Lucy Grealey wrote in Autobiography of A Body (for Nerve) about how she believed sex would bring her closer to love and if she was loved that meant she possessed beauty. Disfigured differently figured. Sex with a man was "5 or 6 inches closer to love." At a party I waited for the bathroom with a man I used to flirt with. He used to joke that I should leave my family and run away with him. This was always at parties nothing ever happened just fun frisson. The bathroom door opened I went in and another woman came to wait, and greeted my former flirtation. "Oh were you planning on going in together?" She laughed. He demurred in a way that interested me as I sat and peed. "Another time maybe..." and I was like huh pretending that I couldn't hear them I rinsed my hands and checked my lipstick. It took it as a dismissal of our flirtation. That cancer had taken the beauty I possessed and made him uninterested. Or that cancer took me out of the flirtation. It was too serious. As my hand touched the brass handle she laughed knowingly. I smiled as I exited, sure I had lost something. #selfportraitwithcat #beauty #cancer #cancersex #flirt #ovariancancer