Catherine Gigante-Brown

You realize pretty soon that everything other than cancer — i.e. missing a train, being late to your dentist appointment — is no biggie compared to the suck factor of chemo.

Once upon a time, it was easier to keep track of gender. Today, not so much — the lines are blurred. For many, gender’s not so much about questioning your own identity as it is about questioning the very nature of identity.

The Ultimate Counter Culture Diva

Were you going to run into that cute guy John Williams on the way home? Would you see Anne Marie by the lockers and sort out what to do for the weekend? It was hit-or-miss, and that was the beauty of it. The breath-holding chance of it all. Now, our kids’ friends are as close as a keyboard stroke away. It’s too easy.

A midtown Manhattan studio was recently the site of liberation-both on and offscreen-when Shenshean

I go for checkups when I’m supposed to: every three months to the oncologist and every six months to the breast surgeon. I go to SHARE support group meetings to bolster myself. I try to get enough sleep, despite the occasional night spent wide-eyed with dread.

When David was about 12, he told me that he wanted to take the train to school alone. My gut reaction was, “No way in hell!” I mean, we live in a safe neighborhood and all, but David has ADHD and was easily distracted. What if he missed his stop? What if someone messed with him?

Candida Royalle pretty much invented couples erotica. She made it socially-acceptable. Respectable. The women in her films looked like real women and had real, comfortable female bodies. And her movies actually had stories. Good stories. She hired her friends—adult legends like Annie Sprinkle, Veronicas Hart and Vera, and Gloria Leonard — to create Femme films too.

The Daily News quoted one painted lady as saying, “People come up to us sometimes and say what we do is disgusting,” she said. “But what is disgusting about the female body? They shield their kids sometimes, and I think, ‘Kids come from the female body.’”

The office cubicle is indeed a strange bird. Here's how to survive life in a box without driving you—or your office mates—crazy.