Cait emailed me once, said she had all these minutes on her cell phone, thousands, & to call her up some time for phone sex. Hmmmmm. Wellllll. I never did. But when I heard of her illness I emailed her, asked to talk with her. She called me the next morning, I was on the U of A campus, almost to work. She was on her way to Philadelphia. I talked to her for almost two hours playing hooky from work, hiding in the shade of some building as the vast heat of the summer morning grew and blossomed. She has a great voice, deepened & roughened by smoke. Her energy caught me, we talked about all sorts of things, me telling her my troubles, as if they meant anything next to hers, then finally to her illness. She was so positive, hard not to drop into that blessed 'everything is going to work out' space. I should be cynical, especially after all the people I have known, dropping off the face of the earth due to cancer, positive for a cure every one. Damn it someone has to beat the odds. Hope, without hope you are no longer human. So we talked & laughed, about how her new tits were going to look - "Go for perky," I suggested, how losing her beautiful hair was the worse part, worse than all the pain and the sickness. Vanity, perhaps if they invent a chemo that doesn't lose hair more people will survive, who knows? Then we had to go, me to my room o' computers, her for a pit stop. "When I'm better I'll call you & we'll have that phone sex. Be sure you have a ruler handy." she sez. "Great, I'll look forward to it! But a ruler? What am I supposed to do with a ruler?" "You'll see." This time it was her that never called. She never did get better. So I repeat that last thing I said to her "I love you darlin'" & Cait, wherever you are, I've got my cell phone and a ruler handy, just in case. Hope, without hope you are no longer human.
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