmutz. If you play videogames (and of course you fucking do, you're reading this), I'm talking precisely about the kind of shit that gathers in the nooks and crannies of a controller. I would ignore it until I couldn't stand it anymore, and I would dunk it in bleach for a few hours. Problem solved. But other than that, I never took it off.

Only a couple of weeks ago, I was playing with it while I was talking on the phone at work, sort of stretching it out while it was still on my wrist, when the damn thing snapped. It didn't go easily- there was a loud crack and it flew across my office. It scared the life out of me, but I quickly realized I had much bigger problems at hand. The signs were clear, and the end was nigh. I IM'd Baby to break the bad news, and she had some ridiculous story about how it was actually a good sign, because that meant I'd survived long enough to outlive the bracelet, or some such nonsense. Whatever, I told her she'd be sorry when I actually did die. She said, "lol." Women.

But it's actually happening! First, I was afflicted with the Dreaded Handpox. Then just this weekend I received the Curse of 1,000 Unpleasantly Urgent Trips to the Bathroom. That one is particularly ironic, because I've recently cut all caffeine and almost all chocolate and saturated fat from my diet because I think it's been upsetting my stomach (that and, you know, 32 years of rampant anxiety and a daily handful of god knows what in the medicine that I hope is keeping my leukemia at bay). I had actually been feeling pretty good, like maybe I was onto something with this whole healthy food crazy fucking person thing, when this gastrointestinal disaster struck. We went out on Friday night, had a few beers, and spent Saturday laying around. I felt progressively worse all day Saturday, managed to fall asleep around midnight, and then woke up around 3am and immediately ejected every morsel of food I'd eaten in the last 48 hours, along with what looked like considerable portions of a lot of really important looking internal organs. I was in hell. I dropped at least five and probably ten pounds in the next two days. I became a human sieve. It wasn't awesome.

(Two additional things I learned that proved women make no sense: 1) For some reason, they don't like it when you call them into the bedroom to demonstrate how much weight you've lost, and how loose your clothes that used to be tight now fit with room to spare. 2) When the man is lying in bed, dying from some disgusting parasite thing, the woman is actually hoping she will catch whatever it is, so she can loose weight. Seriously.)

There you have it. Two horrible plagues unmistakeably brought about by the broken pact I made with LUCAMIA. At this point I'm just waiting for the bout of whatever that horrible staph infection thing (do you think I'm dumb enough to actually read those articles?) that's in the news today to finish me off.