Last weekend I went out with Jean and a recently arrived academic transplant, and what a treat he proved to be: a writer, art critic, media studies maven and, best of all, North American.
Oh, glorious good luck! A new friend is always great fun, but one with a similar vocabulary and set of interests is a rarity in this town. During the course of the conversation someone told him about my memoir, punctuating remarks about the quality and merits of the book with She has something like a thousand scars on her body!
I frowned and corrected No, just shy of four hundred.
My new companion looked disbelieving, and the others told him to take a look. I obliged by pulling my collar down and he proceeded to rummage around my torso, examining the traces of surgical interventions before kindly commenting that they are not frightening.
Maybe, now – because, without my informed consent (I was just a child) every single cancer scar was injected with cortisone. Over the years they leveled off and faded to silver, and since my immune system destroyed all the surrounding pigment, they are almost invisible.
Of course I didn’t show him my abdomen, hacked open and poorly mended on three memorable occasions, and striated with the evidence that I have birthed children. My belly is reserved for special occasions. Jean commented that it is odd I am such an exhibitionist but I just shrugged; I grew up on display for the benefit of doctors. Showing the scars, the proof of an unbelievable story, is simply routine.
Jean should know this; yet he persists in a series of quaint, sentimental, stereotyped ideas about women.