I turn and let the shower water hit my shoulders, my back. I reach up and wipe my eyes, puffy from two days of crying. I look to my right and press one pump of Dial liquid antibacterial soap—the gold kind—into the palm of my left hand. I rub my hands together slowly and touch my right hand under my left breast.
I feel the incision—the surgical glue along the edge of my palm, about three inches across.
Pat, don’t rub.
I gently press my hand against the bottom of my breast a few times.
Pat, don’t rub.
I look down and see the suds expand and pop with each press.
This soap has a particular smell.
I remember it from Montana. The night I got my first tattoo.
“Go to the store and buy a bottle of Dial liquid antibacterial soap—the gold kind,” my tattoo artist said.
I did. I drove down the road to a grocery store that night—my last night in the state—making a stop before taking myself out for Mexican food and a very good margarita. I walked into the grocery store and bought a bottle of Dial liquid antibacterial soap. The gold kind.
This is the bottle I bought. I’ve had it for a year.
I bought it to clean my tattoo—my first tattoo: a small outline of the state of Montana with a “50” in the middle, just above my ankle.
I got the tattoo to commemorate the completion of my personal goal of going to all 50 states. Montana was my last. It was a solo trip, after my divorce. I drove for hundreds of miles and hiked alone and kayaked and went white water rafting and rode a horse—a little bit scared of it all, but I did it anyway. A little scared, also, when I had the boudoir photos taken—outside, at the reservoir.
After all of it, on the last night, I got a tattoo—-even though I’m scared of needles.
When the tattoo artist was done, I sat up and looked at the little Montana and thought:
I did that.
I got a tattoo.
I went to Montana.
I did the things.
And I bought this bottle of Dial soap, like she said.
“Pat it, don’t rub it,” she said, about the tattoo.
And I did.
And now I use that same bottle of soap to clean the incisions on my breast.
In the shower, while looking at the suds I see the other scar on the same breast—the vertical one, made in February when they removed all the tissue from this breast and much of the skin, and put in an expander so that after chemo we could complete the reconstruction—swapping the expander for an implant. That happened just a couple days ago.
I remember seeing the implant for the first time—in my first appointment with my plastic surgeon, two days before Christmas, a week after my diagnosis. The first diagnosis.
I sat in the wide white leather chair with a notebook and a pen taking notes as she went over all the possible surgical options: lumpectomy, single mastectomy, double mastectomy. It would all depend on what the second biopsy came back with. And the third.
She had the implant there, on a metal cart. She picked it up, waved it around.
I looked at the clear blob. It looked like a jellyfish.
I’ve always been afraid of jellyfish.
I don’t want that anywhere near my body, I thought. I do not want implants.
But I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t qualify for other types of reconstruction. And all the biopsies came back positive. And, as it turned out, I had another cancer too.
So, the decisions became simple, not easy:
- Get an implant, or have no breast.
- Get a mastectomy, or die.
We met a few times—my plastic surgeon and I—me pushing and pushing, “Can this mastectomy be nipple-sparing? Can it be sensation-sparing? Can you save my nipple, please? What can we do to make that happen?”
We couldn’t. She said we couldn’t save it.
I got a second opinion.
They said they couldn’t save it either.
In the shower I look down at the suds and the scars and my breast. There is no nipple. I rub my thumb across it and feel nothing except the skin as it moves across my thumb. There is no sensation in my left breast.
I remember him standing by my front door, his left arm around me, hand on my lower back, pulling me in. Our lips pressed together. Eyes locked. His right hand slid up the side of my body, and his thumb grazed the side of my left breast.
In that moment, every cell in my body shook alive, awakening to a desire I couldn’t remember having ever felt—my heart, beating. Lungs, breathless. Being this close wasn’t close enough. All I wanted was so, so much more.
“I thought I was broken,” I whispered, my lips just barely separating from his.
He placed his hands on either side of my face.
“You are not broken,” he responded. His thumb brushed across my cheek, eyes still locked on mine. He smiled and pulled my lips back to his.
He was jealous about me going to Montana. I remember him saying he wished he could go. I remember him saying, Can I have some boudoir photos, please?
I remember thinking, I would love to send them to you, but I can’t. You’re married…
I remember saying, No, Montana is for me. The photos are for me.
His hands would be the last I’d feel on my left breast.
In the shower, I reach for the bottle of Dial liquid antibacterial soap and press a pump into my right hand. This time, I place my palm over my reconstructed breast and begin to rub it in circles, feeling the skin beneath my hand but no sensation in the breast itself. I look down. My breast is swollen and bruised. I gently rub my hand from my breast up to my collarbone, across to my armpit and down my ribs. I do this a few times.
Will this help reduce the swelling?
I don’t know.
I don’t know how to touch myself this way. I’ve never done this before.
My best friend sent me a link for a vibrator, before Montana, after the doorway.
“You need to get a handle on this,” she said, likely already sick of hearing me say how much I wanted to fuck this married man, but wouldn’t let myself.
She sent me the link and I bought the vibrator.
I told her I was thinking of getting boudoir photos taken.
She sent me a link for lingerie.
I didn’t have any.
I perused the site and those the algorithm sent me, wondering, who am I? Am I a colorful girl? A black lace girl? A tattered jean short–shorts and bra kind of girl?
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know this part of me. Dormant, for so long.
I thought, well maybe I’ll figure me out in Montana, with a Hawaiian-print canvas duffle bag full of black lace lingerie, tattered short-shorts, a white T-shirt, a flannel, and a couple pieces of delicate gold jewelry.
Maybe I’ll figure me out outside.
Maybe I’ll figure me out as a stranger photographed me.
Maybe I’ll get the photos back and say, Oh yes. There she is.
Or maybe I’d get raped and murdered on the banks of a reservoir in Montana outside of Glacier National Park, but at least I’d go out doing something for me.
It’s scary, but maybe I’d figure me out.
The day of the photos, I parked around the corner from where I was supposed to be, on a side street in Kalispell, Montana. I opened my car door and stepped into the bright, warm, mid-afternoon sun, and grabbed my duffle bag from the back seat. I took it in with me in case the photographer wanted to see my outfits. I was told to bring five. I had seven.
I threw my bag over my shoulder and started to walk towards my destination: a private studio on the second floor of one of these old buildings, a block or so away.
As I walked I tugged on my shorts—the tattered short-shorts—to see if I could get them any lower. I worried, Is this ok? Could I walk down the street like this? I wore black lace cheeky panties under the short-shorts and a black lace bra under a red and blue flannel shirt, long-sleeved, that I had rolled up my forearms. This felt right. Classic. Sexy. Dressed for shot one.
My hair, wavy and air-dried, hung past my shoulders.
I got to the building, entered, and walked up a flight of stairs.
The make-up artist slash hair-stylist greeted me in her one-room studio and had me sit in the one chair in the room. A studio light shined in my face. A full length mirror was directly in front of me. She pulled out a palette of makeup.
I asked her to keep it natural. Not too glam.
“I’ll just emphasize what you already have,” she said, and got to work.
The photographer arrived and I described what was in the duffle bag. She said, “Sounds great!” and plopped herself down on the couch, watching as the stylist curled a few parts of my hair.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to get this part done. My hair, if behaving, is fantastic. It might not need anything.
“Let me just curl a few of these pieces,” the stylist said. “I’ll just bring them back to life.”
And she did.
When we were done, I hopped in the photographer’s truck, my duffle bag on the floor between my feet, watching out the window as the mountains passed us by and we pulled onto a one-lane winding road headed towards the reservoir.
I had thought about this moment—would I need my Air Pods? Hype music? Some deep breathing? Visualization? What would I need to do to feel sexy and confident before we started taking the photos?
I casually asked, “So, what do you do besides this?”
“I help my husband dig dinosaurs,” she responded.
I. Was. Riveted.
I turned away from the window and looked straight at her and said, “What? Tell me everything.”
And she did. She told me about the land lease and the prehistoric river and the layers of the earth and the big blasts and the tiny, detailed work she’d do to uncover the fossils. Then she’d sell them in their rock shop.
The next thing I knew we were at our destination and I giggled inside because nothing says, “let’s get prepped for an outdoor boudoir shoot” more than “tell me everything about dinosaurs.”
She grabbed a towel for me, and a gun to keep us safe, and we hiked down to a turn in the reservoir where we couldn’t be seen by anyone else on the banks. We just had to look out for boats.
“If someone goes by,” she said, “I’ll toss you this towel to cover up.”
“OK,” I said.
“We’ll start as you are—with the shorts and the flannel and progress as you feel comfortable,” she said, knowing the various stages of dress and undress that were in my duffle bag.
“OK,” I said.
“And if I want to get in the water…?” I asked.
“We’ll do that at the end,” she said.
Back in the shower, after I rub my breast—with the implant underneath—in circles, and up to my collarbone, across my armpit, and down my ribs—not having any idea how to touch myself like this but doing it anyway—I turn and let the water fall over my chest and down my breast and wash away the suds of the Dial liquid antibacterial soap.
I raise my right hand to my right breast—the one I had lifted—and cradle it gently.
I think of the question My Unlikely Friend and I landed on at the end of the 90-minute conversation we had about what I was going to do with this breast—a conversation I was not interested in having with him as he is a) a man b) married, and c) worked in special operations for over two decades.
But when I tried to skirt the subject he said “Wait, wait, wait. Let’s get into this!”
And I paused.
And I thought, This man has a wife. He has daughters. He has sisters, a mom.
I closed my eyes and let my shoulders slump.
And I thought, God forbid this happen to any of them. Have the conversation. Say all the things. Let this conversation be bigger than you.
So we got into it.
In the end, this is where we landed:
In a couple of months, when I am going through absolute hell, do I want to stand in front of my mirror and see my right breast looking so, so different than the left and think, that’s just one more fucking thing?
The decision then was simple, not easy:
Take the risk. Lift the breast. Do it for your mental health. Do it for future you.
And here I am standing in the shower, cradling my right breast, thinking that lifting this one was the best decision I could have made. She looks great and I feel really good about it. I brush my thumb against my nipple and feel it all.
In Montana, after the short-shorts and the flannel, and the black lace body suit and the robe and the garters and the bra and cheeky panties and the delicate gold bracelet, I wanted to get in the water.
I was ready to do it all.
I changed into the cheeky black lace panties and white T-shirt and waded out, hip-deep.
“Now, dunk!” the photographer said.
I did, dropping myself into the cold water, up to my shoulders. I let out a gasp. I stood, the tips of my hair dripping onto the T-shirt that now clung to my torso, my breasts.
“Now,” she said, “I want you to grab your boobs and play with them as you walk towards me. Like, lift them up one at a time, and look down, kind of over there.”
I put my hands over my breasts and thought,
I don’t know how to touch myself like this. I’ve never done this before.
But I did it. I grabbed my breasts and lifted them up one at a time and looked down—kind of over there—and started to walk towards her. But the ground of the reservoir was all rock, slippery rocks, and I was trying not to slip and break my ankles and I started belly laughing because how on earth was this sexy?
We had to do multiple takes.
Because I couldn’t keep it together and was having so much fun.
Eventually we got it and I walked ashore and stripped off the t-shirt and the panties in front of this person who was a stranger two hours ago. I stood in front of her now, completely naked, and she tossed me the towel she grabbed from her truck before we hiked down the little hill, here, to the edge of the reservoir.
I dried off, and pulled on a set of grey sweatpants and grey crewneck sweatshirt. I put on my hiking shoes, collected my lingerie and tossed it into my duffle bag. I threw the bag and the towel over my shoulder and we hiked back up the hill to her truck.
She dropped me at my AirBnb where I heated up a can of Progresso lentil soup in a mug and ate it while standing on the little porch.
It was 9:30pm. I missed dinner. The summer sun had just about set.
I went back inside, put the mug in the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. My wet hair left dark grey traces on the shoulders of my sweatshirt. My mascara had smudged a little. I blinked and felt the gentle weight of the fake eyelashes on my eyelids, doing exactly what she said they’d do: emphasizing what I already have.
I turned and grabbed my journal.
I wrote, I hope you know that what you just did was incredibly brave.
And back home in the shower I rest my hand on my reconstructed breast, and my eyes fill with tears. I reach for the shower walls to steady myself before lowering myself to sit on the shower floor—knees pulled in, arms wrapped around them, forehead resting on top, water dripping down my back.
I let myself cry and feel this all-too-familiar grief—the same grief I felt after that first appointment with the plastic surgeon back in December when I came home and sobbed on my couch and reached for my phone and entered his name and typed the text “Are you home…?” Please let me wrap myself around you, please be inside me, please just come over and touch me like I’m not a medical project, please. But I didn’t hit send and instead I threw my phone across the couch and yelled from a place in my heart I didn’t know could break like this.
I felt the same grief I felt when I told one of my girlfriends I wish I had spent more time in the last year having lots of sex. What was I doing? I can’t even remember when the last time was.
I felt the same grief I felt when I cried to my mom, It’s hard enough to date after a divorce and now I have to date after this too?
I felt the same grief I felt when I muttered to my plastic surgeon, my nurse navigator, my mom, my best friend, My Unlikely Friend:
I just stood up.
I just found her.
And now you’re taking me down again.
I let the warm tears fall, competing with the heat from the shower.
This is not the first time this has happened.
This will not be the last.
But this is the first time I open my eyes and look down and see the tiny tattoo—an outline of the state of Montana with the “50” in the middle.
I did that.
I stand up and turn to face the water. I hold my breasts as the water keeps pouring over me. I rub my thumbs against each one—feeling one, and not the other. I look to my left, at the bottle of Dial liquid antibacterial soap—the gold kind—almost finished. I look down at my breasts.
And somehow for the first time I think, You know what? We might actually be ok.
I did that.
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