"Do What U Want" with my body: On my surgical excision

Anyone who knows me well knows that Lady Gaga songs comprise a healthy 31% of my life's soundtrack. If you're learning about my Gaga obsession for the first time, welcome to our new level of friendship.

It now probably comes as no surprise that when I learned two weeks ago that I had to undergo a surgical excision to remove a 2" x 1"x 1" chunk of severely atypical flesh from my left upper back, I promptly put Lady Gaga's "Do What U Want" on repeat and quietly meditated upon death's imminence (disclaimer: death wasn't really ever imminent, and I'm 100% fine now - don't worry).

Why this song in particular? The connection between Gaga's "Do What U Want" and my less than favorable medical news may not be initially apparent. At first glance it's easy to dismiss this song as a simplistic, shallow club song wherein the girl gets a little too drunk and the guy gets a little too handsy. Viewed through the lens of surgical excision and death's (potential) imminence, however, Gaga's words quickly cut to a deeper level below mere surface (skin puns - too soon? NOPE).

As I lay prone sweating through the tissue paper draped over the hard table's surface, I couldn't help but sing along, "You can't have my heart and you won't use my mind but do what you want with my body." When they injected, tore and gouged, I kept singing, "You can't stop my voice because you don't own my life, but do what you want with my body." When they finally cauterized the wound and presented me with the slab of grey flesh once a part of my very self and still so familiar, Gaga's words were never more deeply felt: "So just take my body and don't stop the party."

Until that moment, I didn't realize a. how much I was willing to give up to ensure this life party could keep going and b. how much I connected my idea of self with a physical mass. I can't even begin to narrate how profoundly perturbing it was to see a part of me in someone else's bloody, gloved hand. In that moment I felt like nothing more than a smart pork chop speedily rushing toward biodegradation, disease and death.

And yet 10 minutes later in the car on the ride to work I heard the good news again from the Gaga herself: "You can't have my heart, and you won't use my mind...You can't stop my voice because you don't own my life..." She reminded me in her own subtle, brilliant way, that we are smart pork chops. We are smart pork chops AND we are hearts and minds and voices and lives. We are a complicated, interwoven compilation of processes, relationships and systems that dare to live and die and make sense of it all in the meantime.

The exact mechanics of the inter-relationship of mind, soul and body that define personhood is an age-old mystery that has plagued philosophers for literally millennia, and I'm not going to pretend that I have any groundbreaking revelations to offer in a 1,000 word blog post - much more in a blog post that so heavily relies on the lyrical genius of Lady Gaga to make a point.

What I do hope to offer, however, is even just a little insight on how gross, beautiful and fascinating it is to be human and how some of our cultural icons are secretly robust fountains of wisdom in light of pressing existential concerns. And, finally, when all else fails sometimes it's simply best to be back in the club taking shots, getting naughty.