Etiquette Black Hole

My urologist is a middle aged white guy with an air of serious wisdom about him. Exactly the kind of guy you want applying pressure to your balls with his middle and index fingers.
"I can feel it much better from this position," he remarked in a doctorly voice while expertly pressing into my right testicle.
"YUP!" I enthusiastically agreed.

Enthusiasm is especially easy to muster when your balls are the object of discussion. He began talking about what the lump on my testicle could be, how we could get rid of it, and what the next steps were, but all I could think of was, "does this conversation really require your fingers poking into my scrotum?"

You see, back in the beginning, testicular cancer was kinda funny. I mean, you're living a normal healthy existence and then, out of nowhere, the world takes on an immense fascination with your testicles. Suddenly you have doctors looking after your testicles, nurses caring for your testicles, insurance companies checking in on your testicles, coworkers praying for the health of your testicles. It was the first time in my life where I could talk about my testicles to complete strangers and not be breaking some unreasonable social taboo. My testicles were feeling quite special.

I remember going to get an ultrasound on them, after the above doctors appointment. I found myself surprisingly calm upon finding an attractive girl in the ultrasound room. She told me to take everything off from the waist down, and then get beneith a blanket on the bench next to the machine. Then she left the room while I got undressed and considered what was about to happen.

This attractive girl was going to touch my testicles. Okay, looking for cancer. AND she was going to be touching them with a metal scanning device. For some reason the whole thing wasn't very arousing. I'm going to take a guess, but I'm thinking it was probably the "looking for cancer" part which was the turn off.

Which was just as well. I imagine the medical staff aren't as comfortable dealing with erections. I wonder if there is a training seminar somewhere: "What to do in case of an erection." They probably have emergency measures they're trained to take.

I laid down on the bench and tried to get comfortable, giving a final adjustment to my penis-testicle arrangement before hearing her knock on the door.

She got right down to business.
"Which testicle is it?"
"The right one."
"Does it hurt?"
"No. Well, not before the doctor started squeezing it."
She giggled, and I realized I was instinctually trying to flirt with her. Not cool.
In her hand she had a metal device which vaguely reminded me of an electric shaver. Except this one had jell all over it.
She began softly pressing it into my balls, going up under the blanket, so all I could see was her arm extending between my legs.
I realized at this point that there was a very real risk of two things occurring.

First of all, I could get an erection, which as stated earlier, would make for a very awkward moment for both of us. I mean what is the socially appropriate response for that?
Do I say sorry? Oops?
I think that's pretty much a etiquette black hole right there.

Secondly, I could smile, which again would not be appropriate.
However, since I had already considered the possibility of getting an erection, the socially inappropriate smile was quickly surfacing. I had to think fast.

Immediately I brought out the mantra I had often used to keep from laughing while purchasing food while high. It's a simple, usually effective phrase, and I began repeating it to myself furiously:
Not cool. NOT cool. NOt Cool. NotCool! Not cool not cool... not cool. NOT. cool. not not cool. Not cool. Not cool not cool not cool not coolnotcoolnotcoolnotcoolnotcoolnOTCOOLNOTCOOL.
It wasn't quite working. In fact, the image of a guy lying on his back with a girl spreading jell on his balls, while he repeats "Not Cool" over and over again was too impossibly funny not to envision fully in my head. I was going to lose it.
But then, I had a moment of clarity.
What is the one thing that is sooo not funny, the one thing that would cease any potential erection, and would essentially be the only thing to restore control in this situation?
Cancer! Cancer. cancer. cancer. cancer. CANCER. cancer. Cancer.

After all that was what I was there for.

"I can't find anything unusual. Are you sure its there?"
"Um..." I was pretty damn sure.
"Have you lifted anything heavy lately?"
"With my testicles?" I raised my eyebrows for emphasis.
She laughed again, and excused herself to go look at enlarged pictures of my balls. For a minute I was hopeful that the whole thing had been a false alarm. Like the bump was just a small swelling, that would go away over time.
I watched her leave, and then began the unpleasant task of wiping the clear jell off my genitals with the provided rag. It was all over the place, like after a particularly intense wet dream. Maybe that's all this whole ordeal was. She was certainly cute enough to be in one.
Suddenly it struck me. "I should ask her out.." I liked this idea instantly. It would be hilarious, even if she said no. I had to do it.
But when she walked back in, her eyes weren't looking at me.
"We found something."
Shit. Well that's that. Who wants to date a guy who has a lump on his testicles?
I sighed as she closed the door behind her and finished cleaning myself up.

Cancer Groupies

For approximately 23 years of my life I've been completely ignorant about women. It was a willful ignorance, a kind of principled stand against conformity and normality. Or it became that way. Before that, I just wanted a girlfriend so badly that I couldn't get one. If I had to decide between the two, between desperately caring and not caring at all, I really can't say which I'd choose. On one hand you can get hurt pretty badly, on the other hand you live life as an inanimate object. I wouldn't recommend either.

More recently though, approximately around the time a bunch of cells in my right testicle decided to begin replicating themselves ad nauseam, I'd made a breakthrough. I discovered that approaching random women is a skill, not an innate ability. Like all skills it can be learned, through knowledge and experience. I discovered that, for 23 years, I had been seeking the wrong thing. Understanding of the universe, mastery of thought, lucid dreaming, all pale in comparison to the emotional rush of approaching a girl on a park bench and asking, "Can I ask you a question?" In a single month, my entire worldview shifted, and I found that I was capable of filling a hole that I once thought was unfillable.
I was ecstatic. Then the month drew to a close, and I found a lump on my right testicle.

I still am not totally sure if this was the best time for me to get testicular cancer or the worst. Either way there's no denying the irony. At the very same time I had begun to understand women, the very organ which I was doing it for had come under attack. I had a hobby to distract me from the cancer that was spreading inside of me, but at the same time the cancer was distracting me from my hobby. Let me state something obvious. There is no best time for cancer.

However, I think if I had found a lump just a month before hand, my life could have spiraled in a completely different direction. My ego is just where it needs to be in order to make it through this. My previous self-destructive identity would not have been able to handle it.

Here's a conversation I had just a moment ago, with a well intentioned but woman-ignorant friend.
Sedric: "Hey, you can use the whole cancer thing to talk to girls."
Me: "Oh my god, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. All I'll get out of that is pity. What do you get with pity?"
Tammy: "A pity fuck!"
Me: "Ha, yeah. From all those 'cancer groupies' out there right?"

I'm fully aware that testicular cancer isn't going to help me get girls, but that doesn't mean I have to put my sexual self on hold till this is all over. Cancer or no cancer, this last month has been the best month of my life. You can't let a little cancer ruin a good time.
Oh wow. I ended this post on an up note. Here's a smiley face :-)

Boy in a Box

I'm 23, I am not a kid anymore. But you don't feel like an adult when you're trapped like this.
When you're a kid you don't wander too far, you behave yourself, you use your indoor voice. You don't make decisions.
You can't. You do what you're told to, because people who know better, know better than you.

But I'm 23 and I can't make decisions because I have cancer. There's none left for me to make. My decision making privileges have been temporarily revoked. Everything is all worked out for me. My parents are still in the picture, but now doctors have entered the frame. They are part of my extended family. Helping me. Curing me. Making sure I don't wander too far.

On September 11th I will begin my treatment, which involves 6 weeks of chemotherapy. 6 weeks, where I will essentially be removed from normal existence. Stuck in my apartment, with books, and videos, and this computer. I will be bald. I will be prone to disease. I may be sick, or weak, or tired. Piece of cake. But first I have to make it there. And when I make it there, then I just have to make it 6 weeks. I'll get through this, and then everything goes back to normal, says conventional wisdom.

But that's a long period of time to give up. Even for testicular cancer.

Surgeons removed my right testicle earlier this month.
When general anesthesia is administered it numbs the brain, so not only do you not feel a thing, you're not even there. For the first time in your life you experience sleep without dreams. Well, you don't experience it. What you experience is the pinch of the needle as pain killers are pumped into your system, followed by waking up in a hospital bed, feeling groggy and noticing a bandage around your groin. My point is, time does not pass, it simply isn't there at all. You jump from one point of time to another without touching anything in between.

I wonder what that would feel like over a longer period of time.

I wonder, if I had the option to pass up the next 2 months - skip the whole thing - and come out cured on the other end, would I do it?
I think I can say I'd at least like the option.