I Fucked A Man On Chemo

We hadn’t seen each other for three months. He told me to stop calling and texting all the time. I had been in Korea and hadn’t called or texted him for weeks—but who was I to argue with someone who had just started chemotherapy.

My French friend had said, “He’s depressed. Just go over there and see him.” But I couldn’t just drop by. I didn’t want to be the crazy woman knocking at the door unannounced.

I hadn’t planned on stopping by. But I had three hours to kill in his neighborhood before a reading. So like I was in trance, I drove to his street, parked, walked toward his door and had someone in the apartment building let me in.

I knocked. No answer. I said his name. He opened the door and said, “Come in, come in.”

He was playing internet poker. It was his new hobby he had taken up ever since he was diagnosed. It kept his mind off things.

He invited me to sit on his new striped couch. “Fundraising money,” he said. So there I sat, as he finished up his virtual poker game. One hand on the computer mouse, he started his ramblings about the past few months, the trips to the hospital, how he wasn’t going to go on Fridays anymore because it ruined his day. He said, “You’re looking at my bald head, aren’t you?”

I retorted, “That’s your projection. I think it looks gangsta! I dyed my roots, just for you.” He was always pointing out my roots when they grew back in, the white trash contrast to the blonde ambition.

My iphone rang. I took the call, told my friend Katie I wasn’t around the West side for her visit. I finished my call and he finished his game.

Then he told me about the nausea, the throwing up, how there were days when he couldn’t get out of bed. A wash of sadness went through the room, through me.

I stood up, walked over to where he was sitting, and hugged him. His head to my belly, my hand on his bald head with the tufts of remaining hair at the nape of his neck.

Everything after that, a familiar blur—his mouth on my breasts and before you know it, we’re naked in bed. In the seven years we’ve known each other, there have been times we’ve been alone together in a room with our clothes on, but I guess this wasn’t going to be one of them.

I asked, “Is this going to kill you?”

He replied, “I’m afraid you’re going to kill me.”

Everything was so normal. The two rounds, him scrambling in his dresser drawer for his eye drops, putting on his underwear afterward because his mother always said, “Always have your underwear on because you never know when you might have to run out.” He joked about me having to run out naked and him pretending not to know me in the street—channel 7 filming, my students recognizing me on the news. I laughed.

I asked why he wanted me to stop calling and texting.

His defenses kicked in, “Is this a test? Multiple choice? Essay?”

I said, “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” Lying next to him, I knew enough.

I was glad the attorney I had started to see never called me back. I was so grateful to God for the moment with his head to my belly, my hand to his bare head.