The cure was worse than the disease.

Had a lump in my throat. Little small thing, hardly noticed it. Didn’t cause any problems. Thought for sure it would go away. It has always worked that way with me. Leave a problem alone long enough- any problem- and it will go away. But not this one. It slowly seemed to get larger over the course of months until I could no longer put off getting it checked out. Went to an Ear, Nose and Throat person when I started to have difficulty swallowing. She ran a scope up my nose and down the back of my throat and had a quick look around. “See here,” she says as she points to the video replay of the scope on the computer screen. A big mass pushing on the side of my tongue that disfigures the whole area. I swear I heard the music from “Psycho” in the background. She says that she worked at NIH as a head and neck cancer specialist for a number of years and she knows what the mass is. No doubt. Straight to “you have cancer.” I could see from the studied way she talked to me, staying calm and direct that it was a big, serious deal. On the way in to her office it was just another day. One the way out I was thinking I would die soon. Turns out it was a stage 4 cancer that has spread from my throat to my lymphatic system. Treatment was radiation every day for seven weeks. Chemo once a week for seven weeks. First day of treatment I had both. Double header! The doctors and nurses tried to prepare me for the onslaught and what it would do to me. It’s like a big tiger has you backed in the corner and is going to attack, it’s unavoidable. The tiger is going to rip your throat out and you might be alive after it's over. If you are alive after the attack, you will be savagely injured. The attack takes weeks and months as the cancer treatment unfolds. It unfolds slowly, further and further you back up into the dark corner, on high alert every instant. The tiger moves closer for every step back you take, his breathe getting closer and closer. Then one day you know he has attacked and that his teeth are through you. He grinds at you with his big fangs, you can feel him chewing and gnashing. You know you are bleeding your life away and you just hope you can survive it. "Please don't kill me" you cry over and over as your body and spirit shrink away, wondering if you are dying. But what are weeks and months in a lifetime? They are the blink of an eye. It happens so fast and there is nothing else in your life at this time. It consumes you and those around you. You try and live your life- but it's not yours anymore, it's the tiger’s life. Every moment to him, every bloody, relentless moment, rip, tear, and bleed. It's a soul killer. Think you're tough? Suck on that for a few months. This is what a stage 4 cancer diagnosis and treatment is like. Fight? Not really. Piss your pants? Maybe. Suck it up and keep lying on the table so they can radiate the hell out of you and turn your head into a bag of blisters as the skin down your throat peels away? Sure, it's all I can do to give me the best chance of coming out of this alive and having some kind of life. Sit in the recliner in the chemo room with toxic venom going directly into your vein so your cells rip apart die from the inside out? Sure, it's the only way to see my young kids grow up. How does that look for a fight? A battle? Big, strong Scott crying in a funk of depression and fear all day long, cooking on the radiation table with a needle in his veins losing all his body and spirit to the insatiable appetite of the tiger. Hoping you will live and knowing you are being savaged over and over. What a great battle that is. Brave? All I could do was try to keep the idea alive that everything would be ok one day and that I really just needed to pull up my pants and stop blubbering. I could work on sucking it up when things got a little better later on. I became a beaten man as the treatment wore on and on. Hollow eyes, the bony skull visible through my grey skin, ribs poking out of my shirt, pants falling off me as the pounds slipped away, new holes in my arm, new holes made into my belt further and further up each week, and I knew the tiger had indeed attacked. Just as surely as anything in the world I knew he had lashed into my flesh, roaring and tearing as he went. The unavoidable attack was happening and this guy was big, mean and so much stronger than I would ever be. Big Scott, a crumpled mess on a gurney in the basement of the radiation floor at Hopkins. But it’s a lie that the treatment is worse that the disease. It’s bad for sure but the tumor will kill you. Pick one- that’s the attack -pick one or the other.

My Ecstasy trip lasted one year.

The chilled liquid hallucinogen trickled through the veins in my arm, making a determined procession throughout my limbs. Within minutes, vibrant flashbacks to childhood memories once forgotten transported me from the chair. Then I fell asleep. Ketamine, also known as Special K and ecstasy, is being used as an experimental treatment for depression. It is also a hallucinogenic club drug. After months of myriad debilitating medications, exterminating every bit of who I was, Ketamine was administered, promising to cure my depression overnight. This harrowing period of psychotropic drugs eradicated my memory. I don’t remember Summer 2012 through 2013. The three years preceding this year remain a muddy smog of self- assembled anecdotes and white washed memories. The year following, in the agonizing thaw of amnesia, I was left to dig myself out from under the mud casing my brain through collected stories, spotty journal entries, and photographs. Uncertain as to who I was without essential, defining memories, I found myself reassembling an old jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. I was able to generate a pseudo-narrative of events, but was unable to summon the emotional responses associated with those events. As the years prior to this period sluggishly emerged from behind their shrouded, drug-induced veil, this 12-month period, for better or worse, remains a hollow oblivion.

There are no black people in New Mexico

Close your eyes and think about who went west. More than 100 years ago my family migrated to New Mexico, as Exodusters. The Exodusters were African Americans from the Deep South who migrated west in order to escape racial oppression and the possible reinstitution of slavery. My great great grandfather worked in the saw mill and eventually became a sheriff. His wife did domestic work. Three generations later my mother graduated from high school in New Mexico and our story continues.

Don Johnson has influenced my style for 30 years.

Every night I wear a white jacket and white pants. Never do I wear socks. I want to become white light. Every day I consider the easiest way to flip a table. How I can get all the weight onto one leg then kick that leg out thus breaking its bond to the earth. Additionally, I spend countless hours wondering how to either establish parallel pivot points or most effectively spin a human body around a point, similar to a pole. Overshadowing all of the contemplative approaches to theoretical motion against force, is a sense of duty as illustrated in the principle of castling. Only when the king has withstood the tempest of attacks without wavering has he led by example and inspired those who follow to gladly trade places and preserve an ideal. These are the principles I apply to my martial arts practice as both a student and teacher.

As was destined since my childhood, I am now the Godfather

I'm a full blooded Italian. My mother's ancestors were from the Northern Italian city of Bologna, an ancient community founded in 189 BC and home to the oldest European university. My mother passed on to me her thoughtful, creative, and compassionate qualities, as well as her intensity for hard work and attention to detail. My father is Sicilian. He provided me with a temperament suitable to a cornered rat. I was six when I first started realizing that my family was unique. It wasn’t just the countless events or the steady visitors, it was more the way in which everyone treated us, or more correctly, treated my uncle. I remember the time lying across my nonna’s living room floor admiring his shiny leather shoes as he dosed in a chair. It was innocent curiosity when I lifted his pant leg to reveal the hump of a holstered pistol. Uncle Sal burst to life grabbing my wrist but saying calmly in his thick accent “Antonio, no touch. You understand me?” Not long after my awakening to this life, my parents moved us to a small country town in New Hampshire. It had an airport where my father learned to fly and we visited the family each Sunday for the first few years though inevitably became less involved with them in time. We never discussed it, but I now believe my father saw in me someone that would have gravitated to my uncle's world and while my father wasn't there to raise me after those early years his one gift of relocation might be the best he could have done for me. Now, I am living in a quite New Hampshire town with my wife and have become the Godfather...to a beautiful boy.

All my magic is lost.

I always wanted to be a magician. So many hours in front of the mirror, trying to coax small objects into breaking the laws of physics. Years of pocket money poured into new tricks. The shimmer of a hand-sewn cape embroidered with gold stars, a gift from my grandmother. My parents’ lips, curled in indulgent smiles, as they feigned amazement at my latest fumbled routine. The gasps of a school auditorium as I stood on stage, setting things on fire. The names hurled at me in corridors for weeks after. And the sheer pleasure of convincing someone, if only for a second, that there might just be such a thing as magic. For all its faults, the world can be a magical place. As much as we might be able to recognize the value of gratitude on an intellectual level, it's not always something we feel in a visceral way. We get wrapped up in thoughts and doubts, daydreams and anxieties, excitement about what's to come rather than appreciation simply for what is. The magic is sometimes forgotten. Somewhere along the way I forgot too. It's good to remember it every now and then.

I once ran over a drifter in my car.

The “running a drifter over” was an answer I gave in a Q&A at my company, the question was "what is something that no one at work knows about you" and it ended up going live in the "about" section on my company's website. I thought it was a silly question so I just thought I'd be silly answering it but they were rather austere, actually asking me if I thought it was appropriate to share something so serious. I still don't know if they know the truth or not.

I am the she Christ

That really is what the name means. Names can carry some weight with them, you can be a Jesus or a Muhammad if you fit the part, but when parents go outside the norm, are they thinking about how their children will have to adapt? What does a name mean, have you met someone with a name that instantly gave you an idea of who they are or where they are from?

I have issues about my body.

I am not happy with the shape of my body. I have been athletic all my life, I'm coordinated and energetic and I work my butt off. I even played collegiate volleyball, so no one can say I'm not an athlete. However, I don't think I look like one. The ironic thing is that I've never been outwardly insecure about myself. I'm actually somewhat overconfident about my looks and personality. To the point where I make conceited jokes about my beauty and intelligence. For example, I know I have a pretty face. My perception of myself changed in 2005 when I tore my ACL and miniscus (and injured my MCL) playing grass volleyball. The ACL stands for Anterior Cruciate Ligament, it holds your femur tightly to your tibia and fibula preventing the femur from moving side to side (with the aid of several other ligaments including the MCL). When you tear your ACL the ligament snaps up like a spring and tightens into a ball at the end that is still attached causing a severe amount of excruciating pain. I couldn't walk for a week. This is a very common injury for athletes, especially female athletes. Surgery isn't necessary but without there is risk of repeated injury later on. The recovery period after surgery is about 6 months. I had surgery about twenty days after the original injury. Up until that time I could eat whatever I wanted without any consequences. I think the relatively quick shift to a sendentary life and the shock of the injury and surgery caused my metabolism to change. I didn't fully realize this until my weight increased considerably. Over my six-month recovery period I gained about 40 pounds. My senior year of college I put on more weight due to my poor self image, lack of sleep, no routine and general bad eating habits. I also partially blame my physical therapist, but that's another story. After I graduated from college, I got myself back together, with a regular work schedule, less drinking, and a gym membership (with a fabulous trainer) I was able to knock off a few pounds before I left for the Peace Corps. In the Peace Corps I lost the rest of the weight I had put on (by unconventional methods that I will not divulge here), but my body doesn't look the same. I lost a lot my muscle tone and stability and I feel that I'll never have my college/high school body back. I know many people probably feel the same way, but I work hard and I feel I get minimal results. I still don't feel comfortable in a swim suit and I'm afraid I'll never have the body I want. I'm sure most women say that, but I don't think those women say it knowing they work hard to stay healthy. I don't have bad feelings about my body because of the media or because I was taught to be insecure. I'm NOT insecure. My boyfriend tells me that my figure has more to do with genetics, and that either way, he loves it. So, I have learned to view what I think are flaws as eccentricities that make me an individual. Somehow that still doesn't prevent me from having issues about my body.

I’m finally able to get married.

I’ve grown up with two desires in my mind which have sometimes felt contradictory until now: 1) being an independent woman and 2) being a married woman. Growing up as the oldest of three girls, our business- owning mother always taught us that we could do anything that we put our minds to and taught us that we should be strong women and forge out on our own and not to rely on men to support us. And forge out on our own we did. As many women do today, I did not take the direct path to marriage and kids. I always had an affinity for “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, I had taken “the road less traveled.” I lived overseas, I traveled, I moved to cities where I had to start all over, I became wholly involved in my own self-exploration; I have fallen in love and out of love. That road has certainly not been traveled just by me, but I have more recently found myself at a cross roads in life as have many of my single women friends. We have all taken a path where finding a husband that would then give us our offspring was not the priority. Approaching my thirties definitely gave me pause to contemplate the road that I had taken a bit more. When I was in elementary school, I seriously thought I would meet my future husband in college, get married at 22 when I graduated and then start having babies a couple years later. As 22 approached, that was certainly NOT what I wanted to do. I don’t judge anyone who has taken that path, but I quickly realized that was not for me. But, in the last couple years, knowing deep down in my consciousness, that marriage and kids is something that I have always wanted, I wondered if one had to take one path over the other. I felt in some way that the path I had taken necessitated a certain “composure” about my future love life, I should somehow outwardly reject or rather, not care, about whether my future involved marriage. This, maybe, had some to do with the contradictory effects of my socialization and some to do with my own superstition (if I said I wanted it, then I wouldn’t get it). However, recently, I have finally realized that I don’t need to reject either side of my socialization. I am an independent, empowered woman that someday wants to get married and have babies. We are socialized beings, and I have undeniably become increasingly aware of my female socialization. We are also biological beings, and as many women (of any sexual orientation) realize as they near their late-20s, early-30s, I have become aware of what we call “the biological clock.” Instead of denying these parts of myself out of superstition or resistance, I have come to a point where I invite these emotional challenges in and link them with the independent nature I was nurtured with. I can finally say, without superstition or fear, that I want to get married. Note: I recognize that I was born with the privilege as a heterosexual female where I am afforded the opportunity to marry if and when I fall in love, and sadly, we are still fighting everyday for that to be everyone's right.