Cancer Schmancer (6 page)

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pected glances with John across the dinner table. Between us there were extra clinks of wineglasses and extra-close dances. I was picking up a vibe from John that I’d never experienced in all the years we worked together.

“Are you going to Vegas to see Phish?” he asked while we were dancing.

“Nah. I was thinking about it, if I could have hooked up with this guy I met in New York. But that’s not going to happen, so I’m going to pass,” I answered honestly. “Vegas isn’t fun unless you can have a sexy time with someone. It’s all so decadent, who needs to be alone?”

“Well, I’m going . . . maybe you should come anyway,” he said, looking into my eyes.

Maybe I “should come anyway”? Was that a pass? I was totally caught off guard. John never seemed into me, so why had that one question seemed so loaded with possibilities? “Umm, uh, well, maybe. I don’t know, should I?” What was I saying? I wished someone had stuffed a sock in my mouth.

By the car ride home it was clear he was indeed making a move, and I went for it. I’ve got to admit, up until this night I’d never seen it coming. He’d gotten that good at masking his feelings. Apparently, he’d had some relationships with coworkers in the past and they’d ended awkwardly. He vowed never to go down that path again.

I learned in therapy that we never know what’s going on in anyone’s mind. He wasn’t thinking I was too old for him. That’s what I was thinking he was thinking. The truth was, he liked me and always had. This twenty-six-year-old thought I was sexy, and believe me, I had no problem returning the compliment.

So that night I invited him in. Wow, I was so relieved that I liked the way he kissed, especially the way he held me when we 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 43

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kissed. He seemed to be having a great time, and was so open and uninhibited. When we undressed, I was glad I hadn’t worn pants that left marks on my body. I’ve always liked being naked and felt surprisingly at ease around him. I think he found that refreshing and appealing. We had so much fun together. I never imagined he’d be such a confident lover. I don’t know why I was so surprised—I mean, he was a great-looking young guy living on his own and making decent money. I’m sure he had a lot more experience with the opposite sex than I did! It’s just that of all the good-looking guys working on the show, he was the only one who never flirted. He was like a mystery man, to me anyway.

In the morning I dropped him off at his place and said good-bye outside his apartment. He seemed uncomfortable with any public displays of affection and practically jumped out of the car, thanking me for the lift as if nothing had happened. All day I was thinking I should let him off the hook. I was the older one, in therapy and all; I should be able to communicate with him so things wouldn’t get awkward or weird. I mean, what happened happened, but if the experience left him with regrets the next morning, we should be open and honest so we could remain friends.

Before I went to bed, I called him to see how he was. Basically, he was freaking out and grateful I’d called. He didn’t want to speak with anyone about our encounter. He was very afraid of idle gossip, that he would now be thought of as Fran Drescher’s boy toy. I could appreciate his concerns and respected him for being the kind of person he was, so I said, “Look, what happened last night was obviously something we’d both been curious about, and I’m glad we did it. It was fun. But we’re not getting married and we never have to do it again, so no one needs to know.”

He seemed very relieved by my tone, grateful I wasn’t trying to get my hooks into him. Clearly, he felt way in over his head. All the 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 44

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time I was hanging out with him, feeling like equals, he was looking at me as a huge star who’d also been his boss! I wasn’t emotionally invested in him at all—I mean, I hardly knew him—so it was easy to be grown-ups about the whole thing and resume being friends within our larger group of friends.

Well, I figured that was that, but that wasn’t that because he started calling me. He really didn’t want things to end. He liked what was beginning, but just got scared. The minute I cut him loose, freed him of any and all obligation, he wanted me all the more. Go figure.

So I guess you can say we very quietly started to see each other. The more time we spent together, the more connected we became. Like me, he always put other people’s needs above his own, and like me he had no clue that this was a way to avoid his own problems and feelings. I think this common denominator became the magnet that held us together. We understood each other because we both behaved the same way. And through this understanding, each of us was able to make huge progress in expressing our wants and needs. It’s not that his original concerns weren’t legitimate or that his desire to be regarded on his own merit and not for his involvement with me wasn’t an issue. It was. By now, however, it was clear we could not stop seeing each other, so we simply kept our relationship a secret.

But my symptoms hadn’t gone away. The regularity with which I was having sex with John made the staining and cramping a constant, though I really didn’t feel comfortable sharing this with him. I mean, I loved having sex with him. The way his long hair tented around my face enclosed us in a dark, private world.

But every time we’d make love, I’d end up with a kind of mini period that was a real negative. So much for being the single swinger.

I didn’t know where to turn, so believe it or not, I decided to 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 45

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go back to Doctor #1, the gynecologist I’d been seeing for years. I mean, I had wanted to try someone else and I did—I’d tried four someone elses, to be exact. And no one was offering me any miracles. So I was beginning to think that Doctor #1 wasn’t so bad, and made myself an appointment.

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The Progesterone Blues

S e p t e m b e r 1 9 9 9

iwas never one of those women who dreamed of having a baby.

Not like my dear friend Rachel, who played Val on The Nanny.

She always knew she wanted a baby and ended up giving birth to twins. My friend Donna had three daughters; my girlfriend Kat had three sons. It seemed like almost every woman I’d known wanted to have a baby and had one, including my sister. So why was I different? What was it about having a child that made me so scared? Not so much of rearing one, but of actually giving birth to one.

I used to wonder if I was just different from other women. I used to say, “I take care of Peter, it’s enough.” But really, that wasn’t true. Actually, I think Peter would’ve made a good father.

He always showed a lot of patience playing with other people’s kids, whereas I didn’t. But he wasn’t that involved or loving toward Chester, our dog, which used to make me wonder. Still, none of that was relevant. In truth, the reason I never wanted children, which came out after having spent a lot of time in therapy, was that as a child I’d been told by my mother the story of how she’d almost hemorrhaged to death while giving birth to me.

Because I was so fat.

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When I brought this up with her only recently, she corrected,

“I never said it was because you were fat, Fran. I said it was because you had a big head!” Whatever, be it fat or a big head, the drama that surrounded my delivery was a story I’d been told as far back as I can remember. It traumatized and repulsed me so much that it literally kept me from having a baby of my own. Maybe my mom thought I’d love her more if I’d known what she went through, but all it did was burden me with guilt and a fear that childbirth could be fatal.

Don’t get me wrong—growing up, I felt loved and adored by my parents. I had a happy childhood. But I definitely possessed an overactive imagination, and found myself unable to slough off some of the vivid stories I was told.

Other little girls are told their births were the most beautiful experiences in their mothers’ lives. So naturally, they grow up looking forward to the day of bliss when they’ll become mothers, too. I, on the other hand, could only conjure up delivery-room chaos and blood spilling everywhere. The guilt I secretly har-bored for having almost killed my mother was, without exaggera-tion, life altering.

Plus, she’d always gushed that I was the fattest, shortest baby in the hospital nursery. The fattest baby with the biggest head.

“You were the most exquisite baby, but when Daddy put a comb under your nose you looked just like Stan Laurel,” she’d say, laughing. That’s it! Those are the details of my being brought into the world. Any wonder I never had kids? When I finally put all this together, a huge question mark in my life had been answered.

So there I sat, waiting for Doctor #1 to enter, thinking about John and how much he wanted someday to have children. Maybe for John I could overcome my fear. And babies were getting more appealing now that I no longer mixed them up with my own birth issues of fear and guilt. When Doctor #1 entered the examining 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 49

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room, I brought her up to date on the other four doctors I’d seen since my last visit with her. I needed to be up-front with her if we were going to reopen this investigation. She ordered some blood tests as well as an ultrasound. She did a Pap test and a pelvic exam. Same battery of tests, and again, everything normal.

“Well, you’re too young for a D&C,” she said matter-of-factly.

And like an idiot, even though it was just a stupid test, I was flattered to be too young for it. In retrospect, I should have said right then, Why, what would that show? But I didn’t. The only thing that ever showed up on a blood test was an elevated FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone) level, which is the messenger hormone in the brain that tells progesterone it’s time to kick in. Since my FSH

level was elevated, it seemed safe to assume that I was experiencing lower-than-normal progesterone. Doctor #1 once again held firm on the perimenopausal theory and prescribed progesterone pills as a hormone replacement therapy two weeks out of every cycle.

John knew I was experiencing some symptoms that had gone unexplained for some time and was hopeful that this prescription would solve the problem. He was very caring and understanding.

At this point, when my friends began to find out about us, he was just some guy who used to work on The Nanny—one sixteen years my junior and not even Jewish. Believe me, I vacillated over his significance in my life, too. I mean, I knew what a fine person he was. His instincts were always reliable. Good upbringing, I used to think. I appreciated his not wanting to exploit our relationship—many men would have felt differently. But he would have preferred it if no one knew ever, though that seemed too extreme for me. It was one thing to keep our unorthodox relationship private from the general public; it was another to hide it from our nearest and dearest.

Elaine was skeptical of it all, not for a moment thinking it could turn into something serious. “Honey, you worked very hard, you’ve 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 50

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been through a lot, enjoy him, he’s a sweet boy.” My friend Donna said, “You’re not serious . . . are you?” And superficially I could see where those close to me might have thought this older woman–

younger man relationship was a phase I was going through.

But I could see where others couldn’t—beneath the surface.

John wasn’t the first younger man I’d dated since my separation, but he was by far the most special. And even though twenty-six sounded superyoung to Elaine, I remembered being twenty-six, and I felt younger at forty-two. Our friends always used to make fun of how middle-aged Peter and I seemed—already married and owning a condo.

Actually, our late twenties were the pits. A downward spiral of tragic events seemed to plague us. In about a three-year period, I underwent breast surgery, we became victims of a violent crime, both Peter’s parents died of lung cancer, and his only remaining grandparent died, too, wiping out his entire immediate family.

Those were hard years, and the last thing I felt like was a “girl.” So it seemed condescending for Elaine to call John a “boy.” She didn’t even know him. I wondered if telling my friends about us was such a good idea after all. Meanwhile, I was falling for him and consumed over the age difference.

For me the gap in our ages took on heightened significance because I hated being forty-two. The number sounded so old. I didn’t look forty-two, I didn’t feel forty-two, and I didn’t relate to being forty-two. This wasn’t a healthy way to think. I know that now, but at the time I was regretful about not being freer in my youth and getting to know myself better. By denying my age I was trying to deny all the time I had wasted while being ruled by my need to be good.

The age issue wasn’t a big deal for John, but I couldn’t let it go.

I knew we looked close in age now, but worried: What would we look like when he was thirty-five and I was fifty-one? Or forty-9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 51

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three and fifty-nine? Or sixty-two and seventy-eight? I drove myself nuts with the numbers.

Over and over, I talked about this with my therapist. Old when I was young, young when I was old, and fearful of losing both my looks and my youthfulness. I couldn’t wrap my brain around what a freak I was.

I always thought about Ruth Gordon, the actress, who was so talented and youthful even when she was quite elderly. She always possessed charming energy and a little-girl quality. She was married for a long time to Garson Kanin, who was sixteen years her junior.

On her deathbed he sat by her side and held her hand. He loved her to the end. Suddenly every show-biz older woman–younger man relationship fascinated me.