Skaterboi and the Mutant

It was Day 180 of no-human-touch other than the technician who marked up my breasts with a green sharpie through a blue glove for daily radiation treatments. It was a global pandemic, and I was finally getting my immunity back. The last year of my life had been, at best, so treacherous that I figured it could only go up from there and, at worst, so on-brand given my history of spooky medical traumas, that I figured I was a walking curse without a worthwhile future.

I was sitting in my kitchen swiveling the dregs of coffee that I had made earlier in the day—an evening cup that helps me cope with chronic brain fog, headaches, and fatigue from long term anti-estrogen treatment. I was waiting for my date, a skinny introvert from Los Angeles who liked architecture and skateboarding. He knew I had breast cancer, a point my mom made sure to ask me on the phone.

“Is he okay with it?” she said.

“So far,” I answered.

He also knew how rare that was at my age. We had met on a dating app a few months prior and engaged in virtual Jane-Austen-style dates where we chatted about the weather, the fruit that was in season, and my suppressed immune system from chemotherapy. After talking to my mom, it had dawned on me: wow, this is where we’re at now, huh? My vetting criteria for men was no longer: is he ideologically liberal and culturally accepting and cute? It was: does he seem like the kind of guy who’s brave enough to get involved with someone who has unique physical and mental challenges for her age…someone they could lose to, I don’t know, death…?

He’s late…

The last time I had seen a guy other than a healthcare worker was right before the country fell into lockdown. I went to my ex-boyfriend’s apartment without any hair or eyebrows during one “good week” of my chemo regimen in the middle of reconstruction, because I needed someone who knew my old boobs to look at the sizing while I was getting “expanded.” It was the most absurd thing, standing in his bathroom with silicone patches over my scars, while he put on his reading glasses for technical assessment. This was the same guy who hadn’t replied to my text when I told him I got diagnosed with cancer. But, I had no one else to ask unless you count the creepy PhD candidate I had a one night stand with the night before my bilateral mastectomy.

“Well, they’re 25% smaller than your old ones,” he finally said, a fact I then felt compelled to share with everyone who encountered them. There’s nothing wrong with utilizing reconstruction as an opportunity to augment your natural breasts, but that just wasn’t the case with my anatomy, and the thought of people thinking as such still bothers me. It’s ruined my posture when walking down the street.

Hmm still not here…

“Isn’t it crazy that they were larger before,” I remember telling my radiation oncologist, lying topless under a big machine with my arm overhead, prepping to get the upper right quadrant of my body burnt alive while doing deep inspirational breath holds in an N95. Truthfully, I don’t know if you could call tissue expanders breasts; they’re really just two boulders, containing hard material, saline, and metal ports sitting atop the chest wall. It sounds painful, but compared to all the other chronic issues from breast cancer treatment, the dagger-like pain of expanders felt like a cakewalk. I’ll take neuropathy, impaired mobility, and sallow skin for $200, Alex.

In fact, my whole cancer treatment had made me feel like an X-Men mutant, specifically Rogue—unable to touch anyone—fearful of dying from Covid, while trying not to die from cancer. It’s not too far off given that I have a genetic variant of unknown significance.

I wonder if I should text him…

I had gotten it in my head that “Skaterboi” (let’s just call him that) was only interested in hanging out with me, because men operate under the ignorant misconception that mastectomies + reconstruction amounts to a boob job. I was scared of destroying his fantasy, like a blockbuster movie that catastrophically flops. Remember how excited everyone was to see Wild Wild West in the ‘90s? Those sunglasses, the kickass song, Will Smith at peak cuteness…life’s greatest disappointments can all be compared to the utter let-down of Wild Wild West. I didn’t want to be Wild Wild West! I wanted to be Independence Day!

Fuck this…

I felt so foolish sitting there in makeup, having attempted to curl my human-hair wig. I started getting a hot flash from being in medicinally-induced menopause at 30 years old. My face reddened to the color of my dress, (yes, I wore a fucking red dress) and I started sweating off my eyeliner. I hadn’t dressed up for Skaterboi; I knew he’d show up looking like one of those LA bros who “just can’t be bothered”—the ones who go on and on about burritos, options trading, and air fryers. I had dressed up for me. But, my underbelly of anxiety starting bubbling, fearing that this was a chore to him: “I guess I should finally go out with her. She’s ill and sad.”

Fuck that!

I threw out my coffee and poured myself a full glass of Merlot. I chugged it for dear life, even though that’s not the way you’re supposed to drink Merlot, until I heard a knock.

Oops.

I opened the door and there was Skaterboi, and I was…drunk? I wanted so badly to be mad at him, but as soon as he flipped his shaggy hair like a band boy, I got horny. That’s the thing about hormonal suppression…as hard as this cancer pill has tried to ruin my life (and it’s doing a fucking good job), my libido somehow always wins, still.

Well, he didn’t show up as someone who couldn’t be bothered. He was wearing a rainbow-colored face mask, light-wash jeans that were cuffed at his shins, and high black socks—the kind of outfit that healthy-me would’ve ridiculed but sick-me found rather cheerful. This is what they mean when they say cancer changes you; you become more open-minded when it comes to fashion.

“I kind of thought you weren’t going to show,” I said.

“What? That wouldn’t have been very cool,” he replied in his unhurried California voice.

“I’m a little drunk. I mean, not drunk, but not sober. I don’t drink much.”

“Well, that’s okay, because I’m driving. So…should we do this thing?”

We recapped our proceedings over the last few weeks – our negative Covid tests, complete quarantine, and the way we wiped down our grocery deliveries. And then, after confirming our steps like responsible adults, we removed our face masks. It was an unfamiliar feeling: looking at a man’s mouth and jaw.

We listened to Phoebe Bridgers in the car and other wounded indie girls that made me feel at home. I was so conditioned to maintaining social distance from everything but needles that sitting so close to someone made me nervous. We still hadn’t broached physical contact. He asked me how my treatment was going, and the nerves mixed with leftover drunkenness produced a rant about how I was meant to start working with a pelvic floor physical therapist who’d stick her fingers in my vagina on a weekly basis to help reverse the side effects of enduring hormone therapy for the next decade of my life. This made him laugh a little too wildly, which should’ve come off as being insensitive, but came off rather disarming instead. Treatment for breast cancer, at the end of the day, is nothing short of unearthly. May as well have a laugh about it.

Skaterboi had planned the date—an outdoor planetarium—because he loved moon rocks and black holes. When we got there, he pointed out constellations that I pretended to see, but I couldn’t follow what he was saying. I wondered if it was due to the cognitive issues from my pill.

We walked down some stairs, and I feared a small mood-swing coming on; the big ones felt like fire building in your throat that usually ended in tears or a migraine. I could feel the little hairs on his arm grazing mine (grazing my arm, not my arm hair. My arm hair still hadn’t grown back.) Then, finally, he put his arm around me awkwardly like a limp noodle and continued to do so sporadically throughout the date. It was anti-climactic. I thought there would be trumpets blaring and confetti falling.

Skaterboi wasn’t much of a talker, so I had to carry the conversation with a little too much effort, but I was so excited to be spatially close to someone and out and about that I didn’t care. My mini mood-swing subsided, and I started warming up to the astronomical activities; it gave us something to do such that speaking didn’t feel super necessary. Cancer had really killed my love of conversation. After feeling unsafe with one too many doctors in appointments, I had finally accepted that feeling misunderstood and getting reductive advice was just going to be the norm in my life moving forward. So, the best thing sometimes was to just invest less in people and their opinions, even those who were being paid to “help you.” Becoming more apathetic was the only means to survival for an empath.

Towards the end of the date, we stopped talking entirely, but he kept twirling the ends of my wig. We went back to his car, sanitized our hands, and placed our masks in bags. Then, he eyed me like I was in a painting.

“Oh…so should we, like, make out now?” I said, like I had read a manual on first dates.

We started kissing ferociously. Every time we hit a stoplight, we’d make out like teenagers. In fact, I wondered the last time I had made out that much in my life. Spider-Man 3, I thought. That was the last time I remember making out so vigorously, in a movie theater with my high school boyfriend. I had also missed some major plot points of X-Men: The Last Stand for the same reason. Ugh, I had to re-watch the third installment of every major superhero series because of my immaturity!

We reached my apartment and started kissing again. It felt good to finally be sober. He pet my wig and then suddenly stopped.

“So, do you want to come up?” I asked him.

“Well,” he stuttered.

I knew it! Pity date!

“It’s just…it’s a lot of pressure for me, given everything you’ve been through. I want to make sure you have a good, intimate experiences, so I’d rather take it slow,” he said.

Wait, what?

In my overwhelming insecurity, I had failed to think about it from his end. How could he fear disappointing me? I’m a cancer patient for Christ’s sake…we eat disappointment for breakfast...but, as it turns out, he was also scared of being Wild Wild West!

“Oh, well, I mean you don’t have to worry. It’s all intimate by default, because of my circumstances,” I said.

Woah, did I just say that out loud? This must have been the post-traumatic growth my therapist was talking about.

“Yeah that makes sense,” he said and kissed my hand.

He kissed my damn hand!

I got out of my car and waived at him real big like a little kid. Then, I masturbated to his memory in bed. In the morning, I woke up and realized that was the best first date I had ever been on.

And that’s how Skaterboi became my husband…

Just kidding, he moved to Nicaragua to work for a nonprofit, but he still watches all my stories on Instagram.