Pizza Pizza Cancer Cancer

A Cancerversary and a Birthday Party!

Hi Y’all,

Sunday, December 1, we hosted a party called Pizza Pizza Cancer Cancer. Over 60 of our friends came to eat pizza and spend time in conversation about life and share pizza stories and hear some messy internet jokes. The whole day was the best version of a cancerversary that I can imagine. Two years ago was my official diagnosis date (and my birthday is in a few weeks on the 19th). I didn’t want to spend the day feeling sad; I wanted to celebrate my aliveness. Tony and I spent most of the day preparing for the party, and that was fun, too.

Party Prepping by Tony

When I woke up on Dec. 1, my friend Jhumki was on my mind. I wrote about her, and it felt really nice to remember so many funny moments we shared. At the party, I gave a little talk that I thought might be nice to share here with all of y’all…

“Look at all of you. I’m so happy to see you here. I hope that you are talking about pizza while you eat pizza and keeping your “who makes the best pizza” dialogues friendly instead of fist- fighting. This is a no brawl kinda vibe.

On Dec. 1, 2022, after a year of me telling doctors something was wrong, I was told it looks like you have cancer by a technician who I’m pretty sure wasn’t supposed to be the one to say anything. It’s been complicated and hard and fucking heartbreaking, but Tony and I have also been committed to humor and love during this shitstorm. Today is my cancerversary and my birthday is on the solstice, Dec. 19th.

A couple weeks ago another friend of mine was supposed to have her birthday. She also would have been 47. Her name was Jhumki Basu.

My friend Jhumki!

We became close in our mid-20s when we helped open a public school in Brooklyn and worked 14 hour days. She was brilliant. She was a total genius scientist with no fear of looking like an idiot. She asked questions about everything. Her enormous smile contained a life of wonder. Her curiosity was contagious. She made everyone around her believe that they were incredibly smart, too, including me. She once told me that physics was easy to understand, but feminist theory was rich and complex and so deep and asked me to explain some things to her. She liked to point at things, especially students and the direction she wanted them to go, even though it was totally ineffective.

If she was at this party, she’d be asleep, and not in the other room, but like right there on that tall stool. She had this ability to fall asleep in unusual places at unusual times like in restaurants during dinner. And she would have dressed up for this party, putting on her nicest black sweatpants and truly believing that she had pulled something off! When her breast cancer came back in her late 20s, she went at it like a scientist, tracked her markers, built spreadsheets to analyze her labs. She went about it as pragmatically as possible, and felt that was the best way for her. As a sister in the pragmatic, it seemed like misery on top of misery to me, but Jhumki was a scientist, and data was a comfort to her.

For both of us, I ain’t gonna sugarcoat it, cancer is a miserable disease. But, also, it’s not everything. It’s not my whole life. When I was diagnosed, after working on some of my big-ass fears, I decided that I wanted to live as poetically as possible. Fellow writer and canceree (Okay, I need a better word for people with cancer, something snappy!) Suleika Jaouad says that survival is a creative act. That feels aggressively true to me.

My friend Jhumki also laughed a lot with her giant grin so this is for her and for you and for me, too. Warning: I am not a joke writer so these lines have been reworked from the internet.

1. They say laughter is the best medicine, unless you have cancer, in which case chemotherapy is probably more effective.

2. What are you if you can’t decide what pizza to get? You’re indeslicesive. That’s why we decided for you. We have vegan and vegetarian options.

3. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. At this point, y’all, I should be able to bench press bench press the Gas Up (an art deco bodega in our neighborhood). Picture it.

4. Y’all know I’ve gotten into meditation so this one is for the meditators. What did the Dalai Lama say when he walked into a pizza parlor? Make me ONE with everything!

5. I’ve gotta take a lot of meds to keep the cancer away. Why are there never any good side effects? Just once I’d like to read a medication bottle that says, “May cause extreme sexiness.”

6. What’s the difference between a good pizza joke and a bad one? The delivery.

Why is this party called Pizza Pizza Cancer Cancer. First, my life is extreme highs and extreme lows. There are no in betweens right now. One high: seeing Suzanne Ciani with Tony & spending time with her afterward. One low: dealing with severe dehydration and treatment complications during/after Hurricane Helene.

My dream is to write and share my work, and I’m doing it, living that dream. In Feb, I did my first reading at Punch Bucket Lit. The next day I had a skin biopsy, and that night I did my second reading at Juniper Bends. A couple days later I was told by an automatic message, which the local derm says was an error & that they meant to call me, that I had a second cancer, basal cell carcinoma caused by treatment. My first thought was to be pissed about the injustice of it all. My second thought was Pizza Pizza Cancer Cancer, and I cracked myself up. Double Pizza is an extreme high; double cancer is an extreme NOOOOO. The combo is absurd so it’s funny to me. The tagline: It’s a Pizza Party, Not a Pity Party feels like something you could dance to. I think this could be a fun art event next year and also a fun gift book. I’d love for any of you to be involved. If you have ideas, let me know.

Y’all, I love pizza so much that on my substack Chemo Sessions, when I’m encouraging people to be pissed if that’s where they are at, I accidentally write be pizza. So thanks for being here and being our friends. Let’s all be pizza! Cheers.”

Go be pizza! Or better yet, eat pizza!

Sending love and laughter,

Kelly 🩵