Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Making the Breast of the Situation

Righty & Lefty. A & B. Teeny & Tiny. Frick & Frack. I have called the ladies many names over the years, as I have come to terms with their stature—for want of a better term. I have been blessed with modest breasts. I think I stood on the wrong line in that heavenly motor vehicle department that doles out physical attributes. I waited patiently on the line that distributed generous portions of butt and thigh. And so to my never-ending chagrin, the ladies are what they are: small.

When I was younger I desperately wanted cleavage. Was that so much to ask for? I wasn’t asking for the world. I would have settled for completely filling my 34A fiber filled cups. But no, it was not meant to be. When I looked down, I had a clear view of my feet. I could hold bags of groceries between my breasts. I mean I could clutch them directly to my breastbone—no breasts to speak of getting in the way. Let’s call it the grocery bag test.

I have experimented with padded bras, acquiring along the way, an extensive knowledge of the limits of polyester and foam padding. Miracle Bras are just that: miracles of male engineering. No woman would have spent time coming up with a tourniquet that squeezes your breasts up to your collar bone. No, it’s not painful. But it doesn’t feel or look natural. And for me, it still doesn’t quite achieve real cleavage. True, I can’t hug the groceries directly to my breast bone, but I can still see plenty of daylight between the ladies.

Henny Youngman used to do a routine pantomiming a woman squeeeeezing herself into a girdle that rolled her body fat up and into her bra. That actually looked like a good idea to me. My bottom half is zaftig enough to make that work. And while Henny’s routine was just a dream, surgical breast augmentation is not. The first augmented breasts I ever encountered were those of a dorm-mate in college. At least I think they were augmented. Ronnie always wore a baggy gray Stony Brook gym shirt and no bra. The girls—two unnaturally perfect globes—pointed optimistically towards the sky whether Ronnie was cold or not, and the boys followed Ronnie and the girls around like puppies. She never said that she’d had surgery, and in 1971 no one even knew to ask. But honest to God, those could not have been natural human endowments. I recall a group of hall mates discussing the famous pencil test. (The pencil test is simple. Place a pencil under your breast. If it’s held in place by a fold of flesh, then do everyone a favor: Wear a bra.) Everyone shook their heads no, they didn’t pass the test. Everyone except Ronnie and me. Smiling from ear to ear, Ronnie announced that she certainly did pass the test. I remember thinking she was positively chirpy—as she had just discovered something brand new about herself. Well, God bless her and her two close friends. Ronnie would have failed the grocery bag test.

After graduating college and working for a couple of years, I discovered my first breast cyst. I shot straight into locked-down panic mode, with the emergency klaxons blaring in my head around the clock. If I were destined to die young, I was going to India and live in an ashram before I departed this life. I would visit Tibet. I was going anywhere, but I was not going to spend my last few months at a desk in the Pension Department of Mutual of New York. Until that moment, I may not have thought of myself as being especially fond of Rhett and Scarlet, but I was amazed to discover just how attached to them I was. It’s one thing to take complain that Frankie and Johnnie are not everything I’d like them to be. It’s quite another to imagine being disfigured or dead. My family doctor was a bit more sanguine about it and suggested a mammogram as a first step to determine the nature of the lump.

In 1975 a mammogram was quite a different experience than the tourniquet and torture it is today. What it lacked in pain, it made up for in humiliation. The machine resembled a free standing fireplace in a ski chalet. Stationed in the middle of the room, it consisted of a stove pipe that hung from the ceiling and widened into a square stainless steel hood. The open end of the hood was filled with an enormous white balloon that extended out like an upside down muffin top. Below this contraption was a glass topped table, with the mammo film under the table. The technician instructed me to hop up on the table, lie on my side and lay Frankie flat on the table. That was easier said than done. The hood would be lowered toward the table, squeezing the breast between the balloon and the glass table top for the picture to be taken. Sounds reasonable, no? It is reasonable if you a reasonably sized breast. The technician struggled to gather enough breast tissue to pin down under the balloon. I obligingly rolled from side to side, angled my ribs, my back and my hips. But the mammary in question was not to be reasoned with. I don’t know if the tech ever did get a useable picture. No matter, the doctor pronounced it a benign cyst. My mother explained that the entire family (my grandmother, my mother and both her sisters) had cystic breasts. (“They come. They go. It’s nothing.”) I never went to India, but I did go back to work. Most importantly, I had gained a new appreciation for Ethel and Lucy. To paraphrase the US Army slogan, they were being all that they could be. And they were not to be faulted for what they were not meant to be.

Over the years, the ladies have come into their own. As I approached 40, and went through a brief midlife crisis lamenting the loss of youth and questioning the meaning of life, Teeny and Tiny made it possible for me to once again go bra-less. Once I was satisfied there was life after 40, I regained my sanity and put my bra back on. And even as I round the bend approaching 60, Abbott and Costello are still perky. I can’t complain.