deep in the ocean, there lies a wave for you

I think it’s the pressure to have fun that makes me fall into an anxiety-filled sinkhole on New Year’s Eve. Like, gah! You should be spending $150 to see Everclear play at the Hyatt downtown (lolz, this is real). But more reasonably, I should be at some party or pay $50 to get into a bar that I go to for free on normal days. Maybe it’s just me (it’s not), but society is telling me that it’s unacceptable to watch TV in my stretchpants with a few lady friends. And not leave the house. And drink a bottle of champagne and eat handcrafted paninis (no joke) and go to bed at 12:01 am. At least, when I’m in the city limits, it feels like that.

I hope the whimsical nature of this holiday isn’t gone for me forever. But here’s what gets me, because the only New Year’s Clark and I had where he wasn’t sick was in 2007. I went to a big gay party with my friends and dressed fancy and wore heels I could barely walk in. He was working at the Black Cat, and I left around 11:30 and got a cab there. The people working the door whisked me in and pointed me in Clark’s direction and we kissed at midnight and everything was so perfect. And then he went back to work, and I went back to the party.

And I think the reason this kills me is because, once he got sick, people (correctly) interpreted my taking-care-of-Clark actions to mean that I was the most in love with him. But that New Year’s Eve night when I breezed in for my smooch, people didn’t have anything concrete like that to go by – it was just obvious.

More on this later, but for now, a primer:

Those who wonder whether a single patient can help cancer research should know the case of Lee Reyes.

Thirty years old when his advanced melanoma was diagnosed in early 2008, Mr. Reyes was distraught at how little he had accomplished. Introverted and a perfectionist, he had dropped out of college and lived with his parents in Fresno, Calif. He cycled through video game systems, favoring the Xbox. He loved flying and thought about getting a helicopter pilot’s license, but never pursued it.

“For the better part of about 10 years I did close to nothing,” he said two years ago. “I just always felt I had so much time.”

One of Dr. Ribas’s first patients in the trial of the Roche drug, Mr. Reyes was selected because he was among the half of melanoma patients whose tumors carried the overactive protein the drug blocked. As it would for nearly every patient in the trial, the drug held his cancer at bay for several months. But as would happen with the others, his response did not last.

With his life at immediate risk because of a melanoma tumor that had metastasized to his heart, Mr. Reyes traveled to U.C.L.A. for surgery in May 2009, agreeing to let his tumor be used for research.

On Dr. Ribas’s instructions, a technician stood in Mr. Reyes’s surgery room and, as soon as the surgeon extracted the tumor, ran with it to the nearby laboratory to reduce the chance of exposure to contamination. To coax the cancer cells to thrive so that Dr. Lo could run them through a battery of tests, it was sliced up with sterile knives and deposited, in a flask with sugar solution, in an incubator.

“Let’s hope it grows,” Dr. Ribas said to Dr. Lo.

On a visit to Mr. Reyes’s room after the surgery, Dr. Ribas did not discuss the future with his patient. They both knew the options were limited. Instead, they talked of animals: Mr. Reyes’s affinity for monkeys — he was clutching a stuffed one from a hospital gift shop — and Dr. Ribas’s for sea otters.

When Mr. Reyes died a few months later, Dr. Ribas called his mother to offer his condolences, as is his custom. And then he told her something else.

“He said Lee is helping them,” Ellen Reyes told her husband.

Mr. Reyes’s cells were growing.

Today is the second time we’ll celebrate Clark’s birthday without Clark. I woke up this morning and thought, LET’S DO THIS. But every reminder gives me permission for the tears to begin without a struggle. Acknowledgment of my pain reaches a peak. Even though every day is a day without him, today I feel comfort knowing I’m not the only one with his memory buzzing in my brain. 12/20/75 – 6/19/09, and today is the first part of that equation, the part that doesn’t apply anymore.

Usually there’s at least one thing that triggers a Clark memory in one of my weekly crosswords. This week’s New York Magazine had two.

19-Across
Clue: Body fluid build-up
Answer: Edema
Reminder: Clark’s legs, fat and tender, indentation in his skin with the push of my thumb.

88-Down
Clue: Phone system between rooms
Answer: Intercom
Reminder: Clark used this word + numbers as his password for everything. E V E R Y T H I N G.

“Elephant in the room” is an English idiom for an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.

Elephants are a symbol of wisdom in Asian cultures and are famed for their memory and intelligence.

The females spend their entire lives in tightly knit family groups made up of mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts.

Thanks, Wikipedia!