Cracking the Walnut:
How Being A Little Nuts
Helped Me To Beat
Prostate Cancer
by Eric Robespierre

Round 1

Wednesday, October 10, 2007, 6:30 a.m.  Get ready to tumble . . . 



Don't let anyone tell you digging up a grave is easy.  So--what in the world am

I doing at a gravesite, in the pitch of night, on my hands and knees, feverishly 

clawing at the dirt, buckets of rain pouring down, soaking me to the bone?  I 

want to murder my father, kill him for passing down deadly genetic material to 

his only son.  He gave me life, but I'm pissed to the brim he had the hereditary 

right to take it back. 



I'm only kidding.  Revenge may be best served up cold, but I'm not crazy enough 

to actually dig up my dear old dead dad--that's morbidly sick, or a good opening 

for a Romero scare job.  More to the point, I love my father.  I miss him 

terribly.  Let me prove it: Say God, in all his infinite glory, magically 

appears before me and says, "Eric Robespierre--I like you, always have, always 

will--so here's the deal, kid.  How' bouta new Papaw, only this one'll be good 

to the walnut?" 

 

You know what I would reply once I regained consciousness?  "How come you look 

like Charlton Heston, but sound like Elvis?"  Just kidding.  I'd say, 

"Thanks--but no thanks."  Respectfully, of course--you don't mouth off against the

Big Guy.  I'd also take the opportunity to give Him a shout-out for keeping my 

Stuyvesant Town apartment rent stabilized.  



I talk this way now, still glib, still unsure what the urologist will discover, 

but should my rising PSA (prostate specific antigen) numbers climb to the level 

of the unthinkable, well then--in today's argot--I'd be royally fucked, maybe 

actually lose it enough to head out to Cemetery Central and do a Romero on Daddy

Dearest.  Who knows, I might not even return.  



Let's face it: when the horse has left the barn, what choice do you have but to 

bend over and kiss your sorry ass goodbye?  Doing a kiss-off in a cemetery has 

a kick-ass ring to it; makes things so much more convenient and cheaper for 

those you left behind, don't you think?



It's time to open my eyes, get out of bed and put an end to ghoulish thoughts, 

because the longerI lay here in my Brothers Grim twilight, the more I drive 

myself nuttier, and nuttier and nuttier. 



My perversity reminds me of those neurotic times when I have a tiny, but 

bothersome splinter in my finger--I know when I touch it, no matter how gently, 

it will hurt, yet instead of taking Rational Road and simply refraining from 

fingering it until I can do some sterile self-surgery, I take Nut Case Walk and 

cannot suppress the desire to press down on the soft, tender flesh, again and 

again and again, each time incrementally increasing the pain that inexorably 

radiates up the inflamed area and into my hand.  Fortunately, I don't get 

too many splinters.



Time to seek out some music--the best thing to calm my neurotic breast 

(owning up to onanism not withstanding).  I learned this first as a 

ten-year-old with Doo Wop: "Deserie," by the Charts; "Over The Mountain,"

by Johnny and Joe.  Then at thirteen, it was rock and roll: Big Haley, The Fat 

Man, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, and the King.  Then jazz in college: Blakey, 

Ramsey, J.J. Johnson, and Miles--Miles of Miles; classical in grad school: 

Beethoven, Mahler, Mozart; and finally, in my thirties, opera: Verdi, Puccini, 

Wagner--a world of thrilling harmonies and vocal gymnastics. 



I often play the same piece at the same time of the day for a week, month, 

five months.  Right now, mornings belong to the pianist Dinu Lipatti playing

a selection of Bach, Mozart, Scarlatti, and Schubert--mood-altering harmonies 

guaranteed to release my lovely pal Dopamine and bathe me in a mind-soaking 

chemical bliss.



But today it doesn't seem to be working.  



Wait.  I have another kind of a soak that might do it: a long, hot, tub bath, 

another neurological happy pill that usually calms my crazies.  I get in and feel

my pores open in a quasi-religious welcome.  The waters are warm and soothing, 

but unfortunately, my troubled mind is doomsday-racing with anxiety.  I can't 

soak still.  



I've left the door open so I can hear the music.  Perhaps, if I close my eyes 

and let the music and the water wash over me, the combination will calm me.  

It's the rhythmically intoxicating "Partita for Keyboard No. 1 in B-flat major,"

by Bach; for a moment my brain is hijacked.  Angst is flushed down the drain, 

and I'm floating in a rhapsody of tranquility--until workmen arrive below my 

window, and a series of staccato thumps and whumps that travel upwards with the

explosiveness of a 747 taking off shatter my serenity. 



In desperation, I try submerging my head (holding my nose, of course), 

pretending I'm diving for pearls or maybe looking to break the Guinness World 

Records for Nostril-Holding in a Five-Foot, Post-War, Porcelain-Peeling Tub, 

covered head to foot in a protective wet suit.  Or perhaps daring to do the 

stunt sans suit, covered only by a thick, greasy jell impervious to New York 

City bacteria.  Envisioning such a sports moment, however risky it would be, 

normally distracts me in troubled waters.  



But not today.  



I think about going for another kind of record--say consecutive dunks without 

breathing, maybe five, ten, in a skintight Speedo.  It's a maneuver I've never

attempted, but a derring-do worth the risk.  



Not today. 



I know what's bothering me.  Lying in the tub, peering over my naked body 

half-submerged in the brackish (courtesy of fifty-year-old pipes) water, I 

can't help but stare at Mr. Floppy, AKA Mr. Stiffy (in better times).  He's 

obviously not the problem, but offensive nevertheless because he symbolizes 

the crisis.  Oh, and don't tell me Mr. Floppy doesn't know the score, bobbing 

limply in the murky water, laying low, trying to avoid attention, hoping to hell

I won't shoot the messenger because I don't like the message. 



I raise myself up to a standing position in the tub--carefully, so as not to slip

and break my neck.  Fear may be the mind-killer, but it'll also distract your 

ass and make you fall and break it.  I turn on the shower, stick my face 

directly into the showerhead, and feel the sting as my skin yells, Too fucking 

hot!  My cheeks burn, my nose closes up, and I hold my breath for as long as I 

can--maybe another Guinness Record?  



Nope, not today.



Well--at least the pain is somewhat distracting.  Now for a good soap-it-up with

stuff I got in bulk from Costco that smells a little too tutti frutti, flaring 

my nostrils as it taunts the masculinity of my nose.  Unlike Mr. Floppy, my 

sniffer is unaware of any looming doom, and is still hard as a rock.  (This 

tutti frutti soap is a product I normally wouldn't purchase, but like the other

Jewish dilemma--pork on sale--was too good to pass up.)  



I then give myself a cooling coconut shampoo out of a bottle that must weigh 

fifty pounds (another Costco saver), but thank God it doesn't smell like ladies

(you just
 have to look at a hairy coconut to know it's ballsy), rub-a-dub-dubbing

soap and shampoo until the foamy whiteness completely covers the brown waters and

gives me the illusion that I'm not bathing in sewage.  I follow up with a little 

three-sixty rinse-a-dinse under the showerhead.
 



I slowly get myself out of the tub without doing a header onto the tiles

(I'm still in my fear-is-the-mind-killer/ass-breaker mode).  However, before my 

cautious exit, I make damn sure I gently lather Mr. Floppy with reverential care.  

I know it's not your fault, and whatever happens, I say to him silently, just remember 

we'll get through it together.  I hope for a salute in response. 



Not today.



I dry myself off and then dart naked into the living room to make the music a 

tad lower.  I don't want jealous market-rate neighbors complaining, giving 

management another reason to rid them of the dreaded rent-stabilized tenant.  

I unconsciously cover my privates as I glance furtively out my window and across

the courtyard at the apartments facing me, looking for any movement that might 

indicate a neighbor, a peeper, anyone looking to post voyeuristic photos of me on

YouTube.  I don't spot anything perverted, and just as quickly scamper back to 

the bathroom.  Empowered by my daring, and suddenly full of stones, I 

momentarily care nothing about having the shakes, and begin to shave my smiley 

face.



I stare in the mirror.  "I told you I could do it, pally." 

 

The recognizable face in the mirror grins back: thin, scarred lips parted ever 

so slightly; jaw line square and chiseled granite hard; grey fedora pulled neatly

down over the disfigured half-moon eyebrows, leaving a straight shadow across a 

nose that's been shaped by one too many knuckle sandwiches.  Good old Philip 

Marlowe, my get-tough persona when times get tough.



"Come on, finish up, pally; let's dangle." 



No scrapes, no cuts, no nicking the tips of the nose.  A real bleeding bitch when

that happens.  Shaving malpractice requires a good smear of Vaseline and an ugly

wad of tissue paper--the Vaseline being the key, or else look out, because no 

matter how gently you pull off the paper, there will be blood. 



I dress myself without mismatching socks, sneakers, or mixing plaids with stripes,

but there's just so much bravado you can get from forty seconds of running naked 

into your living room, and when the adrenaline rush is gone, the anguish that 

began two short days ago again descends, in the familiar form of a smothering 

black cloud that threatens to become my second skin.  What better time than now 

to tell you how this all started?