My Naked Wrist

Tonight is the first time in more than five years that I no longer have this LiveStrong band on my wrist. Weird seeing it not there any longer, not making sure it didn't come off, not fiddling with it when in discussion or when thinking (toying with it like a nervous tic).

In fact, it may be more than five years. Maybe more than six. It's been on my wrist so long (through every shower, sleep, meal, sport or whatever I've done, I never took it off) I honestly don't remember when I actually put it on.

I'm guessing it has to be close to six years, perhaps a bit longer. I know because when my original one broke, I bought two replacements thinking they maybe snapped more often than I thought they would. I still have the other one in the package. That was when the wife and I were still living in Cleveland Park and before we were even married, so you see, it's been a long time since my left wrist has not had a twinge of yellow to it.

I didn't start wearing it because I had contracted cancer, nor was it just because I watch a lot of Tour de France and got swept up in the marketing of it all. I did it because I have family members who had cancer and so I started donating to a lot of those cancer-fighting organizations, one of which being LiveStrong. I also didn't want to end up wearing 75 colored bands on my arm like some creepy high school sex clique, so I settled on just the one.

In the past year I've been surprised by all the questions I was asked by friends about whether I'd keep wearing the bracelet after all fresh evidence and allegations started coming in against Armstrong. My initial defense was, "well, he never failed a test, so how can I judge the man?" despite me being a rational enough human being to recognize he was most likely guilty of just being better at beating the tests than the tests were at catching him.

I could have taken it off months ago. I could have taken it off when he finally admitted via press releases that he'd cheated and all the medals and accolades were stripped from him. I instead decided to wait until he spoke the damn words himself, and while I won't both watching Oprah, I decided that after tonight I couldn't come up with a good enough excuse to keep wearing it anymore.

I'm not ashamed that I can still watch replays of Lance's big racing moments and feel the excitement of it. In some ways, I just can't separate the impressive feat of it no matter if he cheated or not. If we're to believe it, more than half of the cyclists in his time were doping, which means if it was a somewhat level playing field, he's still kicking everyone's ass year after year. Now, that logic probably holds zero weight and I know it, but I guess when you've watched a group of guys pedal 40 miles straight uphill in rain and snow, you're just left impressed and everything else be damned.

It wasn't about the supporting the cause anymore. I can send money to whomever or whatever cause I want and still be a supporter. I just finally reached the point where seeing the band made me think more about Armstrong than it did my family and the chance to end a ridiculously horrible disease that has claimed the lives of people I've known and afflicted others. The band became more about them than the man who started it and the specific disease, it just became (for me) about constantly saying Fuck You to cancer.

I still say it, and now I probably don't need a band on my wrist to remind me anymore.