Welcome to the second part of my interview with triathlete-turned-author/teacher Scott Tinley. The first part was published a week ago.

I first wanted to provide two examples of his writing style, both from a piece he wrote about having skin cancer:

This wasn’t by-choice surgery. My choice had been to play outside in the sun, all my life, mostly without a hat. Now, this was my price, no-free-lunch and all that. It wouldn’t kill me but I could end up looking, well… cut and pasted, bio-photoshopped.

And:

The cultural ideology of youth-centrism is pervasive, a billion dollar industry. The myth of immortality has become its own political economy. Kids who’ve never heard of The Who don’t necessarily want to die before they get old. But they might consider death before looking older. 

Okay, on with the interview:

Scott Butki: Is that you on the cover with your son? Or your father with you? 

Tinley: That’s my dad rowing, me as first mate, early '60s, somewhere in the mountains above Southern California.

You end your preface with this statement: “Survivors get to suck the marrow, to know that as they die they will not discover that they had not lived.” Can you elaborate on that thought?  

It’s a distant paraphrase from a section in Thoreau’s Walden. The worst deaths I’ve seen are with people who aren’t ready to go, who feel that they haven’t really lived. But people who’ve survived, vets in particular, count every day as a bonus and are happy to have been given what they were.

Your piece about your skin cancer really hit close to me, with my dad dying of complications from skin cancer. When did you write this one? Has the skin cancer returned? Has the experience changed what you tell others about skin cancer prevention? Was this written to help you deal with what happen or to warn others or a little bit of both? 

I wrote that in 1999. I’ve been hacked up a number of times but only for basal cell carcinomas. That last episode was tough because they really did take the tip of my nose. And I thought about the cosmetic surgery “industry” for a long time. I’m still out in the sun every day but I look like kabuki theater with my white zinc. As for warning others... naw, that kind of thing can’t be taught, only experienced.

I have heard breast augmentation compared to many things but you’re the first to make me think of jellyfish. This excerpt is from that story.

I may have appreciated the outline, if not the sculpture of augmented breasts (you really can’t say, “fake tits” anymore), but when I felt them, I was taken back to my days on the beach, shoveling jelly fish into plastic bags to clear the volleyball court. (I can hear the collective sneer of men everywhere.)

If you pick up a white jelly fish and put it in a plastic bag it feels very similar to the product inserted into augmented breasts. Not very erotic but descriptive for my narrative purposes.