Ball & Other Funny Stories About Cancer

Brian Lobel

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781849431682
• eBook ISBN: 9781849433266
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Unexpected, quirky and provocative, BALL & Other Funny Stories About Cancer is a unique collection of performances about illness and the changing body over time.

Documenting a trilogy of Brian Lobel's monologue performances from 2001-2011, this collection challenges the inspirational stories of survivors and martyrs that have come before, infusing the 'cancer story' with an urgency and humour which is sometimes inappropriate, often salacious and always, above all else, honest and open.

Published together for the first time, this collection of performances goes beyond the chemotherapy to include reflections on politics, sexuality and gender, providing cancer – and cancer narratives – with a much-deserved kick in the ball(s).

BALL

premiered at The University of Michigan, Residential College Auditorium, Ann Arbor, 2003

Video still by Diana Densmore, 2003

Photo by John Reed, 2006

(‘Eye of the Tiger’ plays as people are seated.¹ The music cuts out abruptly and a spotlight reveals Brian sitting center stage, responding to an unseen doctor.)

Problematic? I am a twenty-year-old boy whose last concern should be bumpy balls...problematic? A testicle as big and hard and bumpy as mine – I’d say that’s something more than just problematic.

(House lights come to full, Brian notices the audience for the first time.) Oh, hi. Hi. My name is Brian Lobel and this is BALL. Welcome. I’m sorry, I often forget that some people may not know that this is a story about cancer, or at least, sort of about cancer. But I don’t die at the end, so this is probably less dramatic than you want it be – sorry to disappoint you. My bump. (House lights dim.)

Oh yeah, did I mention that this was a bump on my ball, my testicle, in my crotch? That was problematic. I mean, I’m pretty comfortable with my body, but everyone around me – my family, my friends, my doctors – was talking about my balls, soon to be singular, and touching my balls, soon to be singular. I didn’t know if I should feel uncomfortable or flattered.

People always ask me about when I first found it: ‘When did you first notice something? Were you at a check-up? Did you feel sick?’ (Pause. Brian silently debates whether or not to reveal the following. Finally: proudly.) I, Brian Lobel, found my grand, life-changing lump while sitting in a hotel bathtub and pleasuring myself as I listened intently to an episode of the family television series Seventh Heaven. Ironic, no? So when people ask me – ‘When did you first notice something? Were you at a check-up? Did you feel sick?’ – do I tell them the truth, or do I tell them what they want to hear, which rarely ever includes the words ‘masturbation,’ ‘malignant lump’ and ‘90s American TV show about a minister’s family’ in the same sentence?

I felt it and I said, ‘No, this isn’t good, I should have this checked out,’ so I went to my doctor who said that it was problematic, and even though he had only touched my bumpy ball for a brief second, he made sure to say: ‘But don’t worry Brian, even if there is a problem like testes cancer, rest assured that you will still be able to have a normal and healthy sex life.’ Hey GREAT! Maybe testicular cancer will be all that I need to start my sex life.

Every doctor I saw reassured me that I would have a normal and healthy sex life, a NORMAL and healthy sex life – I did not have a normal nor a healthy sex life! They seemed obsessed with my erectile function as if it were my heartbeat. I’m sorry, but when they said the word cancer, the farthest thing from my mind was – oh, no! Will I still have regular erections? Early-morning boners? Awkward semihard-ons? I mean, cancer.

What a loaded word, cancer. Those two little syllables could make me shiver, see sickness, bald headed-ness and death. I was one month past my 20^th birthday. And I had cancer. (Pause.)

Of course, they don’t come out and tell you that you have cancer right away... Enter: the first woman in the whole testicle-cancer saga – the ultrasound technician. It’s weird having a middle-aged woman squirt cream on your balls, soon to be singular, and then take pictures of them – maybe it doesn’t phase you sitting here, I’ll show you – well, I won’t really show you because then I’d have to be naked, and I don’t want to give away the ending. (Lays on the table with legs spread.) Do you realise that this woman and I had to co-habitate in the same confined space for what seemed to be forever? She, her forty-year-old female self and me, my twenty-year-old male self, wearing nothing but a little washcloth and a half-hearted grin. (He grins.) As she peered through the scope at my testicle, her eyes...her eyes began bugging out of her head and she looked like she was going to faint – I became a little nervous.

After I cleaned the gel off my genitals, an interesting thing happened – I became the world’s #1 priority. Doctors cancelled appointments to see me, nurses held special guard by my door and people, random strangers, were offering for me to use their cell phones. Humanity was truly embracing me, which could only mean that in five days they were chopping off my right testicle. It’s my somewhat cynical belief that in life, people are only unconditionally nice to two types of people, and those are beautiful people and cancer patients. I knew I hadn’t become beautiful overnight...

‘Well, I can’t say for sure, but I think that they are going to have to perform an orchiectomy and remove that right testicle.’ That right testicle. That silly, pesky little testicle. Who dragged the mud into the house? Oh, that right testicle. And just like that, I was One Ball Lobel.

Wait, just like that? Some quack from University Health Services was telling me that I needed to have surgery? Immediately, I’m thinking that I should get a second opinion. At least a biopsy should be done, a test – ‘No biopsy, no test. We’ll just get that removed and then take it from there.’ From where? To where? Surgery, will it be right? I’m done after you chop off half my scrotum, right? It’s not like I have cancer...twenty-year old men don’t get cancer. ‘I don’t have cancer, do I?’

‘Well, I can’t tell conclusively from the ultrasound’ – but that was definitely bullshit. Later that night, I opened the ultrasound up and I don’t even read ultrasounds and I knew it was cancerous. In fact, I was ready to remove my own testicle right then and there with some rubbing alcohol and my Swiss Army knife; I just wanted that shit out of my body.

And sure enough, my right testicle, lymph nodes in my abdomen and seventeen spots on my lung had cancer. Now that was problematic.

(House lights up and Brian walks into the audience.)

I know what you’re thinking... Holy Shit, this guy did a testicular self-exam, found cancer, and now I have to wait for an hour while he talks about his cancer before I can get home, pop myself in the shower, turn on some Enya and touch myself? Well, I expected your discomfort, so I thought that instead of ignoring it, I thought I would really give that discomfort a forum. (Brian snaps and Enya’s ‘Only Time’ plays – lights bump to blue.) Gentlemen, you should really do this in a shower – I don’t know, something about the hot water – and Ladies, don’t feel excluded, you can touch yourself too. I don’t really know much about a breast self-exam, but I bet it’s fun... I’m going to turn off all the lights, and we are all going to have thirty seconds to check in with our bodies. Gentlemen, you can’t have your legs crossed during this portion of the performance... Think of this as a testes (Pronounced test-ees) and breasties self-pop-quiz, if you will.

Now, I’m not going to say anything original after this, I’m just going to read off the shower card, so you may as well do it. I mean, what else would you do if you were waiting in pitch dark with nothing to do? Try to forget the strangers sitting around you. (Momentary blackout; lights up.) Gotcha! No, no, seriously. (Lights down again. Brian reads the instructions for men’s self-exams. ‘Check your testicles once a month. In the shower – roll each testicle between your thumb and forefinger. Feel for hard lumps or bumps on the front or side of the testicle. If you notice a change or lumps, contact your doctor right away. Cancer of the testicle can be cured if you find it early.’ Improvised dialogue about touching/testing – lots of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’.) OK, that’s enough touching yourself for right now. (Lights come up quickly.)

People think that the greatest possible achievement for a testicular cancer survivor is to to win the Tour de France seven million² times like Lance Armstrong. Well, that’s a close second. In reality, however, the greatest possible achievement for a testicle-cancer survivor is... Does anybody know? (Solicits answers from the audience. The first answer is inevitably ‘To survive?’ which is met with a laugh and a ‘Not good enough!’.) Nobody knows? To be fruitful and multiply – fathering two blond male progeny would of course, of course, be ideal.

Fuck. Shit. I thought that once I had cancer, people wouldn’t expect me to have kids. Thanks Lance! I’d just let everyone think that I was infertile and asexual and unable to maintain an erection – I am able to maintain an erection, so you needn’t worry – and I’d be fine. But now the pressure was on...

Which brings me to the sperm bank. (The first four seconds of ‘Blister in the Sun’ plays.) Now you’re saying to yourself, ‘Sperm bank? How did we get here?’ Or you’re saying to yourself, ‘Ah, sperm bank – now it’s getting good.’ See, Lance Armstrong, who art in heaven, was able to have his two miracle children by banking sperm before his chemotherapy. This was an interesting tidbit of information that everyone seemed to want to share with me for no apparent reason.

My friends, my parent’s acquaintances, I’m pretty sure my rabbi’s family asked me about banking sperm, but only one man picked up the phone and made my date with destiny – my father. My father. How sweet. I never told him I dated anyone, I never told him I kissed anyone, and here he was, my father, calling a sperm bank and telling them that I would come in and masturbate into a little plastic cup. My father, he who fathered me, looked me in the eye and told me that I, his child, needed to bank sperm.

Wow, that little phrase ‘bank sperm’ sounds so technical, benign really. I mean, I guess that it’s a lot better than, ‘Go beat your meat off into that cup,’ but, when it’s your father saying it and paying the bill for each of the times you beat your meat off into that cup, it’s really not much better at all.

Although the set-up to the sperm bank was extremely awkward, the idea of having a few million Brian Lobels frozen in Beverly Hills, Michigan really appealed to me, so three days after the removal of my right testicle, I borrowed my friend’s car and drove myself to the Infertility Clinic at International Cryogenics Incorporated.

People always think that when it’s their turn to go to the sperm bank, they’ll be really funny about it... You know, cracking jokes, loudly faking orgasms, etc. It’s not like that. All you want to do once you get there is leave. I sat down in the waiting room and the first thing that I noticed was the decor. Turquoise and silver Navajo designs and wood panelling. How rustic! How masculine! How weird that there are exclusively women working here.

I was convinced that men were kept secret somewhere in the building – little Keebler elves, hard at work comparing semen samples – who were kept hidden away, lest the poor, impotent clientele accidentally think of a man while masturbating. Thank God they were so insightful as to only employ decent, attractive blonds.

After a brief welcome, I was taken down the hall to get an HIV test. I did not need an HIV test. I repeat: I did not need an HIV test. ‘I don’t have HIV’ I said very confidently to the nurse. ‘Well, one can never be sure and if we are handling your semen we have to know...’ She wasn’t gargling with my semen or washing her hair with my semen, she was freezing it. Again, I repeated, ‘I don’t have AIDS, I’m pretty sure.’ ‘One can never be sure.’ They know you’re a virgin Brian. They’re laughing at your virginity. Virgin! Virgin! Virgin! ‘And besides, it’s protocol.’ She said besides as if she knew I was just a big queer virgin just from looking at me.³ I HATE YOU. But I put out my forearm, closed my eyes, and let them poke me – I never got used to being poked.

Following that completely superfluous blood draw and tour of the facility, which of course featured the wall of photos, of hundreds, of thousands, of hundreds of thousands of photos of adorable little butterballs whose births were facilitated by the miracle, the wonder, of cryogenic freezing, I was taken upstairs to a room that had no official name other than...

Room A. (‘Let’s Get it On’ plays. Lights bump to deep red.) I felt like I had been transported into some low budget homemade fetish porn. Soft, musty lighting. Piles of Playboys with the pages ripped out, and one huge, sexy, leather chair. So, I’m sitting in the sexy chair. Fondling the leather. Feeling right at home – until I realised (Music stops.) that hundreds, if not thousands, of skanky-ass grown men had masturbated in this very same chair. (Lights return to normal. Brian leaps from the table.) I immediately decided that the collecting of Brian Lobels would be done completely standing. That was fine with me, I was used to doing it in my freshman dormroom showers – you know, where everyone hopes they’re the only ones who do it, but there’s basically a light film of college freshman all over the shower floor. Thank God for shower shoes.

To be honest, I was a little disappointed with Room A – first off, there were no videos. I don’t know why I expected videos, I just did. Something really hardcore and trashy. Something to really get my rocks off. Rock. And the magazines – there were about seventy years worth of Playboys there, but that was it. Where was the graphic sex? Where was the penetration? I mean, Playboy’s pretty soft-core, it doesn’t get everyone in the mood... It doesn’t really do much for me, personally, I don’t know why. I do know why (Brian steps forward and takes a deep breath, as if coming out about something he’s not quite sure of.) but can we just go through one thing at a time? Thanks. Even though I had expected some fantastically dirty masturbation den, I was still able to begin the task at hand. (A hand gesture makes the pun even less subtle.)

And it’s right about now when I notice the directions sheet. Direction sheet? I’m a twenty-year-old virgin with a big nose who wears capri pants. Please. I don’t need a di...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chronology and Performance History
• Introduction
• BALL
• Other Funny Stories About Cancer
• An Appreciation
• Endnotes