Stayin' Alive On White Street

Miguel on drums. Notice the tip jar is a shiny and hopeful soup pot. Somehow I can relate.

Lately it feels as if there aren’t enough hours in the day to feed my hungry brain with all the entertainment available at my fingertips: music, literature, Internet, and The Real Housewives. I want it all. I'm also trying to do more socializing outside of my house, which, considering the coziness of our little nest, is a big challenge. This past week we decided to take the Walk on White. The Walk is designed to showcase the galleries on White Street. It happens on the full moon, and the moon was remarkably big and bright on Thursday night.

Miguel's pretty girlfriend Sally. Even the Key West Krud cannot dim her bright light! 

    We visited the Bikram Yoga studio, where music was supplied by Cous Cous, featuring our son Miguel on drums and vocals. Bikram Yoga (also known as “hot yoga”) occupies a space in a Key West landmark building on the corner of Truman and White. The building has housed a number of businesses since I’ve been here. On the second floor there are very cool apartments. But there is family history here, too. Long ago this building was a drugstore, where my son’s great grandmother, Norma Perez, worked the cash register. Norma had come to Key West from Cuba, as a child, after her policeman father was shot and killed chasing a bank robber in Havana. Norma’s mother brought her children here and worked in a cigar factory. They lived in a little Conch house in the neighborhood. When Norma’s mother died Norma moved into the house and lived there with her husband. My ex-husband Mike Perez was raised by Norma, in that house. He inherited the house when Norma died. Mike Perez and I married on the back deck, 33 years ago, My son lived in that house for the first 10 years of his life.
    When I tell this story to Miguel he seems to be only mildly impressed. 
    On that full moon night the Bikram Studio had been transformed into a gallery, featuring a show of erotic art. The space was still sizzlingly hot at 8 pm, and Miguel and his music partner TJ were cooking, too. Miguel’s girlfriend Sally was there and we posed for a picture. I was trying hard to keep my distance from Sally, who recently developed a case of Key West Krud, which is what we locals call a nasty winter cold. We didn’t stay at Bikram's long. It was too hot! Outside the building I unzipped my hoodie and exposed my bony chest in a celebration of erotica. The photo is sad, and includes the scar left behind by the feeding tube I wore for 12 months.

Celebrating erotica on the sidewalk outside of Bikram Yoga College of Key West.

    Aside from the erotic art show and a very crowded open house at the lovely Harrison Gallery, White Street was pretty quiet that night.
    The next day I had a mammogram. Recently women friends and I had discussed the pros and cons of breast enlargement, uplift, contouring -- you know -- the boob job. If I had a boob job, I wondered, would I be free of the need of the hot and uncomfortable bra? I told my friends I’d ask the mammographer and report back.
    At the hospital I ran into a nurse who asked me if I would visit with one of her patients recently diagnosed with cancer. She was one of a team of wonderful nurses who'd cared for me when I was hospitalized with side effects of chemo and radiation.
    “I told her that I had a friend who looked better after cancer treatment than she did before!” my former nurse said. 
    “Do you really think that?” I asked her.
    “Uh, well, your hair is amazing. . .,” she said. “And you’re so thin you look like a model.”
    I do look different. I lost my hair. It grew back super curly, like a Toni perm. I also lost enough weight to wear my college jeans again. The vestiges of my youthful figure are visible, but with the weight loss, went my nice plump breasts. Breasts are made of fat, and when you don’t have any fat, you need a boob job.
    I visited the newly diagnosed woman. She was beautiful. Her hair was thick and wavy. She was stylishly thin. What did chemotherapy have to offer her? 
    “If I can get thorough cancer treatment, so can you,” I told her. “Go shopping for a wig now. Get 3 wigs, in three different colors, so your husband can go to bed with a new woman every night.”
     She laughed and so did her husband.
     Then on to the mammogram. The mammographer told me how great I look, how cool my hair is, how heartening it is to see me well again. I get that a lot these days. I still love hearing it. I love it a lot. 
    “I’m wondering about a boob job,” I told the mammo girl, as she stuffed my breasts into the machine.
    “You aren’t serious are you?” she said. “After cancer you’d have a boob job?”
    “Why not?” I said. “The oncologist says I might live for 10, 20, or even 30 years. Shouldn’t I look good while I’m doing it?”
    “It’s a bad idea,” she said.
     She told me that in the course of her career she’s lived in Michigan, Ohio and now Key West. In those other places, she said, she rarely encountered a woman with implants. In Key West, many women have had implants. Some days every other woman. This she attributes to the heat and the corresponding brevity of our clothes.  Having a mammogram is a real challenge for those with breast implants. First the regular tissue is examined, and “then we have to separate the implants from real tissue. It isn’t pretty,” she said.
    “So as a mammographer you’re telling me it’s not a good idea,” I said.
    “No, as a woman with implants I’m telling you it’s not a good idea,” she said. “Why not just enjoy being alive?"