Cancer Bitch Behaves Badly Again

I went to Caribou Coffee on my way to meet my friend F for lunch. There were bags of coffee for sale with pink ribbons on them. Part of the price goes to the Susan G. Komen foundation, which goes for--what? More pink ribbons, I suppose. I think Komen should sign on with Christo to wrap every woman with pink ribbons. Then it won't matter if they have breast cancer or not, because you won't be able to see it. As long as you can't see it, it's not a problem. And when they die, the survivors can turn the ribbons into a shroud.

Oh, where was I? Yes, Caribou does sell coffee with pink ribbons with some portion going to the Komen million-dollar ad campaign. (Really. That's true about the million dollars.) Too late to help Komen herself; she's daid. You can guess what killed her. Anyway, I asked what percentage went to the foundation, and the barista told me that the company had pledged $100,000 and she asked if I wanted to buy a bag of coffee, and I said no, that as someone with breast cancer I support an organization that researches the cause. Which is true but makes no sense. You think someone with breast cancer would be focused on cure. But I guess I'm just a selfless cancer bitch. I regret that I spoke to her in a tight, aggressive and aggrieved tone. I think she felt sorry for me because she offered me a Caribou scratcher card (Winner gets a free trip to Costa Rica!) and when I wasn't a winner she kept taking out more and more cards and scratching them even though there were people in line behind me. Finally after a half dozen cards she gave up.

I've been to Costa Rica.. I went with N in the late 1980s. I didn't have a good time there, even though we saw monkeys and lizards and the beach, because I have trouble having a good time on vacation. I get struck with ennui and the meaningless of everything. When L and I travel it always has to be to a place with a coffee house so that I can work.

I will let an honorary cancer bitch, Canadian professor Samantha King, have the last words here, from her book, Pink Ribbons, Inc: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy: "As the Komen Foundation and its corporate sponsors continue to pump money into a research and education agenda that centers on uncritically promoting mammography, encouraging the use of pharmaceuticals to 'prevent' breast cancer, and avoiding any consideration of environmental links to the disease it becomes less clear whether they are not actually doing more harm than good...."

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Remembrance of Things Past or: Everybody's Got a Web Site (Except Frieda)

My friend Miz J, AKA fabulous cartoonist Jennifer Berman, called today to tell me about a dream she dreamt in my honor. She was (in the dream) approaching Paris, and it looked all Impressionist-y , just as Monet and Renoir had painted it and she realized that Paris really did look that way. Then she was in a gallery where cartoonist Nicole Hollander was working. She was making molds of the breasts of women who were about to have mastectomies. This reminded me of Cynthia Plaster Caster, who makes molds of the penises of rock musicians. Similar, but not the same. There's no surgery involved with Ms. Plaster Caster's project. You could argue that there's loss all the same: she had one-night stands with some of these guys. And--this just in--I just found out from her web site that she has also cast a few breasts. Anyway, the dream led to an idea from Miz J. Three people so far (Garry Cooper, my old boss C who is now my new boss C*, and my sister) have suggested I sell advertising space on my head. Miz J suggested I have different artists work on my bare scalp. I said I would reserve her a space. I'll have to have advance warning so I can let the henna fade.

I was thinking I could auction off my scalp to artists and have the proceeds go to Breast Cancer Action. Or have the artists work for free, and sell tickets to watch? I don't know if I would have takers for either. But after all, people pay extra to sit at a table in the kitchen of fancy restaurants so that they can watch. the food artists at work

Years ago, my friend Frieda Dean created a hat gallery. She wore a hat that displayed small canvases she'd painted. Read about the gallery in the Comments section of this post, in an article by Jessica Seigel.

I am so glad I have a decorated scalp. I was in Trader Joe's tonight in the soup-olives-peanut butter aisle and a little girl said something to her father about "funny hair." I said: I don't have any hair. I have designs on my head. You have to choose one or the other, I said, hair or designs.

I didn't feel bad at all. I think I would have felt much more self-conscious if my head was bare.

Frieda was my neighbor on Buckingham Place on the North Side. I coveted her address, 733-1/2. I was plain 733. Frieda moved from Lakeview to Logan Square, where she lived in the brick Art Nouveau apartment where William Paley had lived as a child, and then to Manhattan, near Wall Street. After 9/11 I called her and she said she was having trouble explaining to her dog Butch (a skinny Italian greyhound) why he couldn't go outside. Next time I called her she was gone. I've found her on-line at an art school in Georgia and I sent her a card c/o the place but she didn't write back. When I run into Alex Kotlowitz, who met an ex-girlfriend through Frieda, he asks me about Frieda, and looks at me accusingly when I say I lost her. But I thought you were good friends, he says.

--
*C was my boss as Well-Regarded University. He is now my boss's boss at Intellectual University, where I also teach part time. His dissertation was on Joseph Roth.

READ MORE - Remembrance of Things Past or: Everybody's Got a Web Site (Except Frieda)

A Cancer Bitch Behaving Badly

Yesterday I went out lightly dressed and didn't mean to be gone all day, but I was. And it got colder and colder (52 degrees). Around 8pm or so I walked the half mile from Letizia's Natural Bakery on Division near Damen, where I had a latte and a chocolate chip biscotto* and did some editing work, over to Ashland to get the bus. I was waiting in the shelter when a young woman approached and said she was homeless, did we have change. All of us said no and she walked away. A small middle-aged woman among us with an accent that sounded East European though she looked Asian started spewing, Why doesn't she get a job? She could get a job. She shouldn't ask for money. In America people can work. And a girl sitting on the bench next to me tried to mollify: It's hard to get a job without an address, you don't know the circumstances. I didn't say anything because I would have said something along those lines. A few minutes later the girl came back and asked again for money and the Asian/European woman said to her angrily, You should get a job, why don't you get a job? and the girl left.

The bus came. I got off at Addison and waited in the drizzle for the Addison bus, with a woman who claimed that the bus comes at scheduled times. In all my years in Chicago I have never known a CTA bus or train to come when it's supposed to. I've always presumed that the schedule is some bureaucrat's flight of fancy. But sure enough, the bus came within a minute or two of its appointed time. When I exited at Clark it was still raining. There was a Cubs game and I was going to cut through the parking lot but some young guys in Cubs-type uniforms were standing bunched up near the entrance. One of them came up to me as I tried to go through. He said, You can't go through the parking lot. I said why? He said, I don't kno--because the players come through here and you can't get close to them. I didn't ask him why the players would be leaving in the middle of the game. He said I could take another path that was almost the same. I was so angry and cold and damp and didn't want to take an extra step. I yelled, It's raining and I HAVE CANCER!

And I turned and took the other path. It really was almost the same as cutting through the lot. I was so angry even though I was laughing at myself. I could understand how people get out of control and become abusive in public. I wanted him to recognize how stupid it was that there were five guys standing there guarding a lot from me. Me me me. I am harmless. I am a Wrigleyville resident not some stupid fan. I live around here and put up with the Cubs traffic every year and the fans peeing and shouting in the alley and stealing our potted plants from the porch. I am wet and cold and I AM CANCER BITCH.


*Nota Bene: "Biscotti" is plural only, despite what you hear and read. It means "twice cooked." Thus "terra cotta" means "cooked earth." "Panna cotta" means "cooked cream." All this has nothing to do with the word origin of matzah. Or you can just ask for the mandel bread.

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