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Saturday, October 15, 2005

Tania Katan's My One-night Stand With Cancer

My One-night Stand With Cancer

My One-night Stand With Cancer



Improbable as it may sound, My One-night Stand With Cancer by Tania Katan is one of the funniest, bravest, most heartwarming books I’ve ever read. I laughed out loud (or at least chuckled quietly to myself) countless times. Katan somehow manages to convey her fear, anger and uncertainty about getting breast cancer, and having to have a breast removed, at both 21 and then again at 30, putting her decidedly at the younger spectrum of breast cancer patients, a point repeated throughout the book. But as she tells her tale in alternating eras (market by left breast, right breast, and no breasts), Katan finds the humor within any situation, from doctors mispronouncing her name to her attempts to hit the dance floor with only one breast to several truly crazy ex-girlfriends who are rendered in perfectly psychotic detail.

The first page clues us in to her sense of humor. "The Breast Clinic. A clinical setting or...a lesbian mixer? As a lesbian and optimist, I choose the latter." From her mom, who compulsively steals magazines, to the gay best friend who calls her "Katanilicious" and encourages her to try "alcohol replacement therapy," to her crunchy, granola brother, Katan also paints humorous portraits of those surrounding her as she goes through cancer, twice. Watching Survivor, she perks up, sure she has found a show that relates to her life.

"Today’s challenge involves skill, dexterity, and strength." I can so relate to that. I turn up the volume as the khaki-clad man continues to speak, "You will have ten minutes to move those wood dowels from here...to there!"

I don’t get it? What kind of lame-o challenge is that? Wait a second. These people aren’t sick. What the hell kind fo “Survival” are they doing? They’re engaged in Contrived Surviving. This isn’t “Reality.”...

I’d give my left breast to be on a tropical island with twelve totally hot half-naked people–oops, too late...Why don’t they kick it up a notch and inject those young healthy survivors with a dash of cancer, a pinch of multiple sclerosis, and a touch of HIV? Some challenges might include Puzzle of Paralysis; Ring Around the Lesions; and Ductal, Ductal, Carcinoma. The new Survivor could be like the island of misfit toys: breaking broken people’s spirits, all set to a funky tropical soundtrack on the coast of Thailand. What do you think, MTV?

Television sucks. I think I’ll go masturbate?


Or an argument in San Francisco’s Good Vibrations with her craziest ex, the one who holds photos of her breast hostage, the ones taken only days before she will have her final breast removed, never returning them and complaining to Katan about how "hard" her life is: “The arguing began with Sal’s interest in the army-fatigue dildo and my expressing that I didn’t want to get fucked by the government any more than I have to.”

Yet for all the harrowing trials Katan goes through, and her extremely witty, hilarious take on pop culture and her own battles, the core of this book is about finding the good within the bad. The love of her life walks into a café where Katan works and they begin a 7-year friendship that eventually morphs into a relationship. One of the biggest things I took away from My One-night Stand is a short, short passage in which, for her birthday, Katan walks the labyrinth of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral and does a visualization exercise wherein all the evils of her world–cancer, her cloying exes, anger–all go into a huge pink bubble which she blows into the distance, banishing it from her life. When I get to Katan’s last sentence, after she has successfully run the third of many 10K races, shirtless, in brilliant time, tears are streaming down my face. That last sentence? “I guess what I’ve figured out is that life is precious and temporary, so there’s no need to pretend to be someone other than who you are, even if you don’t always fit in.”

I’ve read plenty of books that have made me laugh out loud, or weep, tears unabashedly streaming down my face, but very rarely have they both been caused by the same book. And there are cupcakes here! Not just on the gorgeous cover, but inside, too, where Katan finds momentary solace in the sugary sweet goodness of a simple cupcake. She also has a blog, where she teases about her One-night stand with Paris Hilton, and promises that if 1 million people buy her book, she will tell us all about it. You don’t have to be a lesbian, breast cancer survivor, or anything except human to get a lot out of this fast-paced, incredible book (though it should be required reading for any dyke with a crazy ex, so pretty much any dyke). This is the kind of book I want to give to all my friends and say “Read this now!” So go, start reading.

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