Mine Goes Up to 11

E.J. and I fist-bumped as I left my first radiation treatment. He was sitting in his gown talking on the cellphone in the long waiting room with the fake wood handrails. "I'm graduating tomorrow. It's my last radiation treatment,"  he said. "What about you?" 
     "It's my first day," I replied. "How many days has your treatment been?"
     "21 Days," he said.
     "So what was your Gleason score?," I asked.
     "I think it was 20 or 19."

I looked at him, pretty sure that the Gleason score only went up to 10. Mine is 9, I thought. His must be 9. I was reminded of the 1984 movie, "This is Spinal Tap," where Nigel Tunfel's amplifier goes up to 11. E.J.'s Gleason score can be whatever he wants it to be.

It was my first time in this room with the high ceiling they call "The Vault." There's this big machine that looks like the Holland Tunnel, but made out of soft-looking plastic. I had to take a picture of my profile on the computer screen and another one of the tunnel. Melissa asked me what I wanted to be called, Mr. Brown or David. My immediate response was, "call me Dr. Brown." I take pictures and ask to be called Dr. Brown when I want to stay in control.

Have you ever had to lie down on this long moveable slide, where they pulled away your hospital gown and the registration plate felt really cold on your ass? I have (homage to Tom Pappa).

All kinds of things are going on in this Ph.D.'s head. I want to die right now. No, I want to publish my Cuba book before I die. After that I want to die. No, I want to write this blog and then publish it as a book before I die. Then I really want to fucking die, but not before I take it on the road in the combination book signing and stand-up comedy show I'm planning.

I sent the manuscript in PDF format to Academica Press, which I know nothing about, except that it sounds good. They wrote me back and said, "didn't you get the message that we want it in MS Word so we can work on it?" I told them I sent it in PDF format for security, and asked why they would be "working on it." I thought it was just to review and I'd receive a letter saying they had agreed to publish it. What kind of press was it that started editing any manuscript sent to them. "Sure! We accept anything anyone sends us, just as long it's in MS Word." Hey, do I really want to publish with that kind of press? The only person they wouldn't publish would be Jack Kerouac, whose wrote his first draft of "On the Road" in one sitting on a long roll of paper.

"This Ph.D's Prostate Cancer Blog" has to be about Prostate Cancer, or anything that comes into my goddamned mind. It's got to be worthy of the Marx Brothers or, at least, a New Yorker cartoon.

When I was a The Pingry School for Boys, Dave Rapson said that I was the "master of the one liner." That's from all the Marx Brother's movies I watched a hundred times and memorized in Gordon Berkow's "Cinema 26" on Clive Hills Road in Edison at age 13. How come my son Manny says that I now talk in paragraphs? I owe it to Oberlin College and Yale Graduate School. That's about what my father said to me too. David, you've just changed.

I've had no sense of humor for two years. I haven't been able to tell a joke or even laugh, except once or twice watching Bill Maher. Things have to be really dark. Gallows humor is pretty much all I can do now.