You know Adam, you know Eve. No, not in the biblical sense, of course, but in the history-of-mythology sense. (If you believe literally in Partriarch Uno and Matriarch Una--and if I were a lot more devious than I am--I would be tempted to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.) Well, if you know those two, you certainly know what came between them. Though at my age I know a great deal about the problem of good and evil, I am not exactly their symbol, the apple. O yes I am. Or soon will be. Let me explain.
Plato recounted the myth that primordial man was neither male nor female, but a combination of the two. Why did Zeus decide to split the androgenous thing apart? Let me guess. They suffered from fatigue; they lacked goals; they were phlegmatic; they were, no matter their age, old. After his sword went snickersnack, howwever, each half became obsessed with hooking up with the other. Sex was born; vitality increased; romantic love as well as sexual obsession have been with us ever since.
Now let us put both myths together. Let us write our own myth; let the ruddy little sphere between them, the apple, represent a half-Eve, half-Adam androgynous blob. Now let's go from myth to reality: that adrogenous blob will soon be me.
An aggressive form of prostate cancer forces me to take a course of hormone therapy before I begin a six-week course of radiation. You may recall that Alan Turing, so important in the development of computers, was also the man who used his Turing Machine to break a Nazi code, which greatly aided the Allied war effort. His reward: chemical castration. Homosexuality was illegal in those days; he was given the choice to rot in jail or become an Eve-and-Adam apple.
What have I got to complain about? Old age unites old men and old women. Wrinkles and ageism go hand in hand. Before one's forgotten completly, being ignored can help make a crabapple wise.
There I go again! Like most human beings, I have done some terrible things over the years, including acts of commssion and sins of omission, but, like most human beings, I've gotten away with it. My path doesn't lead to a fork in the road, hormones to the left, jail to the right; I have no choice but to walk straight on and join all those pitiful apples in the sad orchard ahead. There I go again!
If any reader is in the same condition as I am now, here is good advice; cheer up and walk on; it's not so bad. Since I made the decision to proceed, I have experienced feelings of relief. Go with the flow and all that. And, besides, there is a good chance that after treatment I will leave the androgynous apple of good and evil behind and become an incarnation of good and evil, Adam, again.
Yes, the fruit of research is good, very good indeed. Without it, without the support of the medical experts and staff at Hopkins, I would soon be looking up at that orchard for a very, very long time. Yet I have miles to go berfore I sleep. And I shall sleep soundly tonight.
(P,S,, I've read that women in Japan rarely suffer form hot flashes during menopause. This is probably due to the consumption of tofu, a food which contains naturally occurring estrogens. Arigato, Sisters!--lucky for me, we cook tofu a lot.)
To self and other selves all over the world: Be thankful! Keep breathing! And at the very least, survive.
Comments welcome. Especially from those who suffer from a serious illness.
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