The UnTexan

NECK-O-PHOBIA: CUTTING MY OWN THROAT

I had another ultrasound a couple of weeks ago. My large thyroid cyst is gone. That's the good news. But there is still a little area of calcification on the right lobe of my thyroid where the cyst once was. And now there are two very small cysts on the left lobe of my thyroid. And some more calcification. That is not good news. Calcification is not a good thing. Calcification and carcinoma can go hand in hand and carcinoma in any context is a frightening word. When the nurse calls from the doctor's office and says, "Dr. Huang would like for you to come in to discuss your ultrasound and your options," it is not a good sign. I had two options: continued monitoring OR surgery. I told the doctor I was not the sort of person who was going to leap on the table and have surgery and she told me she liked my conservative approach. But she seemed relieved when I picked surgery.

So sometime in mid-January my thyroid will be removed. I will have to allow a stranger to mess with my neck with a knife. That will be the hardest part. I do not like to have my neck touched. Or cut. Or squeezed. I like it when my wife kisses my neck. She is the only one I trust. Otherwise, I do not even like to wear shirts that button at the throat.

The surgery is routine (aren't they all?), but there can be problems. Vocal cord paralysis (complete or partial) from nerve damage is one possible side effect. Partial paralysis would turn my voice hoarse for the rest of my life. The other would be worse. I told the doctor I would be unable to survive without being able to talk. My brain pumps out words the way artesian wells pump water. I do not speak, I overflow. I told her how words build up in me. I told her she would have to be very careful in removing my thyroid because I would smother under the weight of the unspoken words in my head if I could not get them out.

So there will be Christmas, then New Year's, then throat-cutting. Then maybe we can talk about it.

BETTIE PAGE IS DEAD

Today's New York Times has an obituary for Bettie Page. The headline reads: "Bettie Page, Queen of the Pinups, Dies at 85." The Times is selling Bettie short. She was not a pinup queen. Well, she was. But she quit being a pinup queen years ago. Generations of men and boys worshipped Bettie Page, dropping to their knees in front of her photograph for decades. There are naked Betties, partially clothed Betties, whips and bondage Betties, Bettie spanking and being spanked, and for some reason Bettie with a short whip and a stuffed toy monkey, always with the bangs and the black hair. There are men and boys who would have paid good money to be Bettie's monkey. She understood the impact her highest-and-even-higher-heeled shoes had on the male imagination. They were shoes no ordinary woman would wear (Bettie knew how to make a point). Who could even walk in them? Bettie's shoes weren't made for walking; they were fuck-me shoes. She understood other things too. She was the woman men and boys had sex with while they were waiting for their good girl to come along. No doubt Bettie was a homewrecker. What other woman could ever measure up to Bettie Page? It was a time when no good girl wanted to (or admitted she wanted to) be like Bettie and I am sure there are women who found themselves home alone because they were not Bettie Page. Bettie understood things. You could see it in her eyes. If you looked at her eyes. And there was an innocence in Bettie that is easier and easier to see in an age when most everyone's child has seen real porn on the Internet by they time they are 11 years old and are bored with it a couple of years later. Porn is boring. Bettie Page never looked boring. I was 13 years old (about the age kids get porn-bored these days) when I found Bettie in 1957. That was the same year Bettie left the pinup business and disappeared into the world of mystery and photographs. She was 34 years old and had been a Playboy centerfold only a couple of years before that. Boys stole their fathers' girlie magazines to get a glimpse of Bettie. She was in the first "dirty" magazine I bought at a newsstand on a dare from my friends. I made the clerk put it in a bag. That magazine stayed in my dresser drawer -- most of the time -- until I left home after high school. Nowadays young women try to look like skinny, flat-butted 13-year-old boys. And they shave their pubic hair until they are as slick and smooth as a little girl. Bettie wasn't like that. Bettie was a woman. Bettie had curves. Bettie had pubic hair too, but not many boys I knew had those photographs. She is the most enthusiastically naked woman many of us will ever see. But even in those pictures there is an undeniable innocence that cloaks Bettie.  Bettie is dead, but she will always be wonderful to look at. And remember.

Photographs protected. Property of the author.