Staying Alive

Nurse: No, he hasn’t got the six-pack to be a cyclist.

As a rule my sense of neatness is pervasive, all-consuming, but in the ongoing face-off between shaggy and trim, shaggy wins every time.

My eyes travel down a little further to my…You know something? I don’t know what to call it. I’ve never felt comfortable with any of the standard terms. Penis sounds too formal—a bit sort of Presenting His Excellency Lord Penis, Duke of Genitalia. Willy, of course, is too cute. Cock? Too blunt, macho, in-your-face. There are dozens of other words for the thing—well, thing for one. Then there’s knob, todger, schlong, pecker, love trun-cheon. Love truncheon. Not even in my dreams. None of them feels right. And before anyone suggests it, I am not going down the road of personalising it, giving it a pet name. So I’m not left with much. But I’m looking at it now. Like the rest of me, it’s nothing special. Thoroughly average, I suppose, though I’ve never taken a ruler to it. But that isn’t why I’m staring at myself in the mirror, my trousers round my ankles. I reach down to my…Balls? Bollocks? Knackers? Testicles? Same problem. I’m stuck whenever I have to refer to anything in the…er…meat ’n’ two veg region ( meat ’n’ two veg—truly horrible). My solution to date has been to avoid any reference if at all possible. It has worked well enough for thirty-one years, but now…Well, I’ve got a lump. Or something.

I think I read somewhere that men should check themselves once a month, like women are meant to examine their breasts. I also read that you should check the batteries in your smoke alarm on a regular basis. I’ve never done that either. Frankly, I’ve never felt happy about the idea of self-examination, and only partly because I’m not especially fond of molesting myself. My principle objection is that the doctors—men and women who, let’s not forget, undergo only slightly less training than architects and London cab drivers—are advising the rest of us—a bunch of barely informed amateurs—to do the checking. Where is the logic, please? Why the billions blown on teaching hospitals the size of Devon if they end up making us do the work?

But I’m checking now. Feeling with my hand. Very tentatively. My left one…Just say the word, Murray. My left testicle is lower. Though I’ve never paid it the kind of attention I’m giving it now, I think it has always been lower. It’s also bigger. Definitely bigger. I don’t think it has ever been that. I take it between my fingertips and roll it gently as if it’s a bingo ball and I’m looking for the number. There it is. My fingers weren’t deceiving me in the scrabble for change at lunchtime. I quickly let go. Drop it like a red-hot pebble. As if I’ve turned the bingo ball and seen the number.

Six, six, six.

I’ve got a lump.

11.38 p.m.

I’m in bed, but I can’t sleep.

I feel dreadful. Hot and sweaty, bunged up, achy. It’s the flu. But that isn’t what’s keeping me awake. I’ve got a lump. My mind is racing, looking for explanations. Alternatives to the obvious and deeply unpleasant one. Until a moment ago none had offered itself. But the one that does now is so blindingly obvious that it practically switches on the light and yells Eureka!

Megan left weeks ago. Three weeks, two days and (quick glance at the alarm) just over nine hours ago since you ask. It was weeks—OK, precisely twelve weeks and two days—before that when we last did it. That makes fifteen weeks, four days and an indeterminate number of hours without sex. That’s over a quarter of a year without any kind of release. Nothing so much as a…Say the word, Murray…Nothing so much as a wank.

The lack of sex has surely caused the lump. I must be backed up, overstocked, whatevered—there’s almost certainly a correct medical term for it. It’s probably only a matter of days before my right testicle swells in a similar manner. If I don’t do something soon they’ll be as big as satsumas—or full-blown oranges. Well, I can do something right now. If only to rule out the possibility.

wednesday 5 november / 1.33 a.m.

It didn’t work.

Oh, it worked in as much as I managed to shuffle through some mental reruns and get the job done. But nearly two hours on the lump is still there. Just as big—though, actually, it’s pretty small. So I still can’t sleep. And now I’m in the corridor outside my bedroom. I’m standing on a chair checking the battery in my smoke alarm.

It’s flat.

four: fancy that. outposts of the nhs that examine nothing but balls (#ulink_6fa79352-5819-5f4b-a8ec-f7d6107d6edf)

wednesday 5 november / 9.12 a.m.

Blimey, I didn’t know Tom and Nicole were back together.

Mildly surprised but, honestly, not that interested, I return Hello! to the pile on the table. It’s only now that I see the date on the cover—July 1998. It must be a cunning policy cooked up by a Department of Health think-tank. Put ancient magazines in doctors’ waiting rooms and watch as patients are transported back to a halcyon age when Tom and Nic were the golden couple and you only had to wait two years for a hip replacement.

I’ve never met Doctor Stump. He has been my GP for years, but I’ve been avoiding him. Doctors make me squeamish and having one called Stump is hardly likely to cure me of that. The only time I did visit, a locum was on. He was Polish. No disrespect to the guy—I’m sure he would have made an excellent practitioner in suburban Gdansk—but in South Woodford, where the East End blurs into Essex, he was no use whatsoever. Normally I take my ailments to the chemist, where I ply the pharmacist with my symptoms before leaving with an over-the-counter remedy. But I couldn’t see myself dropping my trousers in Superdrug, so here I am.

Up on the wall the green light blinks. I’m on. I walk into the shabby surgery and sit down. Stump caps his biro and looks at me from behind his desk. Then he coughs. It isn’t a polite throat-clearing ahem. It’s a prolonged, spewing-blood-into-a-hanky, Doc Holliday affair that doesn’t look as if it’s going to finish any time before lunch. ‘Can I get you some water?’ I ask. He glares at me angrily—like Who’s the doctor round here?—so I sit back and wait. As he tries to catch the spittle with a billowing cotton hankie, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I mean, the lump…It’s probably nothing. The thing is, it doesn’t hurt. I’ve squeezed as hard as I dare squeeze one of my own testicles (a word I’m growing increasingly comfortable with) and there’s no pain. If it were something bad, surely it would be painful. By bad, of course, I mean cancer. Pain is the first thing I think of with regard to that disease. Cancer hurts. Like hell, by all accounts. Yet I feel nothing. So what am I doing here? Wasting precious NHS time, most probably.

Then again, if it is something bad, what am I doing here? Why am I entrusting my health to a doctor called Stump? It’s like calling a new brand of sweetener Anthrax and expecting the public to sprinkle it onto their cornflakes. And look at him retching into his hankie as if he’s spent the last few decades ignoring his own profession’s very sensible advice on smoking. He can’t even manage his own cough and I expect him to help me?

No, whichever way I look at it, coming here was a poor idea. Best I leave now, let him get on with the three old ladies in the waiting room, all of whom looked as if they might die in their seats if they don’t get immediate medical attention. I stand up, but with the hand that isn’t preventing his lungs from spilling into his lap Stump waves me back into my chair. With an effort that turns his face purple he finally strangles the cough and says in a voice awash with phlegm, ‘What can I do for you, Mr…’ He searches for the name on my file. ‘…Collins?’

‘It’s Colin,’ I say. ‘Like Cliff Richard.’

‘What, it’s not your real name?’

‘No, I mean it’s Cliff Richard, not Richards. I’m Co lin. No S.’

‘What can I do for you, Mr Co lin?’

I’ve been giving my next line a fair amount of thought. Actually practising it in front of my bedroom mirror. Much like I used to mime to Smiths songs when I was fourteen. (And now I think about it, Doctor, it would appear that I have a growth on one of my testicles sounds like a Morrissey lyric, one he rejected as being too gloomy—that and the fact that finding a plausible rhyme for testicles would have been beyond even his considerable lyrical gifts.) But now I’m here—on the stage, in a manner of speaking—I can’t say it. So instead I mumble, ‘I’ve got the flu.’

‘Well, what do you expect me to do about it?’

I don’t answer.

‘I suggest you go home, take some paracetamol and sleep it off,’ he says.

I don’t move, though.

‘Is that it?’ he asks. ‘You’ve got the flu and you just came to tell me?’ He picks up his pen and writes something on my file—time waster probably.

‘No,’ I say quietly.

‘What then?’

I still can’t say it.

‘Speak up.’ He’s irritated now. ‘I’ve got a waiting room full out there.’

Yes, three old ladies and the Grim Reaper.

‘It’s my…I’ve got a…’

He nods by way of encouragement.

‘I’ve got cancer.’ There. Said it. It’s out now.

‘Really?’ he asks, genuinely curious because, well, there’s no note of it in my file. ‘Where? When was it diagnosed?’

‘It hasn’t been…Not exactly. But I’ve got a lump.’

‘Where precisely?’

I can’t say it.

‘Give me a clue.’

‘It’s…It’s on…My…’ No, still can’t say it.

‘Somewhere rather personal perhaps?’ Stump hazards.

I nod.