RE-TOUCH

Do you remember that show from the 90s “Touched by an Angel”? Where there would be some dying kid or down-and-out street person or someone who needed to be cured of an illness and Della Reese would place her loving angel hand upon their face and erase any sign of discomfort, disgrace, or disease? I think I was touched by an angel. Actually, it was more like molestation. Yeah, I guess I was molested by an angel.

“Can I touch your breasts, Tania? Please?” John casually asked me as we shared a bench seat at the crowded coffeehouse on the corner of 18th and Market Street in San Francisco in 1999.

“Sure,” I told him, and without missing a beat, added, “But only the right one.”

“Okay,” he said. He moved his hand towards my right breast, and as soon as his fingers felt the material of my shirt draped around my breast, his hand recoiled. His face lit up with a combination of horror and delight.

And with that touch and the verbal contract, John and my right breast began a two- year long relationship. But you should know that John is gay. And I’m gay too. Oh, and I don’t have a right breast. I think that’s everything.

The relationship between John and my right breast started innocently enough. See, it had been a long time since someone requested to touch my right breast, because, quite frankly, it had been a long time since I’d had a right breast—seven years. The last person who touched it wasn’t exactly an angel. She was more like a pony. A Ponyboy, to be exact. Do you remember that character from the 80s film The Outsiders? Well, my girlfriend in 1992, Dawn, was a lot like Ponyboy: tough, brooding and no hips. Her looks were so compelling to me that they almost pulled focus from some of her quirks, like communication. Dawn’s prime method of communication was the ScrewyouslamthedoorImleaving Method. I would say something that irritated her, like “Have a nice day!” and she would say “Screw you,” slam the door, and leave. Another one of Dawn’s quirks was her unique sense of language. She would say things like, “That woman was so skinny. Tania, she was emancipated.” So . . . she’s free to be skinny? In retrospect Dawn and I didn’t have a lot in common, except for sex. And some other stuff, but mostly sex. That was our preferred method of communication.

During one of our communication sessions, Dawn and I were kissing while she was touching my breasts, and then . . . and then . . . AND THEN . . . she stopped. Placed my hands on my right breast and said, “Do you feel that? It feels weird.” My half of our dialogue was about to climax, if you will. A lump, in the larger scheme of things, didn’t seem like a big deal.

But in fact, that little lump discovered by my mildly toxic girlfriend was a big deal. It was Stage 3 breast cancer. So in 1992, at 21 years old, I was scheduled for a mastectomy and thrown into a medical labyrinth where being poked, prodded, and pinched was all par for my booby’s course.

John never grabbed my (fake) right breast, or pinched it, or poked it, or treated it unkindly. He would sneak a quick pat every once in a while, or skim what he thought was my nipple with his hand, as if to say “Hello, Tania’s booby.” He just reveled in the fact that a woman had given him permission to casually touch her breast whenever he wanted. John's a massage therapist, after all. Someone who uses his hands to touch and heal. He’s the kind of friend who, when you make that instinctual gesture to feel the tension between your neck and shoulders, moves closer to you and starts massaging out the lumps and bumps you never thought anyone could find. He’s always touching people, mostly for the purposes of healing, and, on occasion, for the purposes of copping a feel under the guise of healing. He’ll use those massage therapist moves—which seem kind of bogus to me—to legitimately touch cute guys. (You know the massage therapist moves I’m talking about. Like when my massage therapist finishes a session by kissing me on the mouth. Everyone’s massage therapist does that, I know, but still, it feels odd.)

Now let’s fast forward to 2002. Ten years after having breast cancer I ended up in Long Beach, California, living with my father in his one-bedroom apartment (that’s a story in and of itself) and pursuing my dream of becoming a sitcom writer. I was 31 years old, feeling healthy and completely satisfied with my ten-years-out-from-cancer-status. I was ready to get into a normal romantic relationship and start the next decade of my life. That’s when I met Sal. She had all the allure and coolness of Dawn, but was very different. She was extremely bright -- always reading, never really talking. She wasn’t big on talking. Or words. But the ones she used, she totally knew the definitions of! I mean, sure, in retrospect there might have been a couple, a few, several hundred red flags, but when you’re just beginning to date someone who’s cute and thinks you’re cute and you’re feeling great because you don’t need to visit the oncologist anymore, red flags like someone preferring not talking to talking, or never having met a Jewish person before you, or truly believing that Armageddon is coming so she’s a bit tentative about making long term plans, I mean, those little things can get obscured. Especially because Sal was such a good kisser, and she took such care when handling my only breast, the left one, as she caressed it one summer night while we kissed in her futon bed with her flea-infested cat looking on -- okay, another red flag, but who’s counting? And then. And then. AND THEN. She stopped and carefully placed my hands on my remaining breast.