Worst. lesson from cancer. ever.
Monday, July 20 2009
I was listening to the radio yesterday morning, and it was a program on humor and illness. Several of the interview subjects were cancer survivors, and they were talking about the lessons they learned from cancer.
One of them, a screenwriter named Hal Ackerman, said this: “I learned women are for being awake with – not just for sleeping with. That’s my big gift from cancer.” It wasn’t a joke.
Granted, this is something every man should learn, preferably sooner in life than Mr. Ackerman did. But two things struck me about his remarks:
1) He needed cancer to teach him this, as opposed to, say, a book – or, heck, an actual human woman.
2) That’s all he got – that was his “big gift from cancer”.
I’m all for learning important lessons from illness, but I have to say: Mr. Ackerman should have demanded more from his cancer. He got shortchanged. He needs to go back to cancer and demand a refund – maybe get ‘the meaning of life’ or winning lottery numbers instead.
“I learned women are for being awake with – not just for sleeping with.”
Thanks for the morning creep out Duncan. I have images of this Hal dude stock piling the date-rape drug for some reason. I am going to my happy place now.
From my cancer I learned that many men were still for sleeping with, not being awake with. Yep, 27 and single with cancer, I hoped for some mercy fucks that would at least lead to a little holding and comfort afterwords. Nope. Their heads hit the pillows just as fast as when I was sans tumors. It just felt a little bit lonelier hearing them snore when I was trying to shake the cancer thoughts from my mind.
P.S. The only reason this guy bothered to be awake with these women is because he was scared shitless of dying and couldn’t crash as fast aftewards.
Reality – sorry! Send us a postcard from that happy place.
Kairol – it’s a little more complicated than that. He had prostate cancer, and had to take a testosterone blocking drug. He lost all his sex drive – basically, he was neutered. The reason he was awake with women was that he couldn’t perform if he slept with them. Afterwards, he wrote a play, the point of which is that he had to redefine what it meant to be a “man” without basing that definition on his sexual prowess.