Friday, December 31, 2010

Dear 2010...

Kiss. My Fucking. Ass.




Or, rather, I guess, kiss my punctured lumbar...

...no, doesn't have the same ring to it, huh?

That may be the last LIVE! DIRECT FROM HELL! THIS IS SPINAL TAP! of the treatment. Can't be sure, but maybe.

Let's just cut the verbal hooey and get down to it. It has been a rough year. A year I did not know I had the ability--the humanity--to experience, much less survive. A year that has taken me lower than I have ever been: in body, in mind, in psyche, in blood pressure.

A year that I could not emerge from without the love and care of my wife. And my family, my friends, and pretty much all dogs.

I have forgotten more pain in the last eight months than I may have felt up to then. Maybe not, but it's close.

I have railed against the horrors that have already left me, because I am a performer and a human, and I want to be able to tell those tales, and I want proof that I was there.

I know that, somewhere in the future, I will find myself staring in the mirror or looking at a view or speeding or digging or kissing or running--and I may find that I do not have the tied-to-the-mast hold on all this agony that I should. The appreciation hewn into my marrow; the knowledge of how precious every tinkling laugh and dribbling snot really is.

If this pain--this jagged skinny valley with false sunrises and weeping winds--is not a lesson, than what the hell is it for?

What the hell is it for?

I am at a threshold. Today I feel like I got backed over by a garbage truck, but I know where I am headed. Though I need a week or two to recover, my initial chemo ended two days ago. Ended. Now we go on to maintenance.

Maintenance lasts years. Maintenance is hopping from one mossy stone to another, holding flaming shish kebabs of hope and juggling rusty blades of optimism. But it is the next stage. The next waypoint to putting this behind me. Behind us.

And so, there's no clever or original way out of this...

I just have to say

that I am thankful.

And that I have hope.


I am not beaten.
I am broken.
The difference is delicious.

This. Is the face.



Of Victory. Happy New Year.

-Holter

Saturday, December 25, 2010

The gift that keeps on giving



It is a fine Christmas morning, and we go back into the hospital for more poison tomorrow; about as concise a metaphor for the human condition as I can imagine--a little ying, a little yang.

New York city has a fine dusting of cynicism, but no snow. N's mother, after a pleasant and calm christmas eve of food, films, and a few presents, has driven off to her next visit, and N and I will spend the day relaxing as we prepare, interspersing down-time with the gathering of cots and shower sandals; books, earphones, Ativan, and a partridge in a pear tree.

I was going to write a post about balance: the difficult with the glorious, the fear with the triumph. A post about not letting the cancer or the treatment ever own you. Don't let it become you. For every vein-ful of Drano, there's a walk with your mother and stepfather. For every gut-searing retch through pancreatitis, there's a quiet moment with your wife--knowing you will get through it, listing heavily toward each other like barges on the East River, sliding upstream, pushed by the tide.

But that post was based on photos, and I lost the camera before downloading them all. A nice little human foible to teach yet another lesson in flexibility--when your plans are fouled, improvise.

I was going to write this post a while ago, as it's been some time since the last post. But I gave myself three or four days to look for the camera. And then one more day to accept my failure. And now it is christmas morning.

Christmas has always been a shadow-and-light kind of day for me. Christmases growing up were sometimes transfer days, when I would shift from one parent to the other. It worked out well because Dad woke up early and Mom preferred to sleep in, so I would get a christmas morning at the crack of dawn, then pack up presents and self for the start of six months at the other house, where I would get a second christmas--positive and negative, just like real life. It wasn't really that rough--my expanded American multi-part family, good people and good parents all, got along fine and lived, at the farthest, within an hour of each other--and most of my life within a few miles. But still, with multiple presents came a sense of leave-taking and homecoming mingled in a grey Baltimore day: hugs hello, hugs goodbye.

And the religious aspect stuck in my craw. As I aged I came to see that not only did christmas delete or overlook the vast majority of the world's population, but that some dipshits, under the banner of Christianity, were using it as a way to overpower voices and cultures different from their own. If there was a Jesus, this would disgust him, of course; but power-hungry, ignorant ethnocentrists rarely think about stuff like that.

At the beginning it was basically a discomfort with some blonde guy in a white bathrobe telling me what to do from the sky, and his hippy-looking son walking around with his empathetic eyes, and this sense that I owed them something. I likely didn't know Patti Smith's "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine' line until much later, but I would have dug it from the get-go. Plus, I'm just a punk-ass, trying to be different. Against the grain.

And that persists. In the above paragraphs I have written and rewritten, trying to use 'xmas' as a less religious way of naming the day. Then editing that out because it looked snotty and had a lesser music in the sentences. But going back one more time to make it lower-case. In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse (trapped again: Eliot was an anti-semite and pretty ruthless Christian, even while inventing modern poetry. A little ying, a little yang.)

So I do not believe in the ghost stories, but I love the time of year when people tend to come together, families (made and blood) gather, give, and maybe give thanks for what they have. I do not believe in the ghost stories, but believe in the feeling. I will bow out of trying to explain it and instead quote my wife, il miglior fabbro, who catches the moment I'm trying to draw in recalling her childhood:

From Christmas Eve to January Sixth, in the old Irish way, we lit a red candle for the Magi to follow. I pictured the Three Men of the East, looking like my father, wandering the desert, following red candles lit by Irish-Catholic women.
-You Have Given Me A Country

And I'll leave it at that. Enough about me: what do you think about me?

Physically, I'm peaking. It is that top of the climb in health and vitality, right before they kick out the stool. So I feel good.

In fact, I'm sore. The good sore, the kind of sore you get from physical activity. I have been running and sweating, swimming and moving, as much as possible since the fever, trying to claw back a little power and take advantage of the good week before the rattlesnake and the drips draw it back out again.

Because we go into the hospital tomorrow I am not in Baltimore this year for the annual Egg-nog run--where a wonderfully motley created family meet at our house and run, bike, or walk to another friend's house, then overeat and drink for a couple hours, before trotting off into the cold again for another few miles to another friend's house for more food and drink, and then plodding back to our place to collapse and enjoy each other's company. Run, eat, repeat.

So I cannot be there for the first time in a long time. But I can at least be in some semblance of shape, run those miles up here over the week. There in spirit, pounding pavement in reality.

My muscles ache from use. My legs are stiff from running. God, it feels good. I consider it a gift, and I am very thankful for it. And miles to go before I sleep.

(For anyone using this blog as some kind of how-to: steal your old self from the jaws of the treatment every second you can. Be an apple tree: when you cut me, I grow; in autumn cold, I bear fruit; I may be twisted and gnarled, but I'm still here. You want this thing to end, you're gonna have to cut me the hell down with a chainsaw. And if you burn me, I will still crackle and roar.)

The fever fell away, like scales from the eyes of those people--I forget who, maybe in the bible; not sure. As soon as it broke and they deemed me out of the woods, off we were sent, and it was like it never happened. There were a couple of days of fatigue and creakiness, I guess, but the speed with which the whole episode became memory was, and is, astonishing. Again--like the agony of pancreatitis and the deepest terrors and weakness--I am a little mad that I cannot completely hold the sensations and memories longer. As an actor I want everything, so I can use it later. As a human, I feel cheated: goddammit, I went through that; the least you can do is let me keep the merit badge.

And since the fever things have been uneventfully OK. A lot of voice-over work to make up for the week I lost to the hospital stay. A trip to PA to visit N's mom, a visit with N's dad to the Holiday Train Exhibit at the Botanical Garden, and N's mom's trip here for christmas eve. Miles running, hundreds of pages read into a microphone, meals and movies and quiet time with N. Hell, I almost felt normal a couple of time: which is, of course, terrifying.

But then a I got a mustache…in about forty minutes. As I have said, I've been achingly hairless, making a baby's ass look like Robin Williams' chest-carpet, for months. The HYPER CVAD seems specifically designed to keep you pumped full of the depilatory chemicals at just the right interval so that you don't even get a shadow of growth; smooth epidermal sailing, stretching to the horizon.

But not this week. Maybe the running, maybe Murphy's Law, maybe the random nature of everything. But one morning earlier this week I had full-grown half-millimeter blonde/white nodes, just above the center of my mouth. And the next morning they were joined by a dark points of whisker. Again, just above my lip.

It's like my follicles made a terrible error in judgment. They were at a poker game hosted by my brain and liver and, shitfaced on 'Vengeance'--a cocktail my brain invented which is a brutal and heady mix of V-8 and Vincristine that can really sneak up on you--barked out "Hey, no, wait, I got it!..What were we talking--oh yeah: totally! I mean, he already looks like a skinhead, right? So, so, I know! Let's give him his facial hair back, but, but, just, like, a little Hitler mustache! Right?! That's hilarious, right?!"

And my brain, corked out of my mind on Valtrex and chicken salad, said "Genius! Seriously, Skinhole, yer a fuckin' genius. We're doin' it!"

And so now I get to relive a puberty I did not have. The odd scarlet-pelt aside, my Norwegian Scottish Irish ancestors were not known for being terribly hirsute. Fairskinned and blonde, my facial hair woes were pretty translucent and not so much of a concern. Braces, sure. Cracky voice lower than everyone else's, you bet. Labial shadowing--not so much. Puberty wasn't all that horrid for me, really.

Payback's a bitch, huh? So now--when I look back at the sprouting pre-manly hedgerows of intermittent stalks and willows on the Eagle Scout who Henry and I used to call "Eyelash Mustache" as we cowered in fear of his bigness and meanness, his burgeoning acne and likely pubic hair--I have empathy.

Not a lot, but still…some.

So one morning I shaved. Electric razor in the predawn light before I went to the gym. And razor-razor that evening in the shower. Four short passes over the spot, then a pathetically non-resistant swipe across the rest of my face for old time's sake: pushing a bar of butter across a searing hot teflon pan would have garnered more friction. It was like I was shaving a big pink marble.

And tomorrow we return, for what hopefully (and hope is, of course, terrifying) the last time.

Not really, because even on maintenance there are chemo stints somewhere near months six and eleven.

But for now, and as far as the 'initial chemotherapy' and the Drs are concerned, that's it.

One and done. On to Maintenance. You've made it. Welcome back.

That's scary even to write. I feel like a dog creeping toward an owner who just kicked him. Like Scrooge future-looking at Tiny Tim's empty stool by the hearth. I'll believe it when I see it.

There will be this stint, and then recovery, and then there should follow another bone-marrow biopsy; another stealing of the soul. The results of that will, as always, be everything. And we'll go from there.

I'll have written more between then and now. I'll check in from the hospital, some time after tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

Until then, merry christmas.

There are people reading this who have helped me, helped us, get through this. Whose time or interest or care have been a wind blowing us toward health and survival this whole time. I would name you, but it's not that long a list and the rest of you freeloading parasite douche-bags would probably get your namby-pamby feelings hurt.

So, instead, in the spirit of compassion and giving and reaching out instead of in, this christmas N and I have made a donation in honor of everyone to The McKim Center in Baltimore.

Friday, December 10, 2010

The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of D'fever



This is how you sleep in a hospital. Plugs to block the beeps, bleats, whirrs, and squeaking crocs. Bandanna across the eyes to keep out as much of the permanent lighting--growing dawn if you haven't slept, or piercing top-light when they come in to change, adjust, check, prod, remove, or verify something.

But why, you might ask, does this photo appear here? A good two weeks almost since getting out, and a good two weeks at least before going back in?

Well, that's where the fever comes in, screaming (to lift a violent image from Judas Priest) for vengeance. The world is a damnable place.

After the Halford/Ozzy show, things were going along just fine. I was tired but improving, counts responding as they tended to. I get a couple fake-OK days before the bottom drops out, and usually by then I still just need to be careful and take it easy and then the Neulasta catches up to the damage and I start a slow climb back to OK enough to--ta dah!--get hit again.

Mom and Jim were up for last weekend and we took a nice long cold walk to the Little Red Lighthouse that stands at the river's edge beneath the George Washington Bridge. A good four miles total from subway to subway, I would say.

After they left I went to the gym and did a little chemathlon: a mile on foot, 20 super-easy minutes on the bike, 20 laps. Came home tired--N said I looked too tired--but that was about it.

Monday is all day at the clinic: White count down to .2 and I need blood and platelets, so had to postpone a job; but that's how it goes these days and the employer was OK with it.

Tuesday I started the first day of a new audiobook, meeting a new director and new engineer at a publishing house I hope to work for again. That day went well; I got a lot of pages read and things seemed fine.

On the way home I feel a chill--which makes sense because it is in the high 20's and blowin' like a bitch out there.

As soon as I get home I take a hot shower to warm up--which should have been a signal flare, right there.

After the shower I just kind of lay about, saying I was beat but didn't want to sleep because if I went to bed at 6:30 I would get up at 3am and have a horrible Zombie dawn, padding around the apartment thinking about nothing other than the fact that I wanted to sleep.

N, smarter and more observant, as is her wont, suggests maybe we take my temperature.

Except she has a superstition that if I see the results it will turn out better. So she holds the fancy-schmancy unit we bought because we saw the hospital staff using them and figured, hell, if your temperature is this important, this a a perfectly good hundred bucks spent (and we were right). She slips the protective one-use sleeve over the temp probe, puts it under my tongue, and then turns the hand-held unit to face me, so I can watch the little cursor spin and spin and spin until...

101.9

Oh, hell.

Just for the record, 100.5 is the supposed 'go to the ER' number. But we learned after the second HYPER CVAD round that Neulasta makes me run a little hot and 100.5, while unpleasant, would be more of a 'call the clinic or service or whomever, calm down, and take your temp again an hour later.'

We waited fifteen minutes (N unknowingly draining all the humour from one of the few funny moments I ever had from the handful of times I tried weed when she yelled in anguish "it's been 6:13 for way too long!") and took it again.

101.9.

Fuck. Now I'm scared, and N is existing in this hard-to-watch state of fear, exhaustion, control, planning, preparation, despair, and worry. I think she kinda lives that way a lot, but the rubber-meets-the-road moments like this are when you can really see it. This will not be the first time I apologize to her, as we gather together a night's worth of stuff, my meds, the essentials we keep near the door for just such an occasion.

We've had a fifty dollar bill under a magnet next to an ever-updated list of the meds I am 'currently' on. And, for some reason, we never use it. It it grab-fast cab fare, specifically set aside so that it can be manhandled as fast as need be when the frantic 'OK get to a hospital right now!' moment finally comes. But we never use it. We use the money in our wallets, money laying around somewhere else in the apartment, the ATM, anything but that money magneted there for that purpose.

And I think it because grabbing the 'emergency' fifty is calling it an emergency, and that's just too scary. There's already enough going wrong every day; adding that kind of stress on top just isn't worth the four extra minutes it might take to ascertain where cab fare to the Upper East will come from.

It takes 10 minutes or so to get gathered, and we put in a call to the Cancer Floor because the Drs offices are closed and we will likely know one of the people there. It is 7 or so, during shift change, so why not?

We get the redheaded Norwegian shipbuilder with whom we've had many a great chat--she loves the night shift because she got into this field to work with patients, not Drs [the logic is so inescapable I have since wondered how day-shifts stay populated].

We take my temp again as we call, so we can tell her it is...

99.4

Well, shit. Now what do we do? 99.4, while high, is well within the Neulasta range from two months ago, and that cleared up on its own.

But there were two 101.9s, and the PA on the phone would clearly prefer that we get looked at. So it is settled. My Echinacea tea will just have to steep overnight: we're off.

Traffic is mediocre, but I am a mess. I am crying and apologizing to N. All I can feel--as we put little micro-lives into ever-smaller places for our stuff (Nod to Carlin for the framework and the genius to illuminate it), as we overturn one schedule after another, as we fall farther and farther away from what we thought our lives would be at this point--is bad. Bad husband, bad friend, bad person.

I have stolen a year of her life. Her second book is out, is great, and she should be freewheeling the country if not the globe basking in the reactions of people she urges to read it.

Instead we're in a cab on 3rd Avenue, on our way to the ER. Again.

She, of course, will have none of this. Tells me that bonding together as friends and partners involves the shitty and the sublime both. That she would still rather be with me, even right now, as we dig through our pockets for the 19 bucks it took to get us to the City-state.

She's right--shocker--and I am feeling self-pity to mask the fear that this is the one, the fever that turns septic and burns a hole in my weakened GI tract and swirls my battered innards down the drain of my pelvis and I am found dead, midriff blotchy and rank, on the cold paving stones between the cab stand and the ER.

Or not.

The PA from the Cancer Floor has told us to make sure and say at check-in that I am neutropenic (white count .2 the day before, so I'm pretty much dead-tropenic, for what it is worth) so that they can fast-track us at the ER.

Or not.

There seems to be some acknowledgment of my heightened, cancerous state, but not a lot. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is blaring from all screens in the waiting room. I actually look forward to the moment when Linus steps on stage and recites a bible passage, bold and quiet. Even for the late sixties, or whenever it was first aired, that blunt, brief, grounded attempt to place Christmas somewhere other than the north pole always touched me, even as I eschewed the ghost stories and mind-control of most religious storytelling.

A local semi-celebrity news guy and his wife come in while we're waiting. She's recently given birth and is having issues.

They get treated exactly as we did. Which is a comfort. "That's nice, dear. Sit down."

I wonder if celebrities know that part of their service to society is as counterweights to the feeling that most of us are getting the shitty end of the stick. Nicke Nolte's horrid, startling mug shot goes a long way to making people who bemoan their lack of the best beauty products and personal chefs feel better. And that's nice.

N has taken it upon herself to get noticed--and, for the record, when she does that the unfortunate people on the other end of whatever it is she is attempting would best be served just doing what he wants, because she's gonna win; just face it, she's a tiny quiet slim wand of devastation. You lose.

We get noticed--shocker--and taken into a curtained area to be prepped and questioned etc. A nice NP from the Islands and his local counterpart were both incapable of getting a rattlesnake into my port, so I was poked and bled from many a spot up to then needle-free.

My low numbers did earn us a closed room in the ER, where we spent the first night. N, in a chair, with her coat on and her head on the edge of my bed, slept maybe twenty-five minutes that night: Tuesday.

Some time Wednesday we were brought upstairs, but, because of the packed Cancer Floor that kept us downstairs last night, we end up on the Geriatric wing that abuts the Cancer Floor. Our roommate turned one hundred one the day before, and he is getting over the flu. And coughing. Sharp as a tack, but coughing, hacking.

I had to cancel pretty much the entire week of work, which will either be a setback or a loss of work--can't know until I get out and am available if they will still want to use me.

The fever is horrid. Awful. In many ways worse than just about anything else I have gone through with this. Knocked down, screaming headache for days, no desire to eat or drink, heart averaging 100 beats per minute to keep up with the self-immolation, blood pressure dangling above dangerously low as I sweat out what little fluid is still in me.

There are times when I am hooked to lots and lots of drips.

There are time when three blankets can't stop the shivering.

There are times when N and a nurse are trying to help me find places for all the cold-packs they want me to push up against the spots where blood flows. Side of the neck, behind the knee, in the armpit, between the thighs.

The one under the bandanna against my bald head hurts the most. But I guess it does the job.

N and I miss a wonderful Christmas Jazz concert by a colleague from the union; a calm and musical date we were both very excited about.

We miss my agent's birthday party, a celebration of his aged-ness and universally-beloved-ness we were both sad to have to watch float by without us.

Time creases and folds, sleep is broken. Sweat, chill, languish, sweat, burn, chill.

Then it ends. Supposedly the last time I spiked a fever was yesterday (Thursday) mid-morning, which means they think I can go home tomorrow.

The Chief Dr came by last night, and this episode may or may not effect when we come back in for the last hit. Too soon to tell.

But that's what you get. That's what you get for thinking it was going well, thinking about Maintenance, thinking about what's next. Planning for trips, saying things like 'When I feel better we'll..."

That's what you friggin' get. You get a fever. And that is more than enough to drag your eyes right back to the little piece of road right in front of you.

Do not look left, do not look right, do not nod off, do not day dream.

Left foot, right foot, repeat.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

The metal god and the prince of darkness played the garden last night and all I got was a crummy tee shirt.






Well, actually, N got the shirt, and it wasn't crummy. A nice girl-cut Ozzy tee in white and black. Part of the problem with being a fan of the same music for so long is that, to some extent, I already have all the t-shirts.

OK, back up.

We got out of the hospital Monday at a very respectable hour, as the Drs and the nursing staff were very on top of their game. Home in time to get dinner and go to bed with little drama. A much better stint than the last, and one that bucks me up for the last one a month or so hence.

The next day, because Murphy is the One True Law and Scheduling is His Prophet, the boiler in our building was being replaced.

Of course, a new boiler is significantly better than the current state of 'hey, does this water seem hot to y--Oh Holy Christ I Just flash-cooked 40% of the skin off my thumb!!!'

But still, less than twelve hours out of the city-state--numbers plummeting like any hope that the tea party candidates have even the shed skin of a clue as to how to help the country heal--and the specter of bucket showers and toilets that won't refill has us heading uptown to the apartment of a colleague and friend of N's whose generosity is matched only by her view of the Hudson. So our plan is to go to the temporary residence after the clinic, and, to pack as light as possible, I figure I will wear what I am wearing to the concert that night throughout the day--less to schlep in my backpack, right?

At the clinic I get the Neulasta shot, having pre-medicated with the Claritin, as has become the norm.

And I am in leather pants. Which I can safely say are not found in great abundance in the leukemia waiting room at New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center. Wigs; hats that stay on indoors; huge splotchy bruises, sure. Leather pants...not so much.

I'm gonna knock 'em dead.

But my thunder is duly stolen by the bloodletter. The lovely and wonderful young woman who has been successfully--for the most part--drawing my blood, and whose steadily, happily growing belly has been one of the few way-posts against which I have been able to mark time passing, has outdone me. She arrived for work as on any other day, but by the time I was there for her sure-handed rattlesnake ministrations, she was three centimeters dilated and eighty-five per cent effaced.

Which, of course, means fuck-all to me.

And most everyone else, too, it turns out. It was humorously unnerving to see a flotilla of white coats--enough Drs to keep the explosively misbehaving lymphoblasts and self-hating marrow of dozens of people healthy, if not recovering, for years--wandering around the hallways of the leukemia wing like so many tipsy swans trying to score stale bread off the tourists:

'OK, so the cervix is eighty...'

'What was she wearing?'

'no, dilation is the cervix. Effacement refers to--'

'Can you self-dilate? I heard about this travel-nurse from Calgary--'

'she texted me like ten minutes ago. I think she's OK, but...'

'...'

You know what? I wish her well: new life trumps age like dogs trump humans, and so her and her pre-person would be at the top of my prayers if I believed the ghost stories, and I am more than happy to give way to her drama.

The only downside is that, because the assumption is that I will not need blood or platelets so soon after a stint, I have not been assigned a chemo nurse. So there's nobody to access my port. And, since I probably won't need anything injected into my system save the Neulasta, which is a stand-alone shot anyway, there's not a lot to be said for accessing me in the first place.

So it is off to the IV nurse, where I get the vein on the back of my hand popped into for my blood work. The IV nurse has worked with my Drs before and so draws a bit more than she needs to, which turns out to be prescient, as they want to get me pre-typed for what will almost certainly be at least platelets on the Friday visit.

All well and good. And I am gone. And the day crawls by with some errands and getting to stand and enjoy the lovely panorama of New Jersey (yes, go ahead and make your own little oxymoron/Garden State/What Exit? joke in there if you want, but it really looks nice from a few stories up and a river away).

And finally the hour draws near and N and I hie ourselves to Madison Square Garden, which is not square, is not near Madison, and could only be called a garden if hockey players' teeth that rolled into the Zamboni hopper fermented into some rogue form of mushroom.

We got there early because Halford was opening for Ozzy. I will not go into it, as I am sure some of you are still reeling from the Ronnie James Dio essay of a few months back, but Rob Halford is the lead singer of Judas Priest. He often records and tours on his own, most recently with a band called--in the interests of not confusing people
who have been banging heir heads up and down vigorously since 1983's Screaming For Vengeance at the very least--Halford.


If Judas Priest were touring, they could as likely headline the garden, though they tend to prefer Jones Beach Amphitheater, where you can watch the laser lights, the smoke machines, the steel-framed god-like machines, and the dusk over the Atlantic all at once.

But when Halford tours alone he has to take a second seat to more established acts.

No matter. I like Ozzy. And N fuckin' loves Ozzy. Sure, some of his music, and certainly his social conscience. But mainly his attitude. N and Ozzy are the only two people I have ever seen over eight years old who have, with utter conviction and a palpable belief that they will be listened to, told the sea to stop rushing at them. Ozzy on an episode of his reality TV show; N every time we go to the beach. They share a joyous indignation at the hugeness of certain aspects of life, and an equally elemental physicality when faced with things that delight them. Ozzy clapping and roaring and egging on the crowd bears a spiritual and oddly physical resemblance to N watching a TV show about dogs, learning to snorkel, or simply observing pigeons.

Oh, also, Halford is as gay as the day is long. I mean gay like Rock Hudson's slacks, and N is a hag of the highest order. While Halford only officially came out in the mid nineties, most of metal knew it long before that. Henry and I even dragged a gay roommate of his from NYU to a Priest show as portable gay-dar; we were pleased to have our hypothesis proven when, during some less-than-metal dance steps during 'Turbo Lover,' said gay divining rod piped in with 'Oh yeah. He's stepping. He's stepping.'

So we both had a blast. I tried very very hard to not scream and roar and howl and smash my beaten self about, and I did an OK job. One day out from chemo, I have to try and see the long view, right? At some point either near or during Ozzy's inquisitional portrait of British pseudo-satanist Alistair Crowley, I found myself crying.

I was in my body. In my body in a way I had not been for weeks, if not months. Swimming is glorious and freeing, running the 5K was a challenge and a triumph, chemathlons are little victories I hold very dear to my hemoglobin-starved heart.

But standing in the too-narrow space in front of an arena seat, leathered left leg straight for support and leathered right leg jacking down and downward, down into the floor, the cement rebound through your heel coursing straight back up your rigid body, rattling the prayer-wheel and Thor's hammer necklaces bouncing against your
out-of-shape chest; arms tensed always for balance and force, music talking to atrophied muscle and not bothering to clue in the mind, fist banging against right pocket, jangling the steel and rubber bracelets crowding your right wrist, left fingers tracing guitar notes as they fly by, and your head, your head bouncing on your tense but able neck, bouncing with a kick drum you can feel in your chest with more force that the straining heartbeats that have thumped you to sleep for so many long, quiet, fear-torn nights.

It's not much, and to most people it probably looks like some nimrod flopping around to loud music like a trout on a dock. But it is a physical interaction with a joyously violent music that has been of great value and solace to me for most of the years of my life. And--weakened and therefore dialed-back for my own safety and the piece of mind of the loved one hooting and cheering next to me--it was still a form of meditation, a secular litany and, most important, the driving of a stake into the ground; a stake that is me, rooted, jouncing, jangling, overwhelmed, full from the inside, with music.

Alive.