Why cancer and chemo is funny

I was asked in a recent print interview what I thought about people who criticized me for making jokes about cancer and chemo. My first response was, “They’ve never been there.” But upon further reflection, I added, when you’re diagnosed you’re reduced to a chunk of cells, a glob, and the seriousness of being reduced to a malignant feeding paste for cancer is a negative gravitational pull towards a black hole. And there are a lot of malignant healthy people out in the world who have no sense of humor because they take everything seriously and make almost everyone miserable, especially the people who work for them. They are the moral referees who throw down the flags of judgment calls and declare the rules of play, largely because either those rules benefit them, or those rules enable them to win the game at the expense of better talented people. These referees see humor as a weakness. But when cancer overwhelms you, you can forget about your life, and humor is a way of hitting a spark in the darkness, pushing its stain back into the night where it belongs.

These humorless people don’t handle disease well. When they’re incapacitated, their bored or angry. They take everything as a personal affront, and if you dare joke about their situation they can snitty or angry. And the card people threw down on me, their Ace to my King, was after what I went through I should be more supportive about their views. And these are people who never lifted a finger to help me, and when they do help others it’s usually benefits them in some way, either promoting their career, enabling them to make money, or falsely making everyone feel they are better people. And they, these people who never accept anyone but themselves, they’re the ones who look at you, and see your humor as a failing, band that you’re the one who didn’t learn anything from your cancer experience, even though while you had cancer they did nothing, but you’re supposed to come around to their way of thinking. That’s how they judge acceptance. And all I can say, is, “I learned to accept WHAT you are, but you’re the one who has to accept WHO you are.” Those who don’t change, look at ME and say I didn’t learn anything from cancer because I didn’t become more supportive and like them?

I guess when your life is a joke you’re the one who misses the punchline.

So, I guess now that I’ve lost both testicles, I’m the only male you has the option of wearing Ben Wah balls.

So through my tears of experience and my patience with torment, and I look at the humorless hecklers in the darkness, and hear the laughter that is beyond them that floats me upwards into the rising parachute of a widening universe while they cling to the dirt in a planet without gravity.