Amsterdam or Bust

I’ve had to figure out a lot of unpleasant puzzles since being diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer just six weeks ago. Forget “How long do I have to live, doc?”.

Google will tell you the median is four years. The pain under your ribs will tell you, oh, coupla days. Your friends will tell you about the person they know who is fifteen years in and still going strong. Others will say yeah, she found out and then six weeks later she was dead.

I’ve barred the latter folks, naturally enough. I’ve also blocked the ones who tell me brightly “YOU GOT THIS!!” via text. I’ve blocked the bad exes, the bad-weather ambulance-chasers, the “is-what-it-is”-ers and anyone who’s pinged off a pass-ag why-haven’t-you-returned-my-call. No, I do not want to know about the latest alternative therapy. No, I do not want to be put in touch with your girlfriend’s ex-wife’s homeopath. I *will* be cutting off any unsolicited advice at the pass.

Yes, you can send me native flowers, top shelf vegan chocolate, a bottle of wine from a good season in Piedemont. Organic food. Articles about sexy new architecture in foreign climes. An Uber Tesla to take me to and from the next Goserelin injection ie controlled demolition of my ovaries. Primo gummies from California.

A subscription to the new QTC season. A weekend away at a health retreat. A seven course degustation including sommelier service. If you invite me anywhere you need to pick me up or send a car. A nice one. Or a fucked up one, as long as it’s being driven by a total maniac with a great story.

If you visit me you need to leave within 1.5 hours, unless you’ve brought a case of champagne FROM Champagne with you in which case you can leave when the case runs out or I pass out, whatever happens first. For the love of dog please don’t let me eat all the cheese. I’m open to discussion re road trips but general rule of thumb, I need to be within 25 minutes of wherever I’m calling home right now.

Home right now is a private mental hospital, by the way, because Housing Crisis plus a five-tranche drug regime involving multiple S8s plus aforementioned Instant Brutalist Menopause on top of complex PTSD and an adult ADHD plus the pain from the lesions in my lung lining, side effect spews, a sub-optimal white blood cell count and tanking neutrophils do NOT make for easy navigation. So, yes, I am out-braining the lot while I decide what my priorities are in the nebulous time that I have left on this merry planet.

Obviously, priority number one is to hang out with my kid and show him everything I know about how to fuck with The Man and get away with it, while being a total badarse community-minded citizen of the world.

Priority number two, which is not in any way mutually exclusive to priority number one, is to win at life, or what’s left of it, because my motto has long been She Who Dies Having Had The Most Fun Wins and I am DEADLY serious about it. Get out your electric stone inscribers fossicked from the bargain bin at ALDI people, that shit is going down and going down hard on my tombstones. Yes plural. Bits of me will be going to a whole lotta fun places after the ghost has done a runner.

Which brings me neatly to the bit where I whip off of the snapback cap I’ve been permanently sporting of late to poke it rather hopefully under the noses of you my (remaining) dearly beloveds.

You gotta laugh. Two weeks after I get the Ecstatic Titular Candy Dancer gong I get an email, on the night of my birthday, 1:37am in the morning, from a lovely chap called Jan-Willem inviting me accept an award nomination and to fly over to Amsterdam to hang out in a VERY fancy room full of the world’s bravest art movie makers, plus Oprah Winfrey’s husband.

I don’t know how you guys feel about Oprah but as a teenager who had glandular fever and then Hodkins Lymphoma back-to-back in the 90s, I have a really big soft spot for Steadman. We didn’t have doom scrolling back then, we had daytime TV and Oprah, and Oprah had Steadman and we all knew there’d be no Oprah without Steadman, who for sure had to be one of the coolest, to be cool with hanging out in the backdrop while Oprah kicked arse at a time when no woman kicked so much arse for so long let alone a woman of colour. Kids, we were living in some Times, let me tell you.

At first when I saw the email I thought DANG those AI phishing bots are getting wayyyy too smart, look at all that soft spot triggery biz. Too clever. I closed up my laptop and fought my way off to sleep. Then a couple of days later I remembered the email, decided to do some protected browsing, and lo, turns out the Septimius Awards are not only the real deal, they are also a BIG DEAL.

I Phoned A Friend. Through my medical stoner haze I managed to ask her to make some discreet enquiries. Meanwhile, in and out of emergency at RBWH, I landed an official onc appointment and with two sidekicks shoring me up, asked all the hard questions, and took in all the hard answers.

“So er, doc, given all what you’ve just told me, how do you feel about me jumping on a plane to Amsterdam for a bit of a giggle in August??”

“You’re going to have to shop hard for travel insurance. But I don’t see why you shouldn’t. You’ll need to fly in a business class sleeper in your state of course, but yes, as long as you’re well enough, as long as we can manage your pain. Try not to get Covid.”

Business class eh.

It’s been a while people. The last time I flew biz class it was on my son’s Father’s tick, a cheeky halfway hook-up in Bangkok, resulting in aforementioned son. Thankfully there’s no chance in hell of getting knocked up again, so business class seems well, tenable, really.

Just the small matter of raising $16,000 for a flight that won’t kill me or land me in a foreign hospital with a bill that WILL kill me. I left it a bit late in the asking, I knowww. I feel… cheeky about asking. Also, lots of people telling me nooooo don’t gooooo you’re un-insurable….

The thing is, I have come to realise that if there’s anything that’s gotten me through the tough stuff (apart from a mega-hearted posse of epic carnie pals) it’s been ADVENTURE. All the other cancers, first one tit sliced off then the other, fuck, who needs a thyroid anyway, what’s a spleen for again? Chemo! Delicious! Family court, housing instability, the pride-swallowing as I head down to the local church for a food box once again, fucked cars, fuckeder dudes and dudettes (ok yes I own my part in that stuff too, I’m not a total numpty), the oh my dog I’m delusional I really must be a shit “artist” how else can I explain thirty years of slogging away in the trenches with nought to show…*

And then… and THEN… The best partner in crime I ever had goes ahead and carks it, leaving me to tough out my silly shit all on my Pat Malone. Man. Didn’t that and doesn’t it STILL SUCK. I tangent.

ADVENTURE. Adventure is my medicine. Doing the thing people tell me I shouldn’t do, and doing it well, proving them wrong (hi Mum, how about that dog I scored eh)… Adventure is what keeps me ticking, stretches out my timeline. So yeah. I really would like to get to Amsterdam, skip up that red carpet in a frock made by one of Brisbane’s finest (THANK YOU DOGSTAR!) and dazzle Steadman with some epically ballsy white girl shit.

Please help me do this. I need one more great story in the bag to keep me going. I want you all to be proud of me. Look at that idiot go. She’ll be giving Keith Richards a run for his money, look out coconut trees of the world.

I’m not sure how to end this rant except with the promise of another, better, rant.

Thank you. I’m going to go off and have a little hormonal cry now, thinking about how freaking lucky I am to have such gnarly people in my life.

XJM

*I have now come to realise that the marker of a true artist IS having nought to show for it at the end. Therefore I am, after all, VERY pleased with myself.