I have a friend who, at Urban BBQ in Sandy Spring, introduced me to a delicious drink called a Buttered Nipple. It is a shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream and a shot of butterscotch liqueur. Some people put vodka or Kahlua in there, too. It is very, very tasty. But it’s hard to keep a straight face while you’re asking for one. So my friend, who doesn’t like saying the word “nipple” to total strangers, asks for a “buttered body part” instead, and the drink tastes just as good. That is neither here nor there; what I am trying to say is, if that friend is reading this, she had better stop now, because I’ma say the word “nipple” lots and lots here, and the word “boob” lots more. Just saying.
I’m about to embark on some serious plastic surgery here in Montgomery County, Maryland, which is the 12th-most-wealthy county in America, according to the US Census Bureau. This means that the waiting room at the plastic surgery center is quite a cultural experience, for me. There is an abundance of tasteful, white furniture and tasteful, spare flower arrangements mostly featuring orchids. The office staff (are they nurses?) are trendily dressed. Lots of black. No green medical scrubs here.
The clientele breaks down into two distinct groups: those who are here to get their parts tucked or lifted or filled with spackle, and those who are here to get their parts replaced. I’m gonna generalize wildly now. Most of the patients here belong in the first category, and these are mostly slim, blond, well-heeled and very attractive women who are not wearing cowboy boots. I believe some of them have purses that cost as much as my car is worth. The people in the second category are not nearly so MoCo. They tend to be bald and overweight and at least one of them is wearing cowboy boots.
There is almost nothing to read in this waiting room, which makes me cranky. Everyone is using electronic devices, instead. There is one Cosmopolitan magazine. At least there are no cancer magazines here.
I am happy to report that the sex tips in the Cosmo are no more helpful than the ones in the cancer magazines at Sibley Hospital, but they are funnier. Compare and contrast:
--Cancer magazine sex tips:
1) Try not to do it while actually puking, which is unattractive.
2) Try to do it before your chemo, not after. See #1.
3) If your body has become hideous for any reason, try to find a way to do it with your clothes partially on, or at least keep the lights off, for God’s sake.
--Cosmo sex tips:
1) Do it on the clothes dryer. (Cosmo did not address who was going to clear out the skanky soccer and bike stuff that’s piled up on there, which is a real turn-on, or how you were going to disappear the children while you got off on the clothes dryer.)
2) Do it with your clothes on like the characters in True Blood. See #3 above. If either your body has become hideous or you’ve become a vampire, apparently, clothing can help.
3) Do it dressed up as that girl from Sailor Moon.
By this point I was snickering and scaring the contingent of blond, attractive persons. That was satisfying in its own way, but, really, you have to admit, that is a pretty lame sex tip. I don’t think John would ever dress up as Sailor Moon, anyway. Happily, they called me to the exam room at this point.
There was even less reading material in there, no Cosmo, no cancer magazines, not even a Golf Digest. There was nothing at all except brochures for the various kinds of plastic surgery you could get done around here. Well, those were educational.
Have I mentioned I am from Montana, and from the wrong side of the tracks, at that? MoCo-style plastic surgery was never on my radar screen before. Hell, I am nearly 50 years old and I have never had a manicure or a pedicure. That stuff is for painted city women or persons from New Jersey. Of course, I have read about manicures and face lifts and liposuction. But arm lifts? I thought that was something you did at the gym. I am reading this brochure about arm lifts and thinking, damn, I didn’t have to do all those miserable bench presses and biceps curls and such. These painted city women might be onto something. I am wondering if I can talk my doctor into doing a couple of those arm lifts while she’s already got me knocked out in the operating room for my boob remodeling.
No such luck. We are here to talk business. When I first met with the plastic surgeon, last spring, I was far too sick from the chemotherapy to even think about a boob job. Well, I’m not sick anymore and I am ready to do whatever it takes to make the boobs look presentable again. We have four major plastic-surgery objectives. Sadly, none of them involve arm lifts or liposuction:
1) Swap out the “tissue expander” for a good old-fashioned breast implant on the robo-boob. It will feel more like a real boob and less like a curling stone after that happens.
2) Make the poor old regular boob on the other side look like it belongs to the same human as the robo-boob. When we’re done, the robo-boob should be roughly the same size and shape and time zone as the other one. By the way, there is no good word for that “other” one. “Real boob? “Remaining” boob? “Surviving” boob? “Conventional” boob? (But the opposite of “conventional” is either “organic” or “nuclear,” depending on your age and mind frame. What is the opposite of “robotic?”)
3) Detail the robo-boob.
Specifically, we mean sticking a nipple on there. Well, that will require another, separate surgery.
“Why?” I ask. “Why can’t we do that all at once, while I’m already drugged up like a darted lion on some Animal Planet show?”
Well, we theoretically could, but it turns out that whether you have a boob lift or a boob reduction on the conventional boob, in your effort to make it match the size of the nuclear boob, either way, it’s a little unpredictable where the nipple ends up. You want to let that conventional nipple settle down some, post-surgery, before you go monkeying around trying to install a nipple on the other side. Otherwise, those nipples could end up pointing two completely different directions, like they’d been put on there by Picasso in his Cubist period, or maybe by Salvador Dali. And we don’t want that!
4) Get a tattoo! I get to have my own tattoo artist! Now my daughter is going to be jealous AND call me a hypocrite! There is a woman, in Rockville, bless her heart, who started out as a regular tattoo artist but has since specialized and now spends her days using the magic of tattoo ink to make the areola, or the front bull’s eye, of your synthetic boob, the same general color as the front of your conventional boob. Maybe I can I talk her into drawing something special, like a butterfly or a spider or a Harley, on there was well. She probably charges extra for that.
One thing I am bummed about is that it is all going to take longer than I had thought. I had thought I would have all this boob remodeling done during the summer. But apparently we might not even start it until September. As it turns out, all the stupid cancer surgery and radiation causes your robo-boob to shrink, and mine is still shrinking. We don’t want to try to match the conventional boob to the nuclear one until it’s done shrinking, or we could end up with two different sized breasts, and that would look wonky.
The other thing that is a mild bummer is, we don’t know if we are talking a boob lift or a boob reduction on the conventional side. How do we decide? Not only do we need to see how much the nuclear boob shrinks; we also have to see how much weight I’ve lost by then. I am supposed to try to get myself to vaguely the weight I plan to stay at, BEFORE we do the plastic surgery. The reason is is, an implant doesn’t gain or lose weight, but a standard non-nuclear human boob does. So, if I plan on losing a bunch of weight—and my doctors have informed me I should plan on that, because the fatter I am the more likely the cancer is to return—I should lose the weight now. Otherwise, again, I might find myself with two different sized boobs, and that would be unacceptable.
Damn.
So not only do I need to lose a bunch of weight to get down to the weight that my doctors say will maximize my chance of not dying; I also have to do it before I get my boob upgrade, or the girls could turn out wonky. Today I looked in the mirror and threw my shoulders back and inaugurated my newly-urgent weight-loss program by eating a big hunk of dark Godiva chocolate. It is heart-healthy! I am skipping the Buttered Nipple, for now. But when this whole drawn-out plastic surgery adventure is done, by maybe next Christmas, I swear, the Buttered Nipples are on me.
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