Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mom decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house and spent my entire existence on the couch watching reality TV shows. I don’t see what’s depressing about this, except that maybe my mom was depressed because she didn’t have such an awesome life.
My mom was on the lookout for depression, because every cancer book and website lists depression as one of the side effects of cancer. But depression isn’t a side effect of cancer. It’s a side effect of hanging out with douches. My mom and doctor didn’t know this, however, so they decided I should help treat my depression by attending a weekly cancer Support Group.
The Support Group, of course, just added to my depression because it featured a rotating cast of douches. The Group met every Wednesday in the basement of a church shaped like a cross. We sat in a circle just below the middle of the cross, precisely where Jesus’ anus would have been. I knew this because Patrick the Support Group Leader told us this every week. Patrick loved to use Jesus’ anus as an analogy: just as every part of Jesus is sacred – even his anus – every person is sacred, even people with cancer. Patrick thought this analogy was helpful and inspiring. He also liked it because he had cancer of the anus.
At the start of every Group, we introduced ourselves. Or should I say, intro-douched ourselves. Name, age, diagnosis, how we were doing. When it was my turn, I’d say: “I’m Hazel. I’m sixteen. Thyroid cancer originally, but it’s now spread to my lungs. And I’m doing fine…EXCEPT THAT I HAVE FUCKING CANCER IN MY LUNGS.” People laughed the first time I said this. When it got to like the twenty-fifth time they really hated it.
The only redeeming feature of Support Group was Isaac, this skinny guy who had lost one of his eyes to cancer. Isaac and I would communicate through body language while other people were speaking, making fun of their “traumatic cancer experiences” and their “suggestions for coping with cancer.” We really were the only two non-douchey people there.
***
So Support Group sucked, and in fact, on the day I met Augustus Waters, I tried to get out of it.
Me: “I refuse to attend Support Group. I’m busy.”
Mom: “Busy doing what?”
Me: “Busy not attending Support Group.”
Mom: “Hazel, you’re not gonna meet any guys sitting on the couch. You aren’t a little kid anymore. You’re becoming a woman. And to be perfectly blunt, every woman periodically needs some cock.”
She had a point…sort of. Every woman does periodically need some cock. But at the Support Group, there was only gonna be Cancer Cock. And at that moment, like every other moment of my life before then, I didn’t really feel the need for Cancer Cock.
But I wanted to make my mom happy. She did pay the cable bill, after all. So I went to Support Group.
***
Mom pulled into the church driveway and I got out of the car, pulling behind me the wheeled oxygen tank that was my constant companion. Like other kids with an oxygen tank, I’d given my tank a name. The name I’d chosen was R2O2.
“Do you want me to carry R2O2 in for you?”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. R2O2 gave me oxygen through tubes up my nose. This helped my damaged lungs work, and also helped eliminate any possibility of non-humiliating social interaction.
“I love you,” Mom said as I got out.
“I love you too, Mom. See you in an hour.”
“Find some cock!” she said through the rolled-down window as I walked away.
I headed downstairs into the basement and went over to the refreshment table. It was the usual assortment of bland supermarket-brand fare. I grabbed a cookie and some fruit punch and turned around.
A boy was not staring at me.
When you’re a girl, and you’re anywhere near a boy, they stare at you. Except hot boys. They don’t stare at you, because they have other options, or they’re thinking about being hot, or whatever. This particular boy was not staring. And surprise, surprise: he was super hot.
I knew, however, that he would stare at me sometime in the next hour, even if by accident. And I suddenly became aware of my myriad insufficiencies: I hadn’t brushed my hair before leaving the house, I was wearing old, weird-fitting jeans, and I had thrown on a T-shirt which said I’M FAT AND PSYCHO AND DON’T HAVE PREMARITAL SEX. It was supposed to be ironic, or something.
“Everyone take your seats,” said Patrick, and we all sat down to begin Support Group. The hot boy sat next to Isaac, three seats away from me.
“Isaac, perhaps you’d like to begin?” Patrick said.
Isaac nodded and stood up. “I’m Isaac. Seventeen. I have surgery in a couple weeks, and it looks like afterwards I’ll be blind. It kinda sucks, but my girlfriend’s been a big help. Unfortunately, after the operation I won’t be able to look at her anymore. But she’s not so pretty that it’s a huge deal. Oh also, I’ve really been helped a lot by my friend Augustus.” He nodded toward Hot Boy, who now had a name.
The introductions continued and we heard from Douches #1 through 6. “Hi, I’m Douche #3. Douche years old. I have douche cancer, and I’m doing douchely.”
Then it was Augustus’ turn. He stood up.
“Augustus Waters. Seventeen. I had a little osteosarcoma last year, but it’s in remission now. Today I’m just here to support my friend Isaac…and maybe to pick up chicks.”
And that’s when he stared at me.
Was he flirting with me? I probably would’ve had a better idea if I hadn’t spent my entire life sitting on a couch. Or if they had discussed the topic on Property Brothers.
Augustus sat down, and Support Group returned to normal. The next half-hour featured the usual combination of Group activities: the other participants reaching out for a kindred spirit to empathize with them and perhaps even give them the will to live another day, and me texting. Neither Augustus nor I spoke again until Patrick said, “Augustus, do you have any fears you’d like to share with the group?”
“My fears?”
“Yes.”
“I fear oblivion,” he said.
“Interesting,” Patrick said. “Would anyone like to speak to that?”
I was not the hand-raising type. This was because hand-raising involved doing something besides sitting on the couch, and I was not the doing-something-besides-sitting-on-the-couch type. And yet, this once, I decided to raise my hand.
“Hazel?” said Patrick, genuinely stunned that I wanted to speak unprompted in Support Group.
I looked over at Augustus Waters, who for the second time was staring at me.
“Fearing oblivion is stupid,” I said. “Because one day everyone’s gonna die, and all our descendants will die, and there’ll be no one left who remembers anything we did. Nobody who remembers Aristotle, and nobody who remembers Cleopatra, and nobody who remembers you. So get a life and stop worrying about it, ‘cause that’s what everyone else manages to do.” I had learned this from An Imperial Affliction, my favorite book of all time. I frequently used passages from the book in conversation as if they were my own.
After I finished, there was a long period of silence as a smile spread across Augustus’ face – not the crooked smile of a hot boy trying to be sexy, but his real smile. “Goddamn,” Augustus said quietly. “You are a giant cunt.”
Neither of us said anything else during the rest of Group. At the end, Patrick led the Group in a prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ, we are gathered here in your anus, literally in your anus, as cancer survivors. We pray that your love might pass to us through your anal lining, and provide us comfort. We also remember in our hearts all who have passed away from this Group and have gone home to you, and all who will be soon going home to you: Isaac, who should be going home to you ten months from now…Lida, who you can expect in five months…Miguel…” He proceeded to read off each of our names and our projected date of death.
When Patrick was finished, we said this stupid mantra together–YOU’RE NEVER ALONE WHEN CANCER IS WITH YOU–and it was over. Augustus stood up and walked over to me. He kind of limped a bit, with his right leg perfectly straight, and I realized his limp was caused by his having a prosthetic leg. Fucking cripple, I thought to myself. But then I thought, Come on Hazel, give him a chance.
“Hey,” he said. “Let’s watch a movie.”
When a non-hot boy asks you on a date right after meeting you, you find an excuse to say no and walk away. But when a hot boy asks you…well.
“Sure, how about Thursday?” I said.
“No, right now, at my house,” he said.
When a non-hot boy tries to get you back to his house right after meeting you, you grab your mace and consider calling 9-1-1. But when a hot boy asks you…well.
“Sure, sounds great!”
We walked out of the church into the parking lot, where I spotted Isaac and his girlfriend making out sloppily against the wall of the church. In between slobbery kisses, they were saying “Always” to each other, every two seconds.
“What’s with the ‘always’?” I said to Augustus.
“Shhhhh, no talking during the show,” Augustus said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and put one between his lips.
“Are you kidding me?” I said.
“What?” he said, the unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth.
“You HAD CANCER and yet you give money to some company for the chance to acquire MORE CANCER? Omigod, you just totally ruined the whole thing.”
“Which whole thing?” he said.
“The whole thing where a pretentious player dude I know nothing about invites me to his place thirty seconds after meeting me, clearly revealing he’s only interested in me for sex.”
I felt this weird mix of anger and disappointment. Mom’s car approached, and I headed toward the curb. But then I felt a hand grab mine. I turned back to Augustus.
“They don’t kill you unless you light them,” Augustus said. “I’ve never actually lit one. You see, it’s a metaphor: you put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t allow it to do its killing.”
“Wait, so what exactly is the metaphor?” I asked.
“The cigarette is a metaphor for cancer,” he said.
“And how exactly?”
“Because, um, you know, like…cancer’s the thing that kills you…and…um … you metaphorically hold it with your teeth.”
Omg, he was so hot.
I turned to Mom’s car. “Mom, I’m going to a movie with Augustus Waters.”
Mom raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Have fun, honey,” she said. She mouthed the words “no anal” and drove away.
