Robert Lipsyte

The Literature of Betrayal Arrives at the Ballpark
Steroids Are the WMDs Sportswriters Didn't Want to See
By Robert Lipsyte

I don't remember such a publishing flood of bad news sports books, at least not during a flood of really bad news in the supposedly real world of politics, wars, and finance. Why beat up on the mendacity of our games? Aren't they our dream world, a distraction from the deadlier contact contests? Or is the message from the sports media meant to be apocalyptic: the nation and its pastime have struck out for good?

All the books about the treachery of elected officials, financial operators, and juicing jocks constitute a literature of betrayal. From the Bush leagues to the major leagues, the narratives roll out about how our role models in pin-striped suits or pin-striped uniforms consciously lied to us for their own advantage. In turn, the beleaguered heavy hitters also claim betrayal, especially by the media: Hadn't they been doing what was wanted, what was needed? Why are we picking on them now?

The treachery of the suits is certainly time-honored: Americans have traditionally used cynicism toward pols as an excuse not to become aggressively involved in civic life, and we expect businesspeople to cheat. That's why we try to bet along with them. We think they've rigged the game and we want in. When they do just that, however, and we lose, as now, we're outraged.

On the other hand, we generally believe in our teams and our sports heroes for good reason; our goals are the same -- to win. That's what we're rooting for, isn't it? That's why "Say it ain't so, Joe," the apocryphal wail of a small boy to an alleged Black Sox fixer, has resonance. Winning is the only thing. Just do it. So why should we care so much when the players go to injectable extremes to do just that? After all, they do it for us, too. Dontcha like home runs?

'Roid Outrage

When it comes to Wall Street and Washington, the anger is clearly real -- and widespread. When it comes to baseball, the larger question may be whether the fans really care in the first place. For all the yammering on talk radio, in whatever newspaper columns are left, and in the steroidal spate of recent books I've read so you won't have to, there doesn't seem to be even a distant rumble of mass boycotts, sponsor pull-outs, or parents forcing kids to turn in their bats for violins.

Could all this rage over 'roid rage be little more than the revenge of the nerd media? Are its practitioners so ashamed of having blown the only truly big sports story of their generation that they have now turned viciously on their former heroes? It's the mirror-image of the story about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that weren't there. The steroids were right in front of their lying eyes, but they were in denial -- and in the tank.

Despite the current rash of weak mea culpas, the media failure on the story of steroid use in baseball is inexcusable because honest stories were being written -- and ignored. In the 1980s,Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post and others were already pointing fingers at the juicers.

In 1995, Bob Nightengale, then with the Los Angeles Times, quoted general managers saying that steroids were becoming part of the game. In 1998, Steve Wilstein of the Associated Press wrote about observing a bottle of androstenedione in slugger Mark McGwire's locker. He was assailed by many of his colleagues as a snoop.

In 2002, Ken Caminiti, the National League's 1996 most valuable player, admitted that he had regularly used steroids. He died two years later. In Editor & Publisher, Joe Strupp wrote:

"But instead of sparking a wave of follow-up articles or investigations to ferret out the details of steroid use in baseball -- who was using it, where it came from, what it did to the body -- sportswriters essentially left the story alone."

They left it alone not out of laziness or stupidity, but rather in the sweet moral corruption of love. Perhaps even more than entertainment and political writers, perhaps even more than hardcore fans, sportswriters adore the events themselves and the heady, faux-manly access to the subjects and the locker rooms. Love wants to be blind. As Murray Chass, then of the New York Times told Editor and Publisher, "I'm not sure that you want to spend every day being suspicious of someone. It might be the journalistic thing to do. But it is not fun."

Fun was the home-run-happy summer of 1998. Remember that moment when the St. Louis slugger with Popeye's forearms, Mark McGwire, andro'ed us out of a national depression over Bill's stain on Monica's blue dress? (Ah, for the dreamy days when McGwire, with Sammy Sosa close behind, was breaking Yankee interloper Roger Maris's record of 61 homers, and thus refurbishing the legend of Babe Ruth.)

The McGwire Effect

Of course, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez did not find that summer fun at all. Barry sulked; he was a far better ballplayer than McGwire, yet was being eclipsed by that wide white hormone container. It undoubtedly crossed his mind then that he'd better get some of that stuff Mark was using.

Roger Clemens, then 35 and on the downside of a fine pitching career, was wondering how he could survive against this new crew of monster hitters. He asked a Toronto Blue Jays strength coach, Brian McNamee, to help him out. And Alex, well, he was having a career season and nobody even noticed. It was time to step up his dosage.

Unlike Barry and Roger, who are brute craftsmen, Alex is an artist, and that description includes being vain, narcissistic, whiney, devious, ingratiating, whimsical, and sensual. There is something soft, dare we say almost feminine, about him, which is undoubtedly why the newshawks have always felt freer to beat on him than on Barry or Roger.

That sense of Alex enlivens A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez (Harper, $26.99) by Selena Roberts, who extended a Sports Illustrated profile into what's become the hottest sports book of the season because Alex's name was leaked as a major leaguer who had tested positive for steroids in 2003. That was off a list that had been compiled for research only and was to have been shredded.

The media might have gone after the leaker, but pounced instead on Roberts as yet another no-fun snoop. Her use of mostly anonymous sources led that old fun guy, Murray Chass, now a blogger, to call the book a "journalistic abomination." He also wrote that she had not been much of a reporter or columnist back in their days as colleagues at the New York Times.

Bad enough a girl breaks the most sensational sports story of the year, but this girl! Jock Culture has never forgiven Roberts for a series of New York Times columns on the Duke lacrosse scandal of 2006. While the charges against the white Dukies for molesting a black stripper they had hired for a party were eventually dropped, Roberts' denunciations of entitled jock bad behavior were uncomfortably on the mark.

The major league version of boys being bad boys is at the heart of a sweet, sad autobiography, Straw: Finding My Way (Ecco, $26.99) by former Met slugger Darryl Strawberry with John Strausbaugh. I've had a soft spot for Strawberry ever since the Mets brought him up in 1983, before his time. We'd been hearing drumbeats from the minors about this "next Ted Williams." I remember the Mets general manager telling me he'd never promote this immature kid to The Show until he was really ready.

Then the Mets had a bad year in the standings and worse, at the box office, and there he was, a likeable, somewhat goofy beanpole. Terrific player. Rookie year he looked like he could be the second coming of Ted himself, the Splendid Splinter as he was known, if given a chance to grow up.

Straw says he never did steroids, but if so, he did everything else, especially speed (the steroids of the eighties), alcohol, coke, crack, groupies. His rehabs and relapses became an opportunity for sportswriters to whine about how Straw had let them down after all the nice things they had said about him. His colon cancer and its recurrence somehow elicited the same response.

Blaming the media for building 'em up and tearing 'em down is an easy shot, but not necessarily a cheap one. Strawberry is a good example, and one worth keeping in mind as we consider a less lovable star, Roger Clemens, who gets two books to himself this season.

Sailing on Denial

The Rocket That Fell to Earth: Roger Clemens and the Rage for Baseball Immortality by Jeff Pearlman (Harper, $26.99) is an absorbing profile of the one-time "fat boy from Ohio" who, like Alex and Straw, was mostly raised by his mother into a socially-awkward, sports-obsessed, life-time adolescent.

American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime by Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O'Keeffe, and Christian Red (Knopf, $26.95) takes in a larger picture. The authors, members of the New York Daily News Sports Investigative Team, have been leading this story for some time and their book is a worthy successor to Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO and the Steroid Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports by the San Francisco Chronicle's investigative team, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. Taken together, they add up to the definitive and lively history of the current Steroid Era.

Roger's neediness, Alex's insecurities, and Straw's cancer show up as well in The Yankee Years (Doubleday, $26.95) by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci. The book is written in the third person, with Torre as the main interview, which gives it a curiously distanced tone to the text. It feels as if Torre is not the author, but merely a source with veto power. And one who can always offload criticism on his partner. As superb a baseball writer as Verducci can be, I would somehow have preferred if this book had come from my favorite manager's heart.

Here's heart, though: The sleeper of the season is Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football (Four Walls Publishing, $17 Paper) by Matt Chaney, a passionate, personal attack on the Jock Culture that brought us to this point. Chaney concentrates on chemicals in football, where, so he claims, the abuse is far greater than baseball. His heroes are Penn State epidemiologist Charles E. Yesalis, one of the few clear-eyed scientists on the case, and the late Steve Courson, a former Pittsburgh Steeler who, in 1985, spoke of his steroid use.

Chaney was a college football player whose own steroid history is instructive. Young athletes do not agonize over the moral question of whether to use or not. They merely seek to answer the only question worth asking in their world: How can I be the best I can be? And older athletes are usually more than willing to strike what might be a Faustian bargain, even if it leads to future malady.

Or does it? As Yesalis points out, there is very little hard science about performance-enhancing drugs, including what they enhance, much less what damage they may do. This leaves us, alas, with the bellicosity of the sportsbabblers, driven to flail and threaten by their sense of betrayal. Those who haven't thrown up their hands and declared that we are already in the Post-Steroid Era -- Let's get past this, we're all clean now! -- are calling for the harshest penalty they can impose: exclusion from the Hall of Fame for such shoo-ins as Roger and Alex. This is real punishment. After all, as Zev Chafets points out in his fascinating Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame (Penguin, $25), election to the Hall immediately jacks up a retired player's speaking, autographing, and memorabilia fees.

Chafets, who is best known for his long-time reporting from Israel and his recent sympathetic New York Times Magazine piece on that former Kansas City Royals front-office worker Rush Limbaugh (soon to be a book), is leading the libertarian wing of the Post-Steroids Party, whose platform is just let them do it and we'll all forget about it. His essential position: the genie is out of the bottle, past generations had their enhancers, and in an age of beta blockers, Ritalin, and the like why pick on anabolic steroids?

While this seems smarter and certainly more pragmatic than breast-beating and witch-hunting, I'm still waiting for the lab reports. No question that adolescents should be barred from steroid use, but what are the consequences for grown -- physically, at least -- men? Until we have those answers, we really are letting down Alex and Roger, demanding they thrill us by any means possible, then turning them in to the sheriff for the crime of getting caught.

Meanwhile, it feels like the pin-striped suits are slinking away without the media-mauling they deserve, much less real punishment. Maybe this is the chance for the sports media to make a comeback, avenge the loss, win one when it counts. While it might be hard to mount a war crimes charge against George W. Bush, what about a steroids trial? After all, he was managing partner of the Texas Rangers in the early 1990s when Jose Conseco, the guru and snitch of performance enhancing drugs, played for him and began sharing his needle.

So, George, what did you know and when did you know it?

A most sacred cow of sports, the Masters, ambles onto the greensward this week to open the big-time golf season and renew all that’s retrograde in American life. Forget about the return of Tiger Woods to health and competition and the sightings of President Obama on a Hawaiian course. Those were no signs of stimulation as far as I was concerned. Golf is about business as usual. Golf helped get us into this economic fix.
The Masters (did they mean Masters of the Universe?) is played at the Augusta National Club, in Georgia, which was founded in the early 1930’s for northeastern businessmen. Under pressure, the Club finally admitted at least one African-American member in 1990. Thirteen years later, it gave up millions in TV sponsorships rather than give in to a campaign to admit at least a token woman member.
But there’s far more to golf than mere lack of equality. Golf is an environmental nightmare, a waste of space, of fertilizer, of water. Think of the vegetables that could be grown on those useless lawns. Think of the lovely meadows, walking trails, wildlife sanctuaries.
Bernard Madoff was a golfer. There was even a links-linked red flag for his victims, according to a CNBC report that found his golf scores oddly consistent, too good to be true – just like his reported investment returns. And even the attempt to desegregate Augusta was really about making money – opening the higher levels of corporate deal-making to business women. Want to play a round with a Bernadette Madoff?
In these hard times, with fewer new golf clubs expected to open this year than old ones closing, according to the National Golf Foundation, while country clubs lower their dues and some sponsors on the 2009 PGA tour re-think their costs, I’ve been hoping this useless sport was finally in the rough. We’ll have to watch the scoreboard.
Meanwhile, I must disclose there’s a personal issue here.
April is the cruelest month for me because so many of my friends here in the northeast disappear. They’re out playing golf. When I complain, they tell me to come along, to take up the game.
Right. I’ve really thought about the joys of thrashing at a small object that’s not moving, then complaining about my performance to sympathetic listeners. Golf is not even a game, it’s a socially acceptable way to avoid your spouse, do business while pretending not to do business, or imagine you have a purpose in life.
I say all this to my friends and they either laugh or look at me with the pity that true believers reserve for sad cynics.
Randy Rothenberg, a digital trade executive, explained to me that golf is his way of trying to better himself without having to beat someone else. He defines his weaknesses and improves. Improves what, I ask? Your capacity to drink after you are done driving your little geezer cart up and down tiny hillocks?
Gary Paul Gates, most recently co-writer of Mike Wallace’s biography, tells me how I’ll make some new pals on the course. Like who, I snarl? Some guy who wants to sell me derivatives?
Tim Sullivan, a TV producer, describes the mysterious changes that golf has led him through, how it has healed his spirit and softened his temper. He even has a website (Sullivanwords.com) in which he writes about all this. Golf, I snicker, sounds like religion. He pats my head.
My friends are slipping off my social radar screen as we speak. The economy has given some of them more free time than usual, and we live near an inexpensive course. I know from past years I will feel a little pang this spring as I bicycle past my cold-weather friends driving their little wagons over the hills, laughing and discussing their lack of improvements and their spiritual handicaps while wearing their Tiger gear. It’s not the pang of feeling left out, but the pang of watching guys with some life left measuring it out in strokes they meticulously record.
It’s symbolic. I’m not expecting any major national turn-arounds as long as good people keep deluding themselves that chasing a little white ball is something as grand as hunting a great white whale. Our national denials will take us down as surely as Moby Dick drowned Captain Ahab. Who looks for terrorists, crooked politicians, greedy stock traders on a golf course? Who is trying to reform health care, regulate the markets, clean the air while putting?
If, however, you are among those trying to face reality these days and thus unable to sleep, I suggest you take advantage of golf’s single gift – watching any tournament on TV, including the Masters, is safer than taking sleeping pills.

At a tough branch library in Philadelphia -- there were more guards than librarians -- a teenage boy I thought had slept through my speech stood up and asked, ''Do you use drugs when you write?''
He seemed disappointed when I just said no, but not as disappointed as I was at giving the same answer to the next question, from a girl who had seemed entranced by my every word. She asked, ''Are you rich enough now to stop writing?''
Sometimes I think that questions from teenage readers are the real payoff in writing books marketed as ''young adult literature.'' There is a reader-writer connection in this category that simply does not exist in sports journalism, movies, television news and documentaries, and novels for older adults, genres in which I've been called a genius and a jerk because I stroked or ruffled someone's feathers. Readers in middle school and high school have taken me to task for things that have happened to my characters -- their characters, they think -- but always in the context of the work itself. Their minds were open to the story and to what they thought I was saying, whether or not they agreed. That's why writing for them is the most satisfying writing I do.
That satisfaction is something all of us who regularly write for teenagers try to keep in mind when people ask us what we plan to do when we grow up. It's touchy. Most of us started out thinking we'd be writing about a King Lear, not a Kid Lear.
I know exactly when I became a writer for young adults. On Nov. 20, 1965, a few minutes after 9 p.m. Las Vegas time, I was sitting at a darkened poolside outside a casino hotel with an old boxing manager I had taken to dinner. He was reminiscing about his glory days when he owned a gym on East 14th Street in Manhattan. Late at night, he said, he would sit at the top of three dark, twisting flights of stairs. He would be waiting for that special kid to climb up, alone, fighting his fear of the unknown because his life on the streets below was so desperate.
A kid who used his fear as fuel, the old manager said, would have a chance to become a contender. Becoming the champion, he said, is often the luck of the draw, but being a contender, a somebody with promise, is about hard work and character.
The picture of those stairs stayed with me all through the fight I had been sent to cover -- Muhammad Ali beat Floyd Patterson -- and all the way home. I became inflamed with the picture, and wondered: What kind of kid would dare to come up those steps? What would be going on in his life? What would he find at the top?
I wondered what I needed to do to become a contender; what were my narrow twisting stairs? I was a boxing writer for this paper; I had worked on a nonfiction book, helping Dick Gregory write his autobiography, ''Nigger''; and I had sold some short stories, but I had never written a novel. Would the chapters of a novel be my steps up to becoming a contender?
When I got back to New York, there was a letter from one Ferdinand Monjo at Harper & Row. He wondered if I had ever thought of writing a book with boxing as its milieu -- a common boxing term, milieu. I called Mr. Monjo right up and began babbling about a book titled ''The Contender.'' There would be three flights of stairs in it. Mr. Monjo said, ''Go right ahead, dear boy,'' and in my innocence, thank goodness, I thought that was a contract.
Ferdinand Monjo was a terrific editor, and he was surrounded by terrific editors: Charlotte Zolotow, a well-known children's book author who became my editor later, and Ursula Nordstrom, their boss, who just about invented the young adult genre. I knew nothing about children's books then; I was just writing my novel, with boxing as its milieu. But because it was linear, had a 17-year-old protagonist and no sex, it was right for that new genre. And for the times.
Government money was available, there was a need for books with minority protagonists, and perhaps most important there was a generation of librarians and teachers open to stories that were closer to the bone of contemporary teenagers' real lives.
The letters have never stopped coming, more than you would think from white Iowa farm girls who said they identified with Alfred Brooks, a black high school dropout. In my school and library visits, young black men, once they got past their mixed feelings about my whiteness, wanted to talk about what I should write next. They had definite ideas about what should happen to some of the characters. Alfred's best friend, James, whom they all liked, would certainly die before the next book, they said; he was a junkie, they knew him well, he didn't stand a chance.
But it didn't matter because I had no intention of writing any more novels for teenagers. It was King Lear time. Even though ''The Contender'' did well enough to buy a suburban house and help send my two children to college, that genre flourished without me. Stars such as M. E. Kerr, Paul Zindel, S. E. Hinton, Richard Peck, Robert Cormier and Walter Dean Myers brought to the genre a grittier and even a more literary sensibility than existed in mainstream fiction. (Young adult fiction keeps getting better. I was amazed five years ago, as a National Book Award judge, at how hard it was to choose one winner from so much good, smart writing.)
Ten years after my first novel, while writing an essay for Mother Jones magazine about books that had influenced me, the phrase ''in the prison of my fat'' fell out of the typewriter. I had never before consciously thought about how trapped I had felt as an overweight kid, hating my body and finding comfort in reading and writing. In my earliest fiction, thin people died horribly.
That night I started writing my second novel for teenagers, ''One Fat Summer,'' an emotionally true story of my 14th summer during which I lost perhaps 40 pounds. (I don't know exactly because I always jumped off the scale as it rolled up toward 200.)
That 1977 novel started a flood of letters, the best from very tall girls who identified with the fat boy. During my school visits, chubby apprentice writers, once they got past their mixed feelings that I had kept most of the weight off, asked me to recount particularly horrible ways to kill thin classmates, who themselves were listening with what seemed to be horrified interest and new empathy.
In 1997 ''One Fat Summer'' was briefly banned at a school in Levittown, N.Y., because of a passage dealing with masturbation that I don't remember writing. Censorship became a source of pride because it connected me to Francesca Lia Block, the most exciting writer of young adult fiction to emerge in recent years, and to my hero in the field, Judy Blume, who may simply be the most influential writer of our time. She has made a positive difference in thousands of young people's lives.
This, of course, is the secret allure of writing for teenagers. There is a messianic streak to what we do; at the very least we think we are teachers as much as we are artists. If you do this long enough, people who claim we made a difference in their lives write or call to say they have given copies of our books to their children.
Because school sales are often critical to our books' success, we tend to meet our readers more often than many other writers do. As we age (and as our own children age), meeting teenagers and sometimes spending time alone talking with them becomes an important part of staying in touch with our readers and characters. What that also does is spawn sequels. When kids begin talking about characters you created 30 years ago as if they were friends, the need to revisit them becomes overwhelming. Nostalgia has created more sequels than marketing. This year I've been going to schools to talk about ''Warrior Angel,'' the fourth in a series that began with that first book, ''The Contender.'' Of my nine novels for teenagers, that latest one was the toughest to write.
It was a high school student's question that made me understand why. She stood up after I spoke, a little grin on her face, and asked me if winning the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in young adult literature in 2001 had put pressure on me to write better. This time I just said yes.
I thanked her for asking. Only a teenager would ask a question like that, a real question that acknowledged me as a real person trying to make some sense out of real lives. What I didn't say was that maybe this book would make me rich enough to stop writing. Or to afford the drugs to keep me writing forever.



I

I FEEL OVERWHELMED THIS MORNING BY THE RESPONSIBILITY OF REPRESENTING THE PATIENT, AN INCREDIBLY DIVERSE GROUP DEMOGRAPHICALLY, ALSO DIVIDED BY PAIN, PROGNOSIS AND HEALTH INSURANCE. PLUS I BELIEVE THAT THE CAREGIVER IS A NEEDIER CONSTITUENCY. I KNOW WE’LL GET TO THEM LATER.
BUT I DO HAVE PATIENT CRED. I KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO SIT NAKED ON TISSUE PAPER, MOUTH DRY, HEART FLOPPING, CLAWING AT THE PLASTIC HIDE OF THE EXAMINING TABLE. IT IS NOT A POSITION OF POWER. AFTER ABOUT 15 MINUTES, WHEN THE PAPER IS ADHERING, SHIFTING WITH ME, MY IMAGINATION STARTS METASTASIZING; EVERY SYRINGE, CATHETER AND SCALPEL IN THE CABINET – I ALWAYS PEEK - HAS MY NAME ON IT.
I WANT TO TALK TODAY ABOUT MY IMAGINATION, FRIGHTENING BUT ALSO EMPOWERING FOR PATIENT. I’VE ALWAYS HAD A RICH FANTASY LIFE – I’M A WRITER – BUT IN THE PAST 30 YEARS, SINCE I FIRST BECAME A MAJOR LEAGUE PATIENT – BY THAT I MEAN SOMEONE WITH A REALLY SCARY-SOUNDING DISEASE TREATED REGULARLY AT A TEACHING HOSPITAL, THE KIND OF DISEASE THAT MAKES PEOPLE SAY, “HOW ARE YOU?” – THAT’S KEY: “HOW ARE YOU?” IS A KIND OF HELLO OR WASSUP? AND “HOW ARE YOU?” CAN LEAD TO BEING NAKED NOT ON TISSUE PAPER, BUT “HOW ARE YOU?” MEANS YOU’RE STILL ALIVE? BY THE TIME I GOT TO THAT “HOW ARE YOU?” STAGE, MY FANTASY LIFE HAD LEAD ME TO THE THREE MAJOR FANTASIES OF MY PATIENTHOOD.
FANTASY NUMBER ONE – I WILL SEDUCE MY DOCTOR.
FANTASY NUMBER TWO – I WILL CALL A STAFF MEETING OF ALL MY DOCTORS.
FANTASY NUMBER THREE – I WILL FORM A PATIENTS UNION.
FANTASY NUMBER ONE, THE SEDUCTION FANTASY: I DON’T MEAN THIS IN ANY SEXUAL WAY - IF YOU CAN HAVE SEXUAL DAYDREAMS YOU AREN’T AS SICK AS YOU SHOULD BE FOR THE PURPOSES OF OUR DISCUSSION. SEDUCING YOUR DOCTOR MEANS LIFTING YOURSELF OUT OF YOUR CHART, PAST YOUR DIAGNOSIS AND INTO THEIR MENTAL FACEBOOK - SOMEHOW MAKING THEM REALIZE THAT YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING, TOO. GETTING THEM INTERESTED IN YOU. PERHAPS REMINDING THEM OF SOMEONE IN THEIR FAMILY – HOPEFULLY SOMEONE THEY LIKE SINCE YOU WANT THEM VESTED IN YOUR BEING WELL OR AT LEAST IN GETTING BETTER.
THERE ARE VARIOUS TECHNIQUES – INTIMIDATION DOESN’T ALWAYS WORK, ALTHOUGH I TEND TO DRESS UP A BIT FOR IMPORTANT MEDICAL VISITS, SOMETIMES EVEN A TIE, TO GIVE THE IMPRESSION THAT I AM EITHER A LAWYER OR WENT TO SCHOOL WITH A FEW.
SEDUCTION ALSO INCLUDES A LOT OF WHAT MIGHT GENEROUSLY BE CALLED “FINESSING.” IN OTHER TIMES AND PLACES IT HAS BEEN CALLED “FLIRTING” OR “TOMMING.” WE COULD ALSO CALL IT “CAJOLING”…WHETHER IT’S SYMPATHIZING WITH HOW HARD YOUR POOR DOCTOR WORKS, COMMISERATING WITH THE X-RAY TECH WHO WAS LATE FOR YOUR APPOINTMENT BECAUSE HE HAD TO WAIT FOREVER ON A STARBUCKS LINE, OR GENTLY SLOWING DOWN THE JITTERY PHLEBOTOMIST WHOM YOU CAN TELL IS GOING TO JAB THREE TIME BEFORE SHE SPIKES YOUR VEIN.
WHEN MY LATE WIFE WAS IN HER FINAL ILLNESS AT MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING, THERE WAS A TENDENCY FOR DOCTORS AND NURSES TO AVOID HER ROOM OR LEAVE QUICKLY – ULTIMATELY WE UNDERSTOOD THERE WASN’T MUCH THEY COULD DO TO KEEP HER ALIVE, BUT PLENTY THEY COULD DO TO ALLEVIATE HER PAIN – IF THEY COULD BE MADE TO FEEL IT. MY DAUGHTER CAME UP WITH THE IDEA OF DECORATING THE ROOM WITH PHOTOS OF MARGIE AS A YOUNGER, HEALTHY WOMAN. IT NOT ONLY LIGHTENED THE MOOD, BUT IT SEDUCED THE DOCTORS AND NURSES. THEY LINGERED TO LOOK AT THE PICTURES, WHICH WERE NOW DISTANT LIKENESSES OF THE PATIENT IN THE BED, BUT THEY MADE HER INTO A HUMAN BEING. SHE GOT MORE ATTENTION AND MORE REGULAR PAIN MEDICATION.
WHEN MY FATHER BECAME BRIEFLY ILL FOR THE FIRST TIME, I TRIED TO GIVE HIM SEDUCTION TIPS BUT HE WAVED THEM AWAY. HE HATED DOCTORS, NEVER WENT FOR CHECKUPS. HE WAS SITTING NAKED ON TISSUE PAPER WHEN A FIFTY-ISH DOCTOR SWEPT IN, EXPRESSED ANGER THAT THIS MAN HAD NO MEDICAL RECORD AND SAID, “WHEN WAS YOUR LAST EXAM?”
COOLLY, MY DAD SAID, “BEFORE YOU WERE BORN.”
“I DOUBT THAT,” SNORTED THE DOCTOR.
“IT WAS BEFORE MY LAST PROMOTION TO DIRECTOR OF FIFTY SCHOOLS AT THE NEW YORK CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION,” SAID DAD. “THAT WOULD BE 1959.”
“I WAS TWELVE,” SAID THE DOCTOR, CLEARLY INTERESTED NOW. “HOW OLD ARE YOU?”
“GUESS.”
“SEVENTY-FOUR.”
“YOU ARE A GRACIOUS GENTLEMAN,” SAID MY FATHER. “I AM 90.”
AND I WAS FLABBERGASTED. WHAT MOVES THE OLD MAN HAD. THE DOCTOR DIDN’T WANT TO LET HIM GO. TOOK A FULL HISTORY. HE HAD BEEN SEDUCED. LUCKILY, THERE WASN’T ANYTHING THE DOCTOR COULD DO SO DAD LIVED ANOTHER TEN YEARS. HE DIED THREE MONTHS SHORT OF HIS 101ST BIRTHDAY, A SHREWD SURVIVALIST TO THE VERY END.
FANTASY NUMBER TWO: I WILL CALL A MEETING OF ALL MY DOCTORS, WHICH CURRENTLY INCLUDES A PRIMARY CARE PHYSICIAN, AN OPHTHALMOLOGIST, UROLOGIST, ONCOLOGIST, GASTROENTEROLOGIST, CARDIOLOGIST, NEUROSURGEON, DENTIST, DERMATOLOGIST, AUDIOLOGIST, OSTEOPATH AND PODIATRIST, ALL OF WHOM I HAVE SEEN RECENTLY, BUT NEVER AS A GROUP. WHEN I’VE GOT THEM TOGETHER, I WILL ASK THE THREE KEY QUESTIONS OF THIS NATION’S – AS WELL AS MY OWN -- HEALTH CARE CRISIS, QUESTIONS AS CRITICAL TO ASK DOCTORS AS POLITICIANS: WILL YOU GET PAST YOUR PARTISANSHIP TO TALK TO EACH OTHER, WILL YOU FEEL MY PAIN AND ARE YOUR HANDS CLEAN?
WILL YOU GET PAST YOUR PARTISANSHIP TO TALK TO EACH OTHER?
DESPITE WHAT WE SEE ON “HOUSE,” “ER,” AND “GREY’S ANATOMY,” WHERE TV DOCS TALK ENDLESSLY ABOUT THEIR PATIENTS (OFTEN WHILE VERY, VERY CLOSE TO EACH OTHER) REAL DOCS MOSTLY TALK ABOUT BILLING PROCEDURES. IT’S SOMETHING THEY HAVE IN COMMON. MEDICALLY, THEY ARE SEPARATED BY THEIR SPECIALTIES. MY OPHTHALMOLOGIST, GASTROENTEROLOGIST, UROLOGIST AND PODIATRIST MIGHT AS WELL BE EXPLORING DIFFERENT PLANETS. WHILE EACH IS PREPARED TO TAKE HEROIC MEASURES TO SAVE A SPECIFIC BODY PART, IT’S HARD TO GET THEM TO TREAT ME AS A COMPLETE SYSTEM.

I’M SINCERELY GRATEFUL TO THE ONCOLOGIST FOR COMING UP WITH A CHEMO COCKTAIL THAT KNOCKED BACK MY RECENT SECOND RECURRENCE OF THAT THIRTY-YEAR-OLD CANCER, BUT I WONDER IF HE HAD KNOWN ME BETTER, THAT I WAS A MUSIC LOVER, IF HE WOULD HAVE PRESCRIBED THE DRUG THAT HAS DAMAGED MY HEARING.

MAYBE UNDER THE PRESENT HEALTH CARE SYSTEM DOCTORS DON’T HAVE THE TIME OR THE FINANCIAL INCENTIVE TO TALK TO EACH OTHER MORE ABOUT THEIR PATIENTS. MAYBE THEY CHOSE SPECIALTIES SO THEY COULD BE IN EXCLUSIVE CLUBS AND NOT HAVE TO TALK TO OUTSIDERS. MAYBE WE HAVE TO FIND WAYS TO GET THEM TO MEET AND MINGLE. I’LL VOTE FOR THE CANDIDATE WHO NAILS THAT INTO A PLATFORM.
WILL YOU FEEL MY PAIN?
THIRTY YEARS AGO, BEFORE AN OPERATION, A SURGEON TOLD ME THAT I WOULDN’T FEEL A THING. I ASKED HIM IF HE HAD EVER GONE UNDER THE KNIFE? HE STORMED OUT OF MY ROOM. MOST DOCTORS STILL DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT WE GO THROUGH ALTHOUGH THERE SEEMS TO BE A MOVEMENT TOWARD GREATER UNDERSTANDING. WHEN DOCTORS DO GET SICK THEY TEND TO HAVE REVELATIONS AND WRITE BOOKS ABOUT IT.
I THINK DOCTORS SHOULD BE MADE AT LEAST A LITTLE SICK TO QUALIFY FOR THEIR LICENSES, AND SURGEONS SHOULD HAVE TO UNDERGO AT LEAST A MINOR OPERATION.
ARE YOUR HANDS CLEAN?
THERE ARE CROOKED DOCTORS, LIKE CROOKED POLITICIANS, BUT THIS QUESTION IS A LITERAL ONE. I THINK THE TOUGHEST QUESTION TO ASK A HEALTH CARE PROVIDER ABOUT TO TOUCH YOUR BODY IS, “DID YOU WASH YOUR HANDS?” AT ONE OF MY FAVORITE HANG-OUTS, THE MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER, THERE ARE SANITIZING DISPENSERS EVERYWHERE AND STAFF MEMBERS SOMETIMES WEAR BLUE BUTTONS WITH A GERM IN A TARGET AND THE SIMPLE ORDER “WASH HANDS.”
IT’S WELL-KNOWN THAT THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS GET SICK EVERY YEAR FROM DISEASES CONTRACTED IN HOSPITALS. BUT MOST PATIENTS DON’T ASK THE TOUGH QUESTION BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT COMFORTABLE ENOUGH WITH THEIR DOCTORS OR THE MEDICAL ENVIRONMENT TO ASK IT IN A FRIENDLY, NON-CHALLENGING WAY AND THEY ARE AFRAID OF CAUSING ANTAGONISM.
WE NEED TO BE MADE EQUAL PARTNERS IN THE SYSTEM, SO WE CAN TALK FREELY. WE NEED TO BE CALM AND ASSERTIVE AS PATIENTS, AND THAT’S VERY HARD WHEN YOU FEEL SCARED, RUSHED, POWERLESS.

FOR ALL THE POLICY WONK DISCUSSIONS ABOUT MANDATED CARE FOR ALL /​/​ VERSUS AFFORDABLE CARE, SINGLE PAYER GOVERNMENT SYSTEMS LIKE MEDICARE VERSUS PRIVATE POLICIES, THE HEART OF HEALTH CARE REFORM IS ABOUT THE DOCTOR AND THE PATIENT FINDING THEIR WAY TOGETHER TOWARD COMPASSIONATE CARE. ACTUALLY, JUST THINKING ABOUT ALL OF THIS GIVES ME STRESS. I AM GOING TO ADD A PSYCHIATRIST TO MY PERSONAL MEDICAL STAFF MEETING.
FANTASY NUMBER THREE: I WILL FORM A PATIENTS UNION
AS YOU RECALL, WE LEFT ME NAKED ON TISSUE PAPER. WELL, FINALLY, A FULLY-DRESSED HUMAN BEING IN A WHITE COAT MARCHES INTO THE ROOM, WEARY AND IMPATIENT, AND, WHILE READING FROM A FOLDER THAT I HOPE HAS MY NAME ON IT, DEMANDS, ''SO. WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE TROUBLE?''
IF THIS WERE A TRUE STORY, I WOULD MUMBLE, ''I'M REALLY SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, DOCTOR, BUT. . . .''
THIS IS A FANTASY. I SMILE CONFIDENTLY AS I GESTURE AT A PERSON SITTING QUIETLY IN A CORNER AND SAY: ''THIS IS MY PATIENTS UNION REPRESENTATIVE, DOCTOR. YOU DON'T MIND IF WE VIDEOTAPE THE SESSION?''
IN 30 YEARS OF SERIOUS TRAVEL IN WHAT I CALL MALADY, THE COUNTRY OF ILLNESS, AS PATIENT AND CAREGIVER, I HAVE COME TO BE CERTAIN ONLY OF THIS: YOU MUST NEVER CROSS THE BORDER INTO THAT COUNTRY BY YOURSELF. AT BEST, YOUR TRAVELING COMPANION SHOULD HAVE ADVANCED DEGREES IN ACCOUNTING, DIPLOMACY, LAW, MEDICINE AND COMEDY. THAT IS A FANTASY EVEN I DON'T ENTERTAIN.


TOO OFTEN WE MAKE THE JOURNEY ALONE, SICK AND SCARED, VULNERABLE TO BULLYING BILLING CLERKS, SNIDE RECEPTIONISTS, OVERWORKED TECHNICIANS AND NURSES AND DOCTORS WHO CAN RARELY TAKE THE TIME TO LISTEN TO A HISTORY THAT CAN INSURE A FUTURE.
SO. LET ME INTRODUCE THE PATIENTS UNION. AT ITS MOST PERSONAL LEVEL, YOUR PATIENTS UNION LOCAL WOULD SUPPLY A SIDEKICK, A SEASONED TRAVELER IN MALADY, TO BE A SECOND PAIR OF EYES AND EARS AT A DOCTOR'S APPOINTMENT AND AT A MEETING WITH YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY OR WITH THE HOSPITAL'S FINANCIAL DEPARTMENT. MEANWHILE, THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION WOULD BE PICKETING GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, H.M.O.'S AND DRUG COMPANIES THAT AREN'T ACTING IN YOUR BEST INTERESTS.
WHEN I SAY ALL THIS, AND IT HAS MOSTLY BEEN SAID AT PARTIES AFTER THE MEDICINAL RED WINE, THE DOCTORS AT THE TABLE SMILE TIGHTLY OR ROLL THEIR EYES OR, IF THEY UNDERSTAND THAT I AM NOT KIDDING, SHIFT UNCOMFORTABLY AS IF ON TISSUE PAPER. IT IS HARD FOR THEM TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE PATIENTS UNION DOES NOT NECESSARILY CONSIDER DOCTORS TO BE THE CENTRAL TARGET OF PROTEST AND CHANGE . THAT’S BECAUSE THEY HAVE ALWAYS CHERISHED THEIR CENTRALITY TO MEDICINE. MY COLLEGE ROOM-MATES, BLESS THEM, ARE DOCTORS, AND EVERYTHING HAS ALWAYS BEEN ALL ABOUT THEM. BUT NOW WE ARE ALL CAUGHT IN A TITANIC MEDICAL-CORPORATE COMPLEX.
WE NEED TO SEIZE CONTROL OF THE BRIDGE AND-OR THE LIFEBOATS – BEFORE THIS SHIP SINKS BY BANDING TOGETHER AS BOLDLY AS THE DOCTORS, NURSES, HOSPITALS AND ACCOUNTANTS HAVE. WE ARE THE ONE ELEMENT THAT EVEN THE ULTIMATE G.E.-DISNEY-GOOGLE-AMA-MICROSOFT H.M.O. CAN NEVER COMPLETELY CONTROL OR CONTAIN. WE ARE THE ONE ELEMENT THEY CAN NEVER DO WITHOUT – WE ARE THEIR RAW MATERIAL, PRODUCT, CUSTOMER BASE, CONSTITUENCY. WITHOUT SICK PEOPLE, THEY ARE DEAD.
BUT SICK PEOPLE AND THEIR CAREGIVERS HAVE TRADITIONALLY BEEN BALKANIZED NOT ONLY BY AGE, RACE, GENDER, CLASS AND MONEY BUT, MOST CRITICALLY, BY DISEASE.

ALMOST EVERY MAJOR MALADY HAS ITS OWN LABORATORY AND LOBBYIST, NATIONAL SOCIETY, CELEBRITY CHAIR, BOARD OF FAMOUS DOCTORS AND, TOO OFTEN, FINANCING FROM A DRUG COMPANY PROFITING FROM THE DISEASE. EACH MALADY COMPETES WITH OTHER MALADIES FOR GOVERNMENT MONEY, PUBLICITY AND TV MOVIES.
WHILE THE GALLANTRY AND MEDIA SAVVY OF THE AIDS BANDWAGON PLAYED ON, THE BREAST CANCER FORCES LEARNED AND PROSPERED. THEN THE PROSTATE PATIENTS STEPPED UP – LESS SUCCESSFULLY BECAUSE BOYS ARE ALWAYS IN COMPETITION - MY PROSTATE IS BIGGER THAN YOURS. THEN DEPRESSION, SCHIZOPHRENIA, BIPOLAR DISORDERS, AUTISM CAME ON STRONG.
DOES THIS MAKE SENSE? CAN YOU IMAGINE IF THOSE DISEASES JOINED FORCES, IF THEY INCLUDED THE SUFFERERS OF LUPUS, MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS, CROHN'S DISEASE, DIABETES, SICKLE-CELL ANEMIA; IF THEY EMBRACED THE MARATHON CAREGIVERS OF PEOPLE WITH CANAVAN'S DISEASE AND ALZHEIMER'S; IF THEY FOUND ROOM FOR THE QUADS, THE HEP C'S, THE ALMOST INVISIBLE HEROES OF CHARCOT-MARIE-TOOTH, A CHRONIC, INCURABLE NEUROMUSCULAR DISEASE?
IN MY ORGANIZING SPEECH I WOULD SAY: OUR IMPERFECT UNION OF IMPERFECT PEOPLE WILL INCLUDE THE MEASURED BRAND-TESTING OF THE CONSUMERS UNION AND THE MUSCULAR COERCION OF THE OLD TEAMSTERS' UNION UNDER JIMMY HOFFA.
WHILE OUR CONSUMERS UNION SIDE WILL DISTRIBUTE THOSE BEST DOCTOR-BEST HOSPITAL LISTS THAT THE GLOSSY MAGAZINES LOVE SO MUCH, OUR LISTS WILL INCLUDE MORTALITY, HYGIENE, AFFABILITY AND COST CHARTS.
OUR TEAMSTERS' SIDE WILL HOIST THE INFLATABLE UNION RAT OUTSIDE ANY H.M.O. THAT CUTS SERVICES AND RAISES PRICES.
AT PATIENTS UNION MEETINGS, WE WILL KEEP REMINDING ONE ANOTHER THAT AS CUSTOMERS WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DEMAND SERVICE, TO GET INFORMATION AND TO BE PART OF THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS, WHICH ULTIMATELY INCLUDES WHO GETS ALL THE NEW DRUGS AND PROCEDURES FOR WHICH WE ARE PAYING THROUGH TAXES AND MEDICAL FEES.

AS FOR MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENTS IN THE PATIENTS UNION, ALL YOU NEED IS A PAST OR FUTURE MEDICAL BILL.
EVERYONE WILL GET PATIENTS UNION T-SHIRTS AND BUMPER STICKERS SAYING: P.U. BECAUSE THE SYSTEM STINKS!
THANK YOU. STAY WELL.