KH: You don't have to answer this and anytime you feel like let's take 5...Any thoughts on sex and cancer?

JF: Not that I can remember. I've only had sex twice since cancer. They were both flings. A lot of the medication I take, make me not really care, so I bitch about the sex part, but I also know that if I left the house more, I know that I would get a date. It's basically ties in with the loneliness. I haven't craved sex but I've craved the companionship of a guy that cared about me more than just a sleep over buddy. Or even just totally...platonic but sleeping over.

KH: Having people around...

JF: Yeah having certain people around especially that make me feel like a girl. Desired. I don't have cooties. Just to wake up next to somebody and have some one spooning your ass.

KH: It seems like that type of companionship...it's such a part of normalcy. Like how you said, "I just want to be me how I was before". I can imagine it must be isolating. A lot of people not knowing what to do will stay away. Did you have a lot of experience with people, not naming any names, who you felt abandoned by, or who you told something and they said something particularly bizarre who made you feel like I can't talk to that person about it? If any of them are too painful, fuck it, don't tell me, but I think it could be something that could help other people.

JF: Yeah, that's what's built into the concept of this magazine. I would have loved to be reading this magazine except I have a stack of tapes...ummm... With my menopause and memory, I think I forgot what you said.

KH: Just how people reacted when they heard or when you told them...

JF: That's a really good question actually. I found out there are people who can't deal with illness and you don't know who they are until you are crying, "ill". And some people really surprised me. But I totally understand about it. I even reached out to people that I could tell didn't know how to deal with it and say "I know you don't know how to deal with it, and that's ok. I sure don't know how to deal with this..."It was different with each person. It was at least 6 people that couldn't deal with it and a few people that just took off and never returned my call, like I have cancer. And that was really hurtful. It's like what did I do besides get cancer? I'm not an asshole. And I would try to stay positive with that. I don't want them to try and deal with something they can't deal with. They have their own problems and I have enough people who can deal with it. But for as many people that couldn't deal with it, at least 10 people came out of the woodwork to be supportive. But I actually learned more about some people than I did about myself.

KF: Is there anything that you learned from managing bands and doing all the stuff that you've done on tour that has helped you manage your own diagnosis or your own care?

JF: Actually the total opposite. I've always kind of been like that. I've always been really on the ball when I'm working for other people. I come home from tour, no electricity, no phone. So I for the first time ever, I was thinking I would do anything to have a tour manager right now.

KF: I was remembering one of the really cool things that you did and that you've done throughout from the time you were diagnosed till now-updating people with The Farry Health Report. I think it was so helpful for all of your friends and all the people who weren't super close with you but wanted to keep up-to-date.

JF: Yeah, there were a lot of people out there that wanted to know and I couldn't possibly be in touch with each person. It was totally cathartic and good for me because so much of what I was bummed out about was that I felt like I lost every iota of creativity so to just sit down and write and have it sound like me, it was a way to reach people and be myself. I've had it on my checklist for about 3 months. I kind of always felt like no news is good news...or no news for me, is I'm so doomed, why do I have to tell everyone in the world? I don't want everyone to feel sorry for me because there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

KH: Actually the part that was all about no light at the end of the tunnel would be a great as a Farry Health Report. I feel like total shit...

JF: I don't pick up the phone, I don't answer emails, I don't socialize, I'm a total wreck, but I'm thinking of you.

KH: But anytime anybody says their bummed out and I can't answer the phone and I'm laying amongst pizza boxes with half smoked menthol cigarettes that I bummed off the guy outside my building, anytime anyone admits that to anyone else I feel like it's total moment of victory. Because we all have it and we all act like it's not going on and we all act like everything's ok. If I'm not able to articulate it in the most perfect, funniest way, then I'm not going to bother.

JF: That's kind of what I've done.

KH: I want to hear snide, depressed bullshit because I'm there a lot of times and I don't even have cancer

KH: I can imagine it feeling totally overwhelming, I'm gonna do this, and I gonna do that...Did you ever have that feeling like I'm going to do all this stuff and have this frustration because you can't because of the illness?

JF: It was a pain in my ass for along time because I haven't had any income except for disability in some odd years. But I still have a $40 candle.

JF: I think to be honest I've known form the get-go that this wasn't going to kill me, so I didn't feel a lot of that. I think if I had found out I was terminal I think I would have done things differently. But I had a few things like that,like I took a vacation, which I normally would never do. A few things, but I haven't felt any race with time to get things done. I've just been like (part about a broken record) I want my old life back. And my friends are like, "well you weren't that happy before." I know but at least they were my real problems. Now I have this mysterious weird problem that won't go away. What I'm struggling with now is that I look pretty healthy and when I see people, they think I look great. But I feel like so much time has gone by and I expected by now to be...

KH: Speaking French?

JF: I didn't think over two years later I would still be struggling as much as I was and still be having all these side effects from new things that have come into my life because the level of chemo I had put me into menopause. All of a sudden I can't remember anything. All of a sudden I'm dealing with all these stupid things that are really frustrating.

KH: That's just temporary though, right? The menopause stuff?

JF: Yeah, everything's probably, hopefully temporary. But when you have nothing going on, it doesn't seem temporary. You just wonder when am I going to feel good for three days in a row? I'm definitely self-conscious. People always ask out of curiosity, "are you back to work?"

KH: It's funny to hear you talk about how you haven't really gotten anything done. You started a band.

JF: Well I joined an existing band. The Love Loves. And it's really fun, pop-y music that I liked enough to say yeah, I really want to do this. And that's been really good because it's playing and stuff.

KH: So did you shave your head or just lose hair and then put a wig on?

JF: I cut it super super short once it started falling out. It fell out a little later and then I basically went to Alicia [hairstylist] and she cut it all off with the scissors so I didn't actually shave my head which is kind of an important thing to me because having grown up in Synanon. I was forced to shave my head with clippers from the age of 8 to 16. At some point in there I got enough people to sign a petition that they'd let us grow out hair, but that didn't last long, because bald head day, Feb 7 rolled around and everyone was getting back to basics they'd re-shave their heads. So I spent a lot of time bald.

KH: So you were already familiar with the bald thing. But you probably had crazy issues with it because that was something from your childhood that you weren't allowed to have hair. So all of a sudden the cancer is like...once again you are not allowed to have hair!

JF: Right. I took it really hard--I don't know if it was feeling sorry for myself or just for the insecurity factor because you always have a few things you like best about yourself. Mine was always my hair and my skin. I love my hair and my skin's nice. Between menopause and all my fears of what's going to happen to my skin. And then having my shaved head and then my hair grew back to...so not what I wanted. The hair thing has actually, embarrassingly enough, it sounds really petty, but has been one of the hardest struggles that I've had except when I had wigs on, because I can actually pull off wigs, and I had a bunch of wigs and if I could fit my hair under a wig now I probably would wear one.

KH: I think your hair's really good now, but that's just me.

JF: Thank you. People were saying that a lot to me when it was really afro-y. For today I calmed it down a little bit. I used to, anytime any one would say, "I love your hair," I used to go through a whole diatribe about how it came out wrong and that I had chemo and then one day, I said ok, the next person that says "I really like your hair, I'm just going to say thanks." And that's what I started doing. It's a lot quicker and easier. If they liked it, they ask to hear about how I grew up in a cult.

KH: What was the cult? Synanon?

JF: Sangamon

JF: I hate complaining because people will be like you're in remission, that's great, and I feel like I have to say, "oh no, but I'm still having really bad side effects. Even when you asked me today--the first thing I say, because I don't want people to think I'm better than I am, I feel like I have to justify the fact that I can't work and that all I do is sleep because I feel bad about it.

KH: You don't want them saying, "Let's go to Wild Weaves now and celebrate," and then you're put in a position where you can't do that or aren't up to it.
The whole thing that it's a continuum. It doesn't mean you're never gonna have good days and it doesn't mean you're never gonna be your old self in a whole lot of ways. But you're always going to be a survivor and that part of it's never gonna go away.