Rebecca Handler

Cancer makes you see yourself as two bodies, the one you must fix and the one that will take over. I recently saw The Substance, the body horror film with Demi Moore as a 50-year-old TV star who, upon hearing she’s aged out of the business, gives herself an injection to release the younger version of herself so she can continue to enjoy the spotlight. Things fall apart of course, and blood and gore prevail. 

Before my double mastectomy, my mother would often say, “I can’t believe they’re going to cut you up,” even after I told her to stop saying that. I was stuck on the not-dying part, while my mother was preoccupied by the horror that awaited me.  

The movie is an in-your-face-allegory for attitudes towards the aging female form. But it is also a story of flesh and bones, and the ripping apart of everything that no longer serves us. The blood and gore in The Substance reaches a point of absurdity, reminiscent of the barfing scene in Triangle of Sadness. 

When I was in pre-op and the surgeon drew on me with Sharpie, it hit me. My body was a piece of meat to be carved and stuffed and sewn back up. Post-op, my body started to separate from me, becoming an object that belonged to me rather than the Me itself. 

At one point, my mother used the words mutilated and baby girl in the same sentence.  

Horror movies were never my favorite. I squeezed my eyes and ears shut during Poltergeist, Saw, The Conjuring, Rosemary’s Baby, even Scream. But during The Substance, I stared straight ahead at the screen as Demi Moore’s naked back split open and birthed Margaret Qualley. I watched calmly as a body was kicked relentlessly until both the victim and attacker were soaked in blood. I felt more gratitude than horror. 

I asked to see photos of my breast tissue after it was removed. At my bedside, the surgeon opened her phone to show me two perfectly round meat patties. Impossible Breasts. 

I asked to see photos of my ovaries. Teensy tiny worms. They were removed through my belly button. 

My mom might be tactless, but her words were an alarm bell for her daughter.

After the first few surgeries, it took me weeks to look in the mirror. I didn’t want to see the blood and the bruising. After the most recent one however, I examined myself as one might an artifact. I felt curious. This body was no longer me. It had transformed to something that simply held me. Plus, the fact that my breasts no longer had much sensation contributed to me seeing them as Other. Imagine your arm falling asleep and you poke at it as if to say, what is this strange limb doing on my pillow? 

Three years later, my naked form looks like a body intact. I spend a lot of time in a sauna with women of all ages. If cancer comes up in conversation, many are surprised to hear that I have been cut up and remade. But I’m a monster, I could say. A mutilated baby girl.     

Near the end of The Substance, a disfigured, fleshy corpus splits open to allow a bloody blob to fall to the floor. The blob is revealed to be a breast. It is by all accounts, revolting. I laughed. After cancer, I’ve been a bit lost in my body. I’d say I’m on a journey but that would involve saying the word journey. What pleased my old body no longer pleases this one. I’m still not sure what this one wants. But it might be horror movies. 

The first time I fell madly in love was my freshman year of college. I saw this hyper-tall, not-conventionally handsome, sweaty man roaring through college on a bicycle and made it my mission to meet him. We finally did meet, one night in the rain, where we kissed near an overflowing garbage can. Even though he had no idea where to put his tongue, I didn’t care, and we dated for a year. 

He introduced me to a world of music with which I was previously unfamiliar. Metallica, Jane’s Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cypress Hill. Angry, fun, not-conventionally handsome belters. And when a mysteriously named music festival landed in Long Island, my tongue-tied boyfriend borrowed a friend’s car, picked up Slurpee’s at 7-11, and took me to Lollapalooza. He wouldn’t let me buy a joint from a white man in a Rasta hat during Ice Cube’s set which should have been a sign that he liked to control me, but that day I thought it was sweet and I was in love with being with a man who could pick me up with one arm.  

That was the first time I heard Pearl Jam. When Eddie Vedder began to sing, I felt the way I do every time I look up at a skyscraper. Humans can do this? My people, my species, we can do this?

Nearly 30 years later, I am spending the weekend in Napa to attend a music festival with my just-tall-enough, very-much-handsome husband who has also introduced me to heaps of music and gratefully does not try to control me. Last night, as we were swaying to Stevie Nicks and marveling at her scarf changes between songs, I felt happy. Leading up to this weekend, I had three nightmares, three nights in a row, all having to do with October 7^th, when festival goers in Israel were savagely attacked. I was nervous. Now that I’m here, though, I feel fine. Which also feels weird.  

Pearl Jam is performing tonight. I hope they play “Better Man.” I want to dance, and I also hope there is somewhere for me to sit down.    

When I was being treated for cancer a few years ago, I created a deathbed playlist on Spotify so if things did take a turn for the worse, at least “Call Me Maybe” wouldn’t be the last thing I’d ever hear. Eddie Vedder was predominantly featured, along with Bjork (of course) and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” which in retrospect might have been too frenetic. I deleted the playlist last year. 

As customary when returning from an international trip, I brought a special treat to share with my coworkers. The salted caramel sugar biscuits came in a rectangular, bright blue flowered tin, the perfect size for storing pencils or chopsticks. I emailed all staff: “Cookies from Oxford! Enjoy!” One by one, the cookies disappeared. In the late afternoon, I stopped by the office kitchen for a consumption check. Not only were the cookies gone, but so was the tin. I really wanted that tin. I found myself with a dilemma. Do I email staff to ask for it back, or do I suck it up and accept the blame for not making it clear that I meant to keep the tin for myself? 

It was a Tuesday, a day many of us come to the office to work together, in person. On other days, those with more flexible schedules and the ability to accomplish tasks remotely, we work from home. 

Three years ago, before Covid hit, there’s no way I could have negotiated this hybrid situation in which I now find myself. “Will you be in tomorrow?” was never a question. I never knew I’d frequently use the word hybrid.

That Tuesday, while making an espresso in the office kitchen, I confessed to one of my colleagues, “I think someone stole my cookie tin.” Without hesitation, he said, “I saw that tin. It was sparkly. Get it back.” “But what if I seem petty? I mean, I didn’t specify.” He said, “If those cookies had been in a Tupperware or on a plate, no one would have taken it.” When two other colleagues joined us, we filled them in on the drama. “This is exciting, an office mystery!” one of them exclaimed, checking the trash and recycling. No tin.

As much I enjoy the flexibility, Covid really screwed us. Recently I listened to a podcast about the negative effect of the hybrid workplace. The story focused on people earlier in their careers, the ones who most need to network but don’t know that networking is predominantly an in-person activity. The best mentoring opportunities and career discussions stem from spontaneous interactions. And fruitful, spontaneous interactions don’t happen over Zoom. 

With the encouragement of my kitchen colleagues, I decided to write to all staff. “It is with a heavy and somewhat self-conscious heart I ask for my cookie tin back. Please return it to my desk. No questions asked.”

Word got around. “There’s lots of people here today,” said the office manager. “Does anyone look guilty?” A young colleague stopped by to give my dog a treat. Laughing, she said, “Maybe Ginger took it.” She’s having her first baby soon, and we talked for a while about managing a full-time job while being a new mother. 

My coworkers have made numerous attempts over the past few years to entice people to come into the office. Free parking and office supplies, flavored sparkling water, dog treats, Nespresso pods, nice bathrooms with that special poop spray. We just got a massage chair. Still, many of us continue to choose home over the workplace. 

Our office has cameras, in the event of a burglary. Our company president put up $10 to the charity of the thief’s choice. Someone else matched it. Nothing yet. 

I met a man who is allergic to everything except beef and milk. And dark chocolate. He can eat that in small quantities. His bout with Covid two years ago left him with the inability to consume most things. Fruit? Itchy rash. Cucumbers? Forget about it. He leaves the house when his wife is cooking, because even the smells are repulsive. While he was sharing this with me at the dog park, he went through two Marlboro Reds. Our dogs seemed to like each other. I was surprised by the cucumbers because aren’t they mostly water? He said yes but they burn his mouth. 

On my walk home, I did what I sometimes do after meeting someone new. I thought about spending my life with this person. Someone who eats beef for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. An adult who drinks glasses of milk instead of wine or even lemonade. I’d have to eat out a lot. The restaurant staff would know me as the wife of the man who can’t eat anything. Here, have this pear walnut Roquefort salad before you go home. I’d feel sorry for him, but I’d also expect him to step up in other ways if this new life were to work out. He’d have to be an exceptional homemaker, lovemaker, dog walker. He’d have to be the funniest, kindest, most generous person to have ever lived. And that wouldn’t be fair. Someone should be allowed to eat prime rib for every meal and also be a jerk from time to time.

Wiping my dog’s paws once I got home, I realized my dog only eats beef and the occasional broccoli floret. Ginger is a terrible homemaker and don’t make a crass joke about the lovemaking. I would need to think of this new imaginary husband as a dog and not a person. A dog who smokes Marlboro Reds.

Let’s face it. This would not work out. By the time the dog got settled in her bed and I had started making dinner, the man and I had separated. I was spending too much money eating out and was way too hard on him. He can’t help it that he’s allergic to everything. 

By the time my actual husband got home, I was tired from the new husband and subsequent break-up. At dinner, I watched my actual husband eat salad with tomatoes and shallots as he listened to our daughter talk about her American History class. He drank wine like a grown-up. He doesn’t have allergies per se, but he’s never liked cream-based soups.   

If I were a poet, I’d write about the dry-cleaning woman who was kind to my daughter and her bell-bottomed jeans that needed hemming. I’d write about the crow that waited on the sidewalk like a father forced to go shopping. But what about the man wanting a dollar for a coffee but how does anyone buy a coffee for a dollar in a town with eight-dollar donuts? If I were a poet, I’d stretch the word conflict to spill over the page and I’d rhyme words and phrases like antisemitism and no place for them. This morning, after the hemming, the patient crow, and the coffee incident, two freshly laundered Mormon boys in skinny black ties asked if I had time for a story. I said no thank you I’m Jewish. What I didn’t say was that today, on Irving Street, I am more Jewish than I’ve ever been, and my grandmother didn’t escape the Holocaust with my father, his baby brother, and diamonds in the sole of her shoe for all the who-said-whats. But maybe that’s exactly why she did. Because someday she’d have a granddaughter named in her memory who would still feel the hatred of Jews in the words people toss around without an eight-dollar morsel of understanding. If I were a poet, I’d fill a page with commas to look like tears, make a million copies, and hand them to slogan-lovers and say here, burn this instead.