“Cool! I’ll drive you!”
“Oh.” I was taken aback by how supportive of the idea he was. I mean, it’s not a mind-bending shock that a guy would be into the idea of better breasts on his girlfriend, but I was constantly surprised at how comfortable everyone was with my paying a stranger with white funk on his mouth to maim my body in order to conform to the standard of beauty, or even to my pathological perfectionism. Maybe subconsciously I wanted someone to stop me, to talk some sense into me, to make me take my own advice about accepting your body. After all, in my first stand-up special I said verbatim: “Love your body, don’t get breast implants.” Didn’t anyone care that I was being an insecure hypocrite? Or maybe they all just knew way before I did that people always tend to become what they despise.
I spent the next couple of days lying to people about where I was going to be the next few weeks, since I was going to have to stay in bed for a while. This was before my handle on codependence, so I had a completely maxed-out schedule full of things I had absolutely no interest in doing. Otherwise, I looked forward to how all my problems would be solved, and now that I was going to have a new boob that matched my old boob, I was going to be able to eat whatever I wanted given I was under the impression that this surgery would immediately cure my body image issues. I planned out all the delicious things I was going to eat that my deformity previously held me back from having. Things that, presurgery, I had to refuse or pretend I was allergic to. Funnel cakes! Cadbury Creme Eggs! Shake ’n Bake! Do they even make that product anymore? Chicken getting magically crispy in a bag? It doesn’t matter. I’d find it on eBay if I had to!
The day of the surgery I was terrified. They told me the night before not to eat. No problem. Not eating was sort of my thing. That morning, I found myself in yet another paper-thin gown, freezing cold. I thought about how much warmer I was going to be once I could finally put on weight since given body would be evened out. Dr. Smegma came in late with a bunch of papers for me to sign, all thicker than the gown I was wearing. I didn’t read any of it.
I woke up a week later covered in bandages. Chock-full of painkillers, I walked around the house like a drunk mummy, unable to lift my arms above my rib cage. A couple weeks after that, when I was able to take the dressing off and unveil my now-symmetrical chest, I was thrilled. I could not wait for all my insecurities and fears to finally dissipate into thin air upon the unveiling of the sternum I deserved. A sternum that didn’t make people look confused or concerned. I of course couldn’t wait two weeks, so I sneaked a peek early. I discovered that my gimpy boob, the little boob that could was indeed on the same equator as my other one, but when I lifted and flexed my arm, there was a small divot running from my nipple to the outside of the breast tissue.
What. The. Fuck.
I frantically picked up the phone like a T. rex and called the doctor’s office. Dr. Smegma wasn’t there. I called an hour later. He was out. Called that afternoon—he’s busy. All of a sudden, the doctor was totally MIA. I know unavailability is basically my favorite quality in a boyfriend, but not in a doctor. I couldn’t track him down for three days. He finally gave me a time to come see him, and when I told him my concern, he explained that he had to cut through some muscle because of how janky my spine is. He said it in a much more erudite way than that, but he seemed pretty at peace with filleting my chest muscle and leaving a ghastly canyon where breast tissue was supposed to be. My boobs were now even more asymmetrical than before.
I didn’t stand up for myself or challenge Dr. Smegma. I figured on some level that I deserved it. That’s what I get for being so insecure and reckless. I could hardly afford the procedure, much less to sue this guy. I guess I could have written a Yelp review or something, but I was too in denial to acknowledge how big of a disaster this was and I was on too many muscle relaxers to remember how to spell “Yelp.”
I spent the next couple years just as ashamed of my divot as I had been of my uniboob, essentially replacing one insecurity with another insecurity. I still had sex with the lights off, still had to spend most of sex trying to manipulate and hide my chest. Having sex with me must have been akin to having sex with a mime because I always had my hands up, trying to distract the guy, bobbing and weaving to cover up my sternum. I was like Madonna in the “Vogue” video, constantly doing spastic origami with my hands. I’m very certain that one guy I dated was convinced I was epileptic.
Cut to a couple of years later, thanks to my therapy for codependence, I gained the courage and ability to trust other humans. I finally confided to one of my girlfriends about my predicament. She effortlessly quipped, “Oh, that’s an easy fix. I have the best guy.” She wasn’t shocked, grossed out, or even judgmental. After talking to a couple of other people I trusted, I found out that one of my friends had a reduction, another a lift after having a baby, and another a similar reconstruction to mine. Almost everyone I talked to had either done it or considered it, and I realized that in not having looked into getting mine fixed, I might even have been in the minority. Again, I started realizing the only person in my life who was horrified by my body rectification was me.
A friend of mine with a similar chest issue had so little shame about it that she inspired me to go to another doctor to get the fix fixed. She sent me to a real surgeon who actually had a website and whose office validated parking. When I went to meet him, someone led me into a private room that smelled like flowers and showed me where the bathroom was. It didn’t even require a key. I felt like I was the queen of Versailles. His binder of before-and-after photos looked like gorgeous wedding albums, not teenagers’ school supplies from a swap meet.
When this surgeon came in, he was tan, with broad shoulders, and not a lick of crust on his face. He looked me in the eye and wrote notes with a pen that worked the first time it hit the paper.
I came in hot. “Where do you do your surgeries?”
Confounded, he responded. “Downstairs.”
“When is the soonest you could do it?”
He winced. “I’m booked out for a couple months, but I am sure someone will have to reschedule.” Ah, a busy surgeon with an office very far away from the airport. I was in the right place. I removed my paper gown with aplomb and revealed my chest.
“Jesus, he cut right through your muscle.” The expression on his face was that of disgust laced with compassion. “What was the surgeon’s name?”
I couldn’t believe I didn’t know the answer. I guess my brain had blocked out the entire experience, including Dr. Smegma’s name.
“You have scoliosis.”
“I know.”