“I’m sorry, I can’t help myself,” says the technician, a young woman in her late twenties or early thirties, as she adjusts the bed for me to lie on. I’m removing my shoes. It’s semi-dark in the small windowless room where I’m about to have a bone density scan. I look up from the shoes.
         The technician says: “Things just suddenly came together. Please forgive me, crying like this.”
          It’s so dim, I probably would not have noticed. “That’s all right. It happens. When I cry I tell myself that it’s sympathy I offer to myself,” I say, quoting from my poem “Sympathy”, but refrain from telling her this.
          The technician smiles. “My friend tells me that the way to stop crying is to force oneself to laugh,” she says.
          I’m not sure I like the way she stops crying so soon and now she is actually laughing. She asks me to lie down and cross my arms. I tell her that my chest hurts, that I have a terrible rash under my breasts. It’s been very hot the last two days and I have such problems with bras in warm weather. Can’t find cotton ones anymore. Everything is synthetic that makes one perspire.
            “Yes, and everything is underwire. I agree, the bras are terrible,” the technician says.
            “The skin can’t breathe. And the elastic ones are no better than the underwire ones. Yesterday I even thought seriously of getting breast reduction.”
            “There is a study under way in Hawaii. The Polynesian women don’t wear bras and the incidence of breast cancer among them is much lower than here or in Europe,” the technician tells me.
 
            "I read of a Canadian study that tried to connect bras to cancer. The breasts get very warm in synthetic fabrics, hot even. I used to work in research where we selected for mutant viruses by growing them at high temperatures. Heat acts as a mutagen.” I read the Canadian study decades ago and this is the first time I’ve mentioned it to someone. “I wonder if the sports bras are any more comfortable?”
            “They’re terrible and the material unpleasant.”
            “Thank God, it has cooled off.”
            “How is it outside?” she asks.
            “Nice. There is a breeze.” No, she wouldn’t know how it is outside. Workers are not treated well. This young woman is working with equipment that may be harming her and she does this in a dungeon.
            As I get ready to leave, she again apologizes for her crying. I want to tell her that I hope she isn’t crying over a man.
            “I’m just torn in all directions. I have to learn to say no.”
            This doesn’t sound like a man problem. I want to tell her that I’m glad she isn’t crying over a man, instead I again, tell her that it’s good to cry sometimes, that it’s sympathy we offer ourselves.  Later as I walk home, I wonder why I felt relieved that she wasn’t crying over a man. Why not cry over a man? I’ve cried over a man. Nothing wrong with crying over a man.