O Curse of Marriage

by Jean Roberta

In Othello, Shakespeare’s tragedy about the causes and results of jealousy, the provocateur who plants suspicion in the mind of General Othello that his new bride is unfaithful warns him:

“O! beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”

Iago, the sly underling, resents Othello for reasons that are never clear enough. Iago might resent Othello for not giving him a promotion, or for rising so fast through the ranks of the army, despite his being an outsider in Venetian society. (Othello is a “Moor,” i.e. Moroccan, so he is visibly different from the Italians around him.) Iago also claims that his own wife Emilia has fooled around with Othello behind his back, though the audience never sees this. Jealousy, it seems, doesn’t need substantial evidence.

Iago’s warning about jealousy drips with irony. He, of all people, knows how it can destroy a life.

Othello is newly-married to Desdemona, a younger and whiter woman who fell in love with him when he told her about his military adventures, the battles he survived. He claims to love her because she admires and sympathizes with him, but he can’t trust her.

Here Othello makes it clear that husbands in general can’t afford to trust their wives:

“O curse of marriage, that we can call these delicate creatures ours, and not their appetites! I had rather be a toad, and live upon the vapour of a dungeon, than keep a corner in the thing I love for others’ uses.”

Othello is so much more to me than a dusty Renaissance play that many English majors have studied in university. As a student of literature and new bride in my twenties, I studied this plot AND lived it. As my desperate, ambitious, hard-drinking Nigerian husband grew angrier on alien turf (I had brought him to Canada from England, where we met), I racked my brains to find explanations and solutions. Why was he so upset that I had had other boyfriends before him, even though he knew that when he proposed to me? Why was he so convinced that I was a nympho who had random hookups with men, and when did he think I was doing all this? Was there an Iago among our friends?

Could I possibly prove my loyalty, even while my husband’s behaviour made me so hurt, angry and afraid that I didn’t see how I could stay with him much longer?

This was the most urgent question: Was he going to kill me, as Othello kills Desdemona?

Luckily for me, I was able to escape, continue my education and raise our daughter with no further violence. (Not that any of that was easy.) My ex-husband tried to persuade my parents to kick me and my baby out of their house on grounds that I was obviously a cheating wife -- otherwise I would never have left my home & husband. When his plan didn’t succeed, he went on to marry another young white Canadian whose parents seemed able and willing (at first) to support him financially. That relationship collapsed as well, and my ex-husband moved to another part of Canada, presumably to find a good job (not to mention a relatively well-off family with a daughter).

Like Othello, my ex eventually died in despair, though his life seems to have declined for years before then. On New Year’s Eve 2006, I learned in a surprise phone call that he had died of a heart attack in a town where he was alone except for the patient friend who phoned me because the hospital was asking for a next-of-kin. The reasons for my ex's isolation weren't hard to guess, and I got lurid bits of information on the day of his funeral: apparently he had gone to the local hospital several times with complaints about plots against him and evil spirits in his apartment. He had been diagnosed with a mental illness. (But my opinion of the “mental health” establishment is a whole other post.)

My current female spouse (a better choice!) usually answers my lingering questions about the drama of my first marriage with this line: “You have to remember he was mentally ill.” Case closed.

This epitaph doesn’t resolve anything to my satisfaction, and my own Othello is no longer able to speak for himself. He was definitely the most jealous man I ever met, but he wasn’t alone.

During the “sexual revolution” of the 1970s, I kept meeting guys who expected me to go with the flow and live for the moment by having unprotected sex with them, but none of them seemed to want a relationship with a sexually-experienced woman. Even in theoretical discussions about dating relationships, one guy after another paraphrased Othello’s “O curse of marriage” speech. They hated the fickle nature of women, as they saw it, and their own inability to put a chastity belt on the mind of any woman they had claimed as “theirs.”

This irrational value system has been called the Double Standard, and it seems incredibly long-lived. Trying to argue it away just doesn’t work. Trust me, I’ve tried that. Writing off every jealous heterosexual man as “mentally ill” seems parallel to summing up women in general as “weak-minded” and therefore prone to go to the Dark Side.

There has to be a way to analyze this monster, this curse or this epidemic without resorting to shallow insults.

Like Giselle, I’ve experienced some disturbing little outbreaks of jealousy in my long-term lesbian relationship. Sometimes I wonder about her real motives for being with me; love can be asserted, but never proved beyond a doubt. More often, I think I see jealousy in her eyes. (I have a much more secure job than she does -- with shorter working hours, higher pay, and no crazy-making office politics. Do I deserve all this? Doesn’t she? Who knows?) But then, I can never be sure if I am seeing and hearing her clearly, or overreacting because of the Shakespearean tragedy of my past. It’s complicated.

I’m convinced that no one is immune from jealousy, or the messy soup of feelings that are described that way. The only way I know of to minimize the damage is to think before I speak or act, and not to blurt out the first words that come to my mind.

Respect (for oneself and others) is probably the best antidote.

-------------------

Haunted by Other Monsters

by Amanda Earl

In 2009 I had an out of the blue health crisis which put me on life support in ICU and in an operating room where the surgeon told my husband I was likely to die. Against all odds and thanks to the herculean efforts of a crack medical team and the support of my wonderful husband and dear friends, I somehow survived. I had to slow down my life for a few years afterward while my body grew stronger again but now I am fully recovered. I'm amazed and grateful to be alive. I lead a very full and joyous life. I am fucking lucky to be here.

Consequently, I am rarely rattled these days by the small stuff. I have tried to write a piece for this topic a few times now and I've come up empty.

I have a good life. I have a husband who I'm passionate about and who is passionate about me in return. I am 100% healthy, both mentally and physically, with only minor aches and pains for the most part. I have the luxury of being able to write whenever I feel like it. I have a roof over my head and food in my belly. I have remarkable, fascinating and caring friends who were very good to me and to my husband when I was sick. 

I also understand very clearly that this good life could end at any moment. I feel the shadow of oblivion hanging over me and mine constantly. I shiver at the shadows. It's this tension between joy of life and fear of death which drives me to keep creating new work. I am simultaneously haunted and exuberant.

I'm a bit of a misanthrope so I tend not to compare my life with others' lives because I don't really give a rat's ass. If someone is biting their nails in jealous angst over my achievements or experiences, I've never heard about it or noticed. I don't share mainstream society's love of bright shiny objects, fancy cars, big screen televisions, pedigree cats, matching dinette sets or white picket fences. I haven't owned a house in more than a decade and I don't possess a driver's license. I am not much of a traveler. I love good books and good company, strong tea and coffee, the occasional drop of whiskey, a never-ending soundtrack of fabulous music, access to dark and playful art and long, lonesome walks by the river.

As far as my writing goes, I keep my head down and I write. I am working hard to learn how to write compelling and unique poetry and fiction. I grew up with a strong work ethic drummed into me. I was taught that anything I wanted, I had to earn. Those who envied others were considered by my parents to be people who mistakenly believed that the world owed them a living.  It did not. My mother said you make your own heaven and hell on Earth. These values were harped on to the point where it would never occur to me to envy someone else their success. Their version of success isn't usually mine anyway.

What I want these days is to be able to write and explore various obsessions through my writing and to write better. I am tremendously grateful when my work is published, but I can't say it's a primary goal. I am happy for the most part to dwell in obscurity with the occasional pat on the back in the form of publication or recognition from editors, publishers, fellow writers and friends I respect and the occasional writing grant to support and validate my creative explorations.

I don't think I've explored the possibilities of jealousy so far in my fiction. I've run through the list of stories I've written since 2004 when I started to write erotica and the only one that springs to mind with any kind of jealousy involved is the recent Daddy Complex where a main character's kinky taboo is threatened with exposure thanks to petty office rivalry.

I've wracked my memory to think of fiction where jealousy is an important plot point. I remembered there was something about jealousy in Flaubert's Madame Bovary. I never did read that French experimental novel entitled "La Jalousie" by Alain Robbe-Grillet, opting instead for the more approachable "On Love" by Alain de Botton.

Greek and Roman mythology is lousy with jealousy. Zeus' wife Hera took her feelings of jealousy over Zeus' non consensual non monogamy out on his children with his lovers. Poor Hercules.

The fact is jealousy hasn't really interested me or affected me. I feel sorry for those for whom it is an issue and I admire writers who are able to infuse their characters with such feelings. It's something to consider for future stories, but I'd need to become obsessed with it, to study it, to collect stories of jealous folk. Jealousy hasn't become an obsession for me yet and I don't think I want it to be.

I worry that this post is sounding hard or unsympathetic. I don't mean it that way. I understand that jealousy is complicated and can cause a lot of harm to those experiencing the feelings or being the object of those feelings. I just am not in that place.  I'm about to take a trip out in the sun to meet a dear friend for coffee and conversation. Life is sweet.

A Self-centered Bastard

Copyright 2012 Daddy X

It may be cliché to say, but Annie’s ass jiggles like jelly. There’s really nothing cliché about Annie’s ass. It’s not what anyone expects, once she gets it moving like she does.

Often it’s what she wears that sets it off, the bouncy little thing. Mostly halter tops with short little skirts that people want to reach under. The way they hang so low on her hips you can see the dimples on the smooth soft skin flanking her crack. Sometimes they’re stiff denim, other times a flimsy fabric you can see right through, as long as the light’s behind her. Annie seldom wears panties, except for sometimes a dark thong under the mini-sheers, just for the visual. It’s the accessibility deal. She likes that sense of accessibility.

When she bends over in those short things, you can see right up there. Right up her skirt. She won’t shave down there and she’s proud of it. “Why call it a pussy if it’s not fuzzy?” she says. Anyone can feel it if they want; Annie won’t mind. After all, that’s why she’s there. Often Annie climaxes the first few times just from peoples’ fingers. That’s why she bends over in the first place, so someone will feel her up. Sometimes she wears assless chaps.

Annie knows what her bottom does to men. The round buttocks make ‘em crazy. If she just let anyone do her like they’d like, she’d be taking it up there all the time. What an ass she’s got. The way she carries that thing around behind her. How it bounces and quivers with each step. Why won’t she let me put my dick in? One time when I was fucking her from behind she let me do it with my finger.

She’s got wavy, brown hair to go with the dark features, eyebrows and long lashes.  Pretty face with dimples to boot. The way a cock distorts those dimples, they just morph into hollowed cheeks. What a cocksucker. But why not up her ass? It’s not like she’s virgin back there. Her fucking self-centered husband fucks her there. She lets most other guys in her cunt if they want, and she’ll suck off just about anyone in the place. But no ass. I’ve seen guys beg her, and I’ve done some begging myself, but no go.

“Not in my poo-poo,” she’ll say, grinning with one hand craned behind her, covering her backside. The other hand will shake a finger at the wishful sodomist. “You’re too big for that,” she’ll say with a giggle. She does that so the guy doesn’t feel too bad about getting turned down. Annie’s a real thoughtful girl and if she likes the guy, she’ll still blow him, or have him fuck her silly.

I suspect her jerkoff husband can’t keep up with her. That’s probably why he brings her here.

Annie’s ass is fully rounded out. Like somebody’s been pumping it up. Nice, deep divide, just a dusting of a few fine hairs in the rosy flesh between. There’s that subtle concave recess on each cheek, further accentuating the protrusion of her. I could flip a derby and have it land on her ass like it’s a shelf. Sometimes when she’s got her ass way up in the air, I do something like that for fun. Everybody watching gets a kick out of what her bum looks like wearing a hat.

That one time I spit on my finger and slipped it in? Boy, I’ll tell you it’s like velvet in there. Once you get past that hard sphincter--all velvet inside. I can just imagine how all that smooth would feel all lubed up and caressing my dick, the tight ring of her entrance pinching me so. But she always says no, “No cocks in the poo-poo!”

“Shucks.”

“Too thick, you are,” she’ll say. “Plus, I’m married-- and we do respect our vows, you know.”

Her husband fucks her ass with that skinny dick of his. Every week. Pencil dick mother fucker. I guess he saw me with my finger up his wife that time, so he took to bringing her   with something already shoved in there. Butt plugs. One week a clear glass one, one that you could see her living red insides as her buttocks twitched in front of me. Lately, he’s been bringing her penetrated with some sort of thing that buzzes. There’s a remote that he keeps with him. I must admit there’s a thrill to what happens when he sets it off when someone’s in her, whether in her mouth or in her cunt. He says it’s for everybody’s enjoyment, but I know it’s just because he doesn’t want anything up there that he hasn’t put in himself. I know how guys like him think. Nothing but themselves. Selfish bastard, he is.

At all the gatherings, he waits until everybody has had at least one turn on his wife.  After prying out whatever’s in her ass, he’ll align his thumbs between her cheeks and wrench them apart to expose the dusky plane between. She’ll be stretched flat, his cock poking through her dick-starved pucker, right in the center of the mauve for everyone to see. That shows everybody that her ass is his and his alone. What a prick he is. Bastard just rubs it in our faces, right in front of the rest of us. 

Annie’ll be all sexy looking, all sticky with jizz the guys have squirted between her tits and in her hair, lipstick all around her cunt if there’s another woman there. But then, when everybody’s drooling over her, he just goes on to fuck the shit out of her back there. He gets right up behind her and slides the long skinny thing in and out with everybody watching. Her damp flesh ripples and shimmies as he slams his pelvis into her, laughing and slapping her come-smeared buttocks back and forth to get the most from the side-to-side action. Her orgasmic moans override everything else going on in the room. Look at her go.

Could this guy be any more self-centered?

Jealous (envy): One of the seven deadly sins

By Desiree Holt

Jealous‑that evil little monster that eats away at your guts and gives you a sour taste in your mouth. It colors everything you see and say and do. But worse than that, it robs you of the ability to appreciate how lucky you are in so many ways.

Unless you get a grip on it.

I’ve been jealous of so many different people and things in my life. In high school I was jealous of my two best friends who got to be cheerleaders while I was relegated to being an usher at football and basketball games. I was jealous of my girl friend who got a snazzy convertible but at least was grateful she hauled the rest of us around in it with her. I was so jealous I almost missed the signals the really cute guy who played both football and basketball was sending me and might have missed the best date for my senior prom.

I was jealous of my college roommates who got bids to the sorority I wanted. Why them and not me, I asked myself. If I hadn’t shaken myself out of it I wouldn’t have accepted the bid I did get and missed out on making some wonderful lifelong friends. My sophomore year we moved into a brand new sorority house, I bonded with some smart, savvy females who I’m still friends with and enjoyed the best of college life.

As I grew older I learned to put a damper on the impulsive leap of jealousy when someone was in a place I wanted to be and started putting that energy into building an extraordinary life for myself. I would have missed the great years with my three wonderful kids—who now, at this stage in life, are my three best friends—and taking the leap to follow my heart in a number of careers—newspaper reporter, publicity agent, manager of rock bands and country rock musicians. I modeled the band in Joy Ride over my favorite client.

But I learned my most valuable lesson when I began to pursue my dreaming of writing romance fiction and getting published. Oh, sure, I was a newbie and greener than grass in the beginning but all around me I saw people getting those very lucky breaks I wanted. Why them and not me, I asked myself over and over again.

And then I began to realize jealousy can suck the life out of you. It robs you of your creativity and makes you an unpleasant person to be around. My late husband, my hero, thought I could do anything I set my mind to, and ragged at me for wasting my energy on something as unproductive as jealousy.

So I gave myself a virtual kick in the ass and channeled all the energy into my career—writing, learning my craft, learning what happens after a book is contracted (yay!), building a reader base. (And trust me, readers don’t like people who embrace the green-eyed monster.)

And then one day I suddenly realized that instead of feeling jealous or envious or any of those nasty things, I was feeling really good. I had not one but several publishers. I had built a substantial reader base. People liked my books! Let me say again—people liked my books!

I had a career! Holy crap!

And I didn’t get it by being jealous.

And, best of all, I had made some wonderful friends, like my blog pals here at OGG. Holy crap again!

So listen. I’m not preaching here, just trying to give you a push in the right direction so you don’t make all the mistakes I did. Or nearly did.

Appreciate everything in your life. Find one thing every day to be happy about. Remember that you are a unique individual and very special.

Enjoy life. Embrace the bluebird of happiness, not the green-eyed monster.

Just….get a grip!

Let Sleeping Green-Eyed Monsters Lie

By Sacchi Green

Write about jealousy? Nooooooooo…

I’d rather let sleeping green-eyed monsters lie. It’s dangerous to wake them. But, well, okay, let’s see what I dig up.

Am I jealous, exactly? Not so much, if we take that to mean resenting the good fortune of others. At least others who, unlike certain writers alluded to by some of you writing here, seem to have earned their success. The stinging nettles of envy, though, spring up again and again no matter how fiercely I try to beat them back. For all the luck I’ve had, all the unearned privilege, I still envy others for the things they have that I don’t.

More precisely, I envy them for things that I once had, but didn’t take advantage of, chiefly time. To be blunt, I envy youth. Well, no, not adolescence—everybody has to put in their time in that labyrinthine morass, and I guess we come out the better for it, but once is definitely enough. But I do envy that stage of adulthood when the future seems limitless, all things are possible, and there’s plenty of time ahead for what you always wanted to do, even if you don’t have time for it right this minute.

It turns out that there’s never time for it right this minute unless you make the time. Some people do. Even while struggling to survive, even while raising families, some people write novels, many of them, great works that make a difference. Of course some people are supremely talented, and I envy them, but in a detached sort of way. It’s more what you do, or don’t do, with what you’ve got, and how soon you get around to doing it.

Really, I’m not jealous, not even envious; I’m just peeved at myself. Maybe that’s a major component of most envy; not that someone else has something you want, but that you didn’t do what was necessary to get it for yourself.

Today, though,  doesn’t seem to be one of those times I can whip out the stinging nettles for self-flagellation. I have too much to feel lucky about. I spent a lovely weekend in the mountains I love, and the seedlings I’m getting ready for my garden are coming along well,  and there’s even a certain amount of pre-writing going on in whatever section of my brain heats these things to the simmering stage. And to top it off, I just heard that one of my stories will be reprinted in Maxim Jakubowski’s Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 12, my fourth appearance in that series. And another has been shortlisted for a gothic-ish anthology. Not novels, not great works that make a difference, but the things I like to write.

Nope. No jealousy today. Not even envy. Maybe next week. If I have the time.  

It's a loooooooong story

Giselle Renarde

That's what I told Aisling Weaver when she asked why my girlfriend and I haven't spoken in two weeks.

It's a long story I've spent the past two weeks trying not to tell anybody.  Not even my mom.  But, what the hell?  I'm an overshare-er, especially when it comes to relationship drama.  So here we go.

I'm not a traveller.  At all.  There's only one vacation I've ever wanted to take: a train trip across Canada.  That's it.  No tropical getaways or European holidays.  A train ride across the country.

Three weeks ago, Sweet told me she was going on a trip...

"That's nice, honey.  You've been working so hard lately.  You deserve a vacation."

A trip across Canada...

"Oh."

...by train.

A trip across Canada by train.  Without me.  She's taking my dream vacation without me.

I don't think I've ever been so... jealous?

But, see, ever since I started reading Tristan Taormino's book "Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships" (which I told you about a few weeks ago), I've had trouble identifying any of my emotions as jealousy.  That's because:

Jealousy is really an umbrella term for a constellation of feelings including envy, competitiveness, insecurity, inadequacy, possessiveness, fear of abandonment, feeling unloved, and feeling left out. (Opening Up, pg 156)

I'm really angry about this situation.  I'm hurt.  A year ago, I would probably tell you I'm jealous, but I don't think I know what jealousy is anymore.  Part of that is because I'm more compassionate than I have been at any point in my life, and I constantly seem to be evaluating other people's predicaments.

But I also see the pieces of jealousy more clearly.  I feel envious--I've wanted to take that trip for as long as I can remember.  I feel insecure--why are you going with someone else?  I feel possessive--you should be taking that trip with me.  I fear abandonment--I don't even know where you are right now.  I feel unloved and left out most especially--why not me?

Maybe breaking jealousy into components just gives me more to cry about.  But maybe it allows me to better articulate the pain I'm feeling.

Sweet didn't bother making excuses.  I told her I felt like she was taking something of mine and giving it to someone else.  She understood.  But I didn't want to yell.  I didn't want to act like the "vengeful harridan" an ex once accused me of being.  The problem is... if you're angry but you don't want to yell, what's left?

Silence.

It's not like she's having the time of her life.  She isn't out to the person with whom she took this trip.  My girlfriend is trans, but she's still in the closet with a lot of her family members and friends.  So, I don't know exactly how long it takes to get from one end of this country to the other by train, but my girlfriend's spending that time dressed in the boy clothes she despises, and being acknowledged as a man, which she hates even more.

If I were truly "jealous" (whatever that means), I would probably be bathing in schadenfreude, knowing that she's as miserable as I am.  Unfortunately, I love her too much to think that way.  I want her to be happy, even when I'm not.

Before she left, she said, "To take this trip, I have to leave ME behind.  I have to pretend I'm something I'm not.  You're my anchor.  YOU are the one who as always accepted me, no matter what I look like. You've helped me grow as ME, and I need you now more than ever."

She wanted my blessing and my support.  She wanted to stay in touch while she was away.

I couldn't do it.

Maybe I'm not as compassionate as I'd like to be.  A more compassionate girlfriend would say, "I'm hurting like hell right now, but I can put my feelings aside for your sake."

I couldn't do it.


 

The Big C

I suppose the journey begins the same for everybody, quietly.   My journey began in the shower late at night when I reached down and there it was on my left testicle.  I put down the soap, paused and fingered it.  About the size of a chickpea, more or less.  Hard.  Maybe a part of the plumbing I had overlooked in a lifetime of more than average interest in that part of my body.   I checked the right one in the same spot, but no, nothing there.  This was unique.  I fingered it some more and felt my head filling with white light and buzz.

For my father the journey had begun quietly with tiredness and blistery bumps on the face.  My stepmom, a registered nurse, took him to the family doctor they’d known for years and he’s pronounced it as adult acne.  My stepmom said no.  She wanted blood tests.  She argued until she got them.  It was not acne.  It was Leukemia.  Ten years down the road it killed him.

I called Blue Cross Health Connection and spoke with one of the nurses on call.  Well sir, it’s probably nothing, but you should get it checked out.  Yes – like now.

A few days later I was in the office of my primary care doctor, a beautiful Filipino woman who had been doing my ritual prostate exams with a primly gloved and well-oiled finger for the last several years.  I explained my problem and removed my underwear and exposed myself.  I guess this is what it must be like for the ladies when they go to a handsome male gynecologist.  There was nothing erotic about showing her my junk, putting my fingertip on the offending spot and letting her handle my balls until she felt it too.  The naughty nurse is a universal male sexual fantasy, but not so sexy when you’re terrified. 

“It’s probably nothing, but we should schedule you a test.”

“But maybe- “

“Now!”

And so this is how you join the legions of the cursed.  Quietly.  Now.

They say cancer attacks one in three people these days.  I wonder if it was always like that, or if this is a new thing in the age of industrial food like products filled with mysterious additives microwaved in plastic trays made of petroleum products, cell phones, cosmic rays unopposed by depleted ozone layers, polluted air and the dreary parade of plagues and bugaboos reaching out to snatch at your 21^st Century ass.  I was given the call and set up for an ultra sound but it would take a week to get in there.  I had to stew with my demons.

And where does jealousy begin?

On Sunday morning at my church, a Unitarian Church that saved my sanity if not my soul, they have a moment called “Joys and Sorrows” when members of the congregation are invited up to explain whatever good or bad event is hugely on their minds.  I almost never get up for this.  I’m an old school Minnesota  guy where men do not weep freely or dump their depressing shit on people who have their own troubles.  I sat in the pew, occasionally standing to sing, and thinking.  A lump.  In an embarrassing place.  I looked at the people around me and how I envied them.  I could look at each one and see how they were superior to me, in creative scope (a Unitarian Church in the Deep South is a rare and precious sanctuary for artists and atheists and the generally strange together) in happy old marriages, in bright young children starting out.  I envied the children as I looked at them with all their life ahead and myself conscious for the first time that mine could be closing down sooner or later.  It’s not our nature to think about death.  When you see children and their effervescence you feel like they’re immortal.  Their health, their energy, the endless future stretching in front them.  I wished I could be that age again and start over.  Why should this room of people be so happy and myself in trouble?

The couples around me, their open intimacy and affection.  I feel grief for myself, for I sense in these moments of discovered mortality, a hidden fear that such feelings have atrophied and shut down in me maybe forever.  And then I think – you’re so fucking dramatic.  You think this is a big deal.  Five Billion Chinese don’t give a shit.

And I argue – it is.  Yeah, it’s a big deal.  Every person in the room is more blessed than me.  I am so small.  Small in scope.  Small in heart.  Small in passion.  Finally petty.

“At this time in our service please come forward and we will receive the Joys and Sorrows.  Are there any anniversaries or birthdays?  Yes?  We light a candle for . . .”

A few people, some of them shyly happy, stand and I’m thinking of death.  And when we die, what?  What will it be?  I think there is a great collective consciousness beyond all this.  I believe this, not because of religion or faith, but because of what I observe in nature and especially plants and animals I know personally.  There is something out there, something common among all living things.  But it will be different from what we’ve been told.  Sitting here with these people I have this compelling intuition that when death does come for me, and it will, in that last moment the death experience will seem . . . familiar.

And so I stand up.  I want to speak.  I will speak; because I want to remind myself we are not alone, no matter how alone we feel. 

And so I go and so I speak.  And my tribe collectively gasps.  And so they light a candle for me.

When I sit down, Bobby, a springy, feisty old woman in her 80s, sitting behind me, Bobby my friend reaches over the pew and gives me a hug. 

After the service, before I can stand up and leave my seat people come to me, people gather and speak.  These are the survivors, they hug, they speak, each to each and me, speaking of their journey.   Some of their stories are harrowing; they have suffered as I may well suffer soon.  But they are standing still, they’re here and full of life and kindness.  What’s amazing to me is their healing cheerfulness, these walking wounded, missing breasts, and uteruses, and prostates.  When I talk to them and hear their stories I’m amazed at how many there are.  And how strong they are.  I am jealous of their strength and optimism.  I wonder if I have that in me.  If my time comes, I wonder if I can be that person for someone as they are to me.

When the ultra sound appointment comes around in Doctor’s Hospital, the technician turns out to be a pretty, cheerful blond girl in her 20s who calls my name from down the hall.  I’m beginning to get used to the idea of dropping my underwear for one after another of these cheerful young women to look me over.  As we walk down the hall I ask her if she’s an oncologist or just does the ultra sounds.  It sounds patronizing the way I say it and I hate myself instantly, but she understands me already.  She sees scared old farts like me every day, mixed in like nasty chocolates in the same box with happy pregnant women who are about to see their babies on radar for the first time.

No, she says, she just does the ultra sounds.  We chat as we go down the hall, and she makes it clear she doesn't do diagnoses and I have to wait, but don’t worry so much, we’ll see how it is. 

In the little exam room, she shows me a stack of starchy white towels, the laundry bin to put them in and what to do.  If you’re wondering how this works, a man takes off everything from the belt down, lays down and tucks a towel across his legs and under his balls so that they are displayed in isolation like an exhibit.  Your shriveled little dick gets lifted up and tucked out of the way under another towel.  This might be the male equivalent of putting your feet up in the stirrups.  I ask her a question, this pretty young woman, I've always wondered about.

“My left testicle is larger than my right.  Is that normal?”

“Oh yes, I see that a lot.” 

“Okay.  Just curious.”

“I’ll close the door and knock in a minute to see if you’re ready.”

That’s an interesting instruction.  Tugging down my underwear, exposing myself, that’s too much like what lovers do.  Not quite right to perform in front of this pleasant stranger, not quite like business, watching a man pull it all down and whip it out like that.  But lying down, being wrapped and packaged and prepped, like shrink wrapped meat in a supermarket, that takes the monkey business out of it.  It’s just business. 

I’m waiting for the technician to come back.  The lady or the tiger?  I've been given this sacred box, and there’s something in it that will change my life forever or maybe the sacred box is empty.  But I can’t open it.  This priestess has to open it and explain the mystery. 

And there’s that wave again, the jealousy.  This young woman with her health and youth.  This young woman who doesn't have this thing hanging over her.  I wish that I were her.  The older you get, the more it seems as though your fate is out of your hands because you've come to know more about contingency and how things you’re not looking out for can knock you off the rails.  You eat blueberries and lots of olive oil and miracle-shit supplements because magazines have told you these talismans can ward off death with the conjured magic of anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatories.  When you’re a kid or a young adult, you have no sense of how out of control things can suddenly get; you have instead an intense fascination with yourself and the mystery of your future, never questioning that’s it waiting there for you to do great things.

Next to the monitor screen someone has left a white pencil.  I pick it up and turn it over, worn down point, black scuffed eraser, an insurance company logo.  If I put the pencil down over here, will the Universe turn itself in my favor this way in the forked path instead of that way?  Or if I steal the pencil will God turn His face and discard me to my fate? Where are the timelines of contingency?  Can I feel out the right one and land on it, like a silver ball on a roulette wheel, or an empty chamber in a pistol at my head; am I sitting here at some vast nexus of possible universes, like a bug in a spider’s web?  If I sit this way, here, with one foot up, will I live?  If I lay quietly with my penis neatly tucked up and balls earnestly displayed on the towel, will I live?  What am I supposed to be doing to give fate a nudge like some rogue asteroid?  How do I charm the universe, get on the right side of God and get a break in all this?

I want to call my dad, to ask if there was a moment of unknowing like this for him just before things turned grim.  I feel a great urge to be sloppy, to be relieved of this tension, to throw clean white towels on the floor and spit on them.  Take a shit on the floor to show my defiance towards death and all fear.  You think you’re not attached to your life, you imagine throwing down your life for a beautiful woman and being her romantic hero, but when the sword hovers over you, anything, even a little bug wants so badly to live.

The knock startles me.   I drop the pencil and it rolls out of sight like a pair of dice down a storm drain.  When she comes in I’m lying on the hospital couch with my penis tucked out of sight and my balls on the towel.  She squeezes some goo on the ultra sound wand while making some cheerful chatter and warns me the wand might feel warm.  Woof!  It sure does.  She frowns, smiles and turns the screen around so I can see. 

This might be my first sign of honest hope.  A sign of good news.  She’s breaking the rules for me, and hospital lawyers wouldn't like it if you broke the rules for bad news.  As the wand moves over my nut a thing like a black moon crater appears on the radar.  I’m seeing my balls from the inside for the first time in my life and it’s so amazing I forget to be afraid.

“Well.  That looks like a cyst.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because it’s black.  See?”  She moves the hot wand down a little.  “See this black area?  This is the fluid inside the scrotum, and water or liquid shows up as black, flesh shows up as gray. “  She moves the wand up a little.  “This is your bump.  It’s black which means it’s full of fluid.  Like a cyst would be.”

“How would you know if it were a tumor?”

“It would be a dark gray, like the gray around it, but denser.  See?  But anyway, wait for the doctor’s report.”

When she leaves I’m sitting on the bench with wet towels and my balls and my lap are all sticky wet and I’m light and relieved.  I feel like a guy who’s just had a massage with a happy ending.

A few days later the report comes back and my doctor calls.  It’s official.  It’s a cyst.