.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a good old life-saving colonoscopy.

Earlier this week, I typed my blog domain name into Bing–which is the default search engine for my weird Amazon Fire tablet that was given to me as a gift a few years ago–and right below the link to this here site was someone on a platform called “threads.net”, also called Vera in Vancouver (how many of us are there?!).  The first few words she shared on this platform were about how she had scheduled her colonoscopy for 1:30 pm.

I wish her well, and it sounds as though she pulled through just fine.  A brief look at her profile shows that she is an enthusiastic photographer, and has a great sense of humour.  Maybe we’re supposed to meet and collaborate.  Incidentally, vera means “faith” in Russian–you just have to put the stress on the second syllable and roll your R–and it seems as though both she and I have a whole lot of that.

But in case any of you found the same thing, it’s not me. Just letting you know.  

…I’m not ruling one out, however.  Maybe it’s a sign that I need some medical interference.  A very, very close friend of the family was diagnosed with colorectal cancer a few years ago, and few things could be more hellish.  He’s still alive, and very much so. Because he’s so mentally and physically indomitable, he miraculously yoinked himself back from Stage 4, but it’s truly such a dastardly diagnosis.  I think I would even take brain cancer over colorectal cancer; it would probably quell the rug-pacing ferret that lives in my head.  

Enough about colons!  Besides, I prefer semicolons myself, which you’ve probably noticed if you’ve been following my scribblings on here.  

 *   *   *   *   *

(Quick note: links are here and there throughout this essay, as usual, but I think the ones included will provide you with some good visuals and reference points as opposed to my typical indulgences)

I was going to write about how I’ve managed to survive for so long in a fairly boring, unacceptably expensive metropolis while I basically never have enough money, but I may put that off until next time.  Writing about intimate body parts in the above introduction got me thinking about Wreck Beach.  And my body.  And how Wreck Beach made up my mind for me to get breast-reduction surgery.  

Oh, right, yes.  That’s me in the header shot, by the way, at Wreck Beach, circa 2008, looking young in a way that could currently shove me into a state of depressed midlife anxiety (midlife if I plan on sticking around until I’m 96, which I do not).  That pic was taken by a good friend about four years after I whittled down the knockers from a double D to a perfectly acceptable 36C.  And that’s the size I’ve stayed for exactly twenty years, more or less.  More, when I put on some poundage during COVID, since most of us had little to do apart from inhaling bowlfuls of pasta and sitting around wondering if we were dreaming all of this.  Less, when I had my first very dedicated stretch of sobriety a dozen years ago and embraced an austere straight-edge lifestyle, regularly hitting the gym and running 10 kilometres every weekend in a bid for some healthy dopamine hits. Those of us in the first determined stint of recovery and sobriety often take things to the other extreme and swan-dive into feats of athleticism and physicality for that particular feel-good chemical.  While drinking will indeed very happily and assuredly kick you in the head with dopamine, it will also kick you in the wallet, the bank account, the family structure, the liver, the bladder, the empathy, the mental health, the relationships, the jobs, the will to live.

So, back to breasts.  We all love them.  Most of us were nourished by them.  Men, women, and anyone in-between…everyone appreciates a good rack.  Doesn’t even have to be sexual; can just be admiration or appraisal, as one would do for some gemstones or objectively beautiful facial symmetry.  All shapes and sizes.  Whether swinging around braless or propped up to the chin with an expensive Wonderbra, women’s breasts are a body part to be heralded and appreciated, from their budding raisin-like beginnings during pubescence to their likely descent towards shoe-gazing later in life.   

I’m going to talk about my breasts, because they are a part of my body, and their existence has shaped my life, my self-perception, and my self-esteem.  They have dictated the way I feel about myself, which has ranged from pure loathing to an odious pride; they have humiliated and betrayed me during occasions in which I could not button shirts that otherwise fit me, or exercise in public without jeering youngsters making crude comments; they have often felt like separate, alien growths on my body. At the age of 48, I now accept them for the joyous funbags they were always meant to be.  Whatever.  Sure. What else am I gonna do? 

It wasn’t always this way.  That’s because I had nothing below my neck for a very long and embarrassing time, and then I had a whole lot of too much, and then I had to seek surgical correction to sort the entire matter out. 

And I point all relevant index fingers squarely at a drunken dingbat who approached me at Wreck Beach in the summer of 2003.

* * * * *

Wreck is exactly–is precisely–the place where you’re supposed to feel safe whilst disrobed; not objectified, not zeroed in on for your body parts, not analyzed and assessed and ogled and made to feel like a slab of pork.  This simian was not just the sort of guy from whom you could never accept a drink at a party, he was the type of individual who would likely have forced me at knifepoint into doing unmentionable things to him in his enormous Ford F150 truck.  I mean, our exchange lasted about thirty seconds, but it was impactful enough to leave me shattered: to find me packing up my things in a state of humiliation, and not returning to Wreck for four years, and to consult medical professionals about altering my body.  Maybe I should also give him a grudging thanks, because it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in a life characterized by pretty questionable ones.  

I linked to Wreck somewhere above here, and I will do it again right here.  I can give a summary of what I know and have experienced: it’s Vancouver’s “clothing-optional” beach, found at the bottom of a set of very tiring stairs at the lip of the University of British Columbia campus, although I’d say about 75% of the people there are as naked as the day they were born.  I haven’t been there in probably fifteen years now, so I imagine it’s been commercialized, ravaged, gentrified, and all of those other terrific things that have occurred to very specialized, very niche locations within Vancouver.  But when I used to go there regularly in the early 2000s, it was very much a piece of paradise that took a small degree of effort to access.  You had to go to UBC, which was easy enough to do if you were taking the bus.  If driving, you’d have to figure out a place to park, which–back then–was somewhat easy with weekend parkades charging not too bad of a daily fee, but must surely cost about $10 an hour today.  Or something similar.  

Small rant time!  I’m old, I get to do this now!

This city is just so out of control with inflation and cost.  It’s out of control.  There is no justification.  A year ago I could buy Annie her cat grass and they’d give me a small paper bag in which I could take it home, because there were still fresh seeds in the plastic container that had not yet germinated and would spill out, causing a small mess.  Now, that same little brown lunch bag comes with a thirty-cent extra charge.  Every time I buy Annie’s grass and confirm that the bag has an extra cost, I usually sneer at the poor cashier who had no say in dictating the new customer-fleecing scheme, and either walk home with the grass in my hand, or gently try to tuck it into my backpack without crushing its contents.  

On it goes.  On and on it goes.  And nobody here can do anything about it.

…okay, swinging this back to Wreck.  You’d get to the UBC campus, which is really quite out of the way for most people, and then trek to the very tip of it in order to find the staircase that leads you down to the beach.  About 500 stairs, which is fine going down, but after an entire day of sunning and drinking and smoking herbal things and lazing about, the march back up those things can feel like a Stairmaster incline set to 20 in the hottest part of hell.  No matter how fit you are, after an entire day at Wreck doing whatever you please, you must pay the piper in the form of the endless, nonstop, treadmill-like, increasingly-steeper, relentless, mocking stairs that seem to keep stretching out like those scenes in horror movies where there is no end. 

Again, I’m only speaking about my many times at Wreck in the 2000s, but once you finally hit the bottom of those stairs, you were met with a jaw-dropping little utopia.  

Perhaps I should backpedal on that hoary, cliched description: I’ve been to many, many Costa Rican beaches on both its Pacific and Caribbean coasts, having lived in that country for nearly a year and a half–in the horrible capital city of San Jose, mind you–and I will admit, Wreck Beach will never hold a Roman candle to those.  Ever.  If you’ve ever seen tourist info / propaganda for Costa Rican destinations, it actually looks just like that, but even better.  However, for what we’ve got going on in the Pacific Northwest, Wreck is–or was–the sort of place where, once you descended those honest little stairs and were met with the type of vista that could tame a rabid dog, you knew you were in a very special location.  We’ve got beaches in Vancouver, lots of them, but Wreck is in a league of its own.  

You’d find a spot and plonk yourself down and, if you were so inclined, you’d take off all your clothes and start to beach the heck out of it.  That’s the scene you’d encounter upon wading through the people; at the time, there weren’t really crowds at all, but instead, small groups of friends, or couples, or families, or individuals wanting some solitude, which is the category in which I usually found myself.  During the few precious hot months we had in Vancouver–which are currently increasing in temperature–I would spend the week teaching ESL, draining all energy and ambition and wit and hope from my being, then hop aboard the bus to Wreck with my beach stuff on Saturday morning and spend a few nice hours there alone.  I would read trashy supermarket tabloid mags, close my eyes and face the healing sun, swim in the brackish water–which was perfect: not prohibitively cold, not nauseatingly piss-warm, not very salty, just inviting and wonderful–and then go home, rejuvenated.  Mildly tipsy, but if I was driving, not at all.  Somewhat okay with another week of explaining gerunds and infinitives to a classroom full of sleepy Koreans.  

There were always the same cast of characters there, marching up and down the beach and selling their wares.  I wish I could remember all of their repeated chants in which they attempted to lure in customers, but I just recall one Australian guy wearing exactly nothing except for a cooler hanging around his neck:

“Getcha sweet TRAITS!  SWEET TRAITS!  Getcha sweet traits roit heah!” 

I believe he was selling frozen novelties like popsicles and ice cream cones.  In the nude. There was also a unique mother-and-son duo selling cold cans of pop and bottles of water.  Naked.  Then another person shuffling through the crowds, discreetly promoting the fact that they had chilled cans of beer and cider.  Yet another one with tightly-rolled joints.   Mushrooms.  Whatever you wanted. 

By that point I didn’t touch marijuana, because the stuff I had enjoyed in the 90s had suddenly turned into something worse than LSD. Most of us brought our own indulgences, but it was wonderful to know that we could top up or add on if we felt like it, thanks to the selfless vendors making their way back and forth, up and down the hot sand, exposed genitals in our faces, genuine smiles on theirs.

The cops would come down regularly to see what was going on and just what sort of shenanigans we naked hippies were up to (note: I am no hippie), entirely ready to bust one and all, and it was fantastic to be part of the buzz spreading across the beach in record time: everyone stubbed out their joints, buried their stash, covered their booze with towels, and made like we were all simply there honouring the Sun King with a can of Pepsi and a sandwich.

I never went entirely nude, but only topless.  Having my dirtypillows hanging out was really no big deal at all, considering I was surrounded by oiled-up, naked men spread-eagled on their blankets trying their best to turn their bodies into jerky, or women on all fours digging through their beach bags, asses in the air and utterly loving the accepting, evolved environment where being naked didn’t mean she was automatically a magnet for a mangy penis uninterested in consent.  I never saw inappropriate or harassing behaviour occur.  Not once.  

So me, minding my own business one Saturday in July 2003 among a few hundred naked people, in my swim shorts, probably sipping on some Mike’s Hard Lemonade with my moneymakers hanging out, was nothing. 

It was nothing.  It was nothing!

Until.

I remember it as clearly as if it were an hour ago, which I actually don’t remember much at all since I’m at work and it all becomes a blur, but you get the idea.  I was on my knees and rifling through my bag, probably reaching for some massage oil.  Get your mind out of the gutter and allow me to elaborate: at that time, I was 27 years old and believed I was immortal, simply untouchable, and so getting a scintillating tan was only obtainable by slathering my clammy Vancouver skin in oil and broasting myself like a rotisserie chicken, really.  I also had a new, fairly brilliant boyfriend in California, and I had this idea I should be tanned and leggy for him, even though he was pastier than I was and had Dad Bod at the age of 24.  

As I was rummaging through my stuff, a guy approached me.  Probably my age, looked like your common brainless jock, was wearing long board shorts.  Was clearly drunk, because I know what that looks and sounds like, except he was jock drunk: sort of swaying, flushed, the imbecilic expression on his face taken to new heights of idiocy.

“‘Scuse me,” he semi-slurred.

Oh, for…

“WHAT.”  I spat out the word.  Defensive, suspicious, on high alert, as all women are when in a vulnerable position around a potential male violator.

“I was just wondering if…uh, I could take a picture of you topless.”

That’s when I noticed he was clutching a disposable camera in his hand.  This was well before the era of smartphones and filters and apps and social media.  

The series of emotions that overcame me were immediate and overwhelming: rage, disbelief, humiliation, confusion, fear, resignation, defiance, and whatever the noun for “homicidal” is.  You also have to understand that we were at a very busy nude beach on a hot Saturday afternoon, and I was hardly–hardly–a centerfold, or anyone who would have attracted attention to her mammaries in a place where you couldn’t swing a purse without smashing it into several pairs of exposed knockers.  I was a very average-bodied woman in her late twenties, minding her own business just like everyone else.  Surrounding us were nubile girls barely out of their teens, cavorting on the beach without a single extra roll of flab on their taut frames, or other women who had come there on their own, some silicone-enhanced, some wonderfully-natural, possessing racks that were perfect, perky, and pert.  

I was a topless nobody in a pair of shorts, and I had been singled out at this place where I was supposed to be safe and confident, surrounded by nudity and community, by a creature who had clearly come here just to gawk.  In retrospect, I doubt I was the only woman he approached in this fashion, but he made me feel like an absolute freak in regards the one part of my body I was already very self-conscious of, and in a place where feeling just a modicum of acceptance about my bosom should have been unquestioning.  

“NO!” I roared at him, and held my towel to my chest.  I was about to cry, but I did not.

“Oh,” he said, kind of smirking.  “Well, I suppose it’s a good thing I asked you.  I could have taken a picture of you from far away and you never would have known it.”  

My heart instantly dropped to the soles of my feet as I realized he had probably done exactly that.

“Oh my god, get out of here!” I exclaimed.  He shambled away, hopefully to step on a broken bottle, get an infection, and die.

TO BE CONTINUED, I THINK, UNLESS I DECIDE THAT AN ENTRY ABOUT SURGERY JUST PROBABLY WON’T WORK HERE. Sorry, this has already taken me a couple of days…but please do follow me on Facebook at Nadz Vera!

(Reach me at nadya@nadzvera.com)