Lousy Sex: Creating Self in an Infectious World

2. Layers of Self

19 2 Layers of Self Although its biological separation is immediate, it takes nearly a full year before a human infant realizes it is an entity distinct from its mother—a self-aware creature unto itself. Curiously, the final immunological separation from the mother takes place at about the same time, and then the real battle begins. Sandy “Unfair,” she says. “That’s how it feels.” Her words ring with certainty. I wasn’t expecting that. Sandy and I have been friends for years, but we have never spoken like this before. Sitting in the small gray cubicle where she works, her words fall like stones—solid, cold. We’re together this morning because I asked her to talk with me about her MS—multiple sclerosis—a situation quite different from any other I know. Because she and her disease are so remarkable, I am trying to write a story about both, and about me. Outside it’s July. Trees full of leaves, freshly mown lawns covered with children, pavement hot as griddles. Inside it is cool and quiet. I DOI:10.5876/9781607322337:c02 l o u s y s e x 20 wasn’t expecting “unfair,” and for a moment I can’t decide where to go. The silence grows prickly. “Has it changed you?” I ask finally, unable to think of anything more specific. “Yes. For one thing, I’ve decided I won’t have children,” she says, shrugging off my stupidity. “It just isn’t worth the risk, no matter how small, that I might pass it on to my son or my daughter. I always wanted children. But not now.” What a shame, I think, that a woman as beautiful as Sandy will never have children. “Do people treat you differently?” I ask. “Lastweek,onefacultymemberaccusedmeofbeingdrunkat 9:00 inthemorning . It’s true I can’t walk a straight line anymore and sometimes I slur my words. But drunk? I want people to know that it’s the disease, not me. I can’t help it.” Sandy is thirty-five years old, petite, brunette, with a face like a cameo, easy to like, and a smile that flickers as quickly and as brightly as flashbulbs. Seven years ago the doctors told her that her immune system had begun a relentless attack against her brain and spinal cord. They said it was multiple sclerosis, this disease. The name seems a bit sterile to me, too easy to say out loud. I think those who named it didn’t give the name much thought. “When I was first diagnosed, the people I worked with worried that they might catch MS from me, that it was infectious. That was hard. And though I try, sometimes I can’t help but believe that this is punishment for something I did.” For the first time she appears near tears. “I believe, though, that everything happens for a purpose,” Sandy continues, her resolution glistening in her serious eyes, her smile again flickering at the corners of her lips. “I may not understand it now. I may never understand it. But I believe it.” And it’s completely clear that she does. Punishment? “When I’m done with this, do you want to read it?” I ask her. “I don’t read as easily as I used to.” “I could read it to you.” “No, I’ll have my S.O. read it to me. He’d like to read it, too.” It takes me a while to get “significant other” out of that and Sandy’s mischievous grin. L ay e r s o f S e l f 21 The tingling, the slurred speech, the angular gait, the accusations of drunkenness , the worried stares of the unaffected, and the revolt of her own body and mind arriving each day as wakefulness claims her. Unfair. Perhaps. But it isn’t like Sandy did nothing to deserve her disease, is it? Even Sandy knows better than that. Sandy is, after all, of German descent. And she was born a woman. And she did grow up in the state of Colorado. Thymic Portraiture True insights into self don’t come cheaply. A little like staring long and hard at the face of a watch and trying to think your way through the mechanism. Somehow it seems it must have to do with time itself, some inherent will of the watch to mark the...