Читать книгу Staying Alive - Matt Beaumont - Страница 8

tuesday 4 november / 7.44 p.m.

At least, I think it’s a lump.

I stand in front of the long mirror in my bedroom and lower my trousers and underpants. I unbutton my shirt and lift the tails out to my sides to reveal myself in seminaked glory. Nothing glorious about it, actually. My body is thoroughly average. No flab to speak of, but no corrugated sheet of abdominal muscles either. Just a gently bowed curve of stomach descending to an untidy clump of mid-brown hair. Every once in a while I consider shaving it off. Nothing to do with vanity. No, the thought appeals to my sense of neatness. But…shaved pubes. There’s something pervy about that. A bit porn star. And I can’t stomach the idea of being knocked down by a car, getting rushed to Aamp;E and the medics discovering that I groom down there.

Doctor: Take a look at this, nurse.

Nurse: My God, a depilator. Is he a porn star?

Doctor: What’s it say on his admission form?

Nurse: Advertising executive.

Doctor: He’s most likely just your run-of-the-mill pervert.

Nurse: Shall I call social services?

Doctor: We’d best be sure first. I mean, he could be a pro cyclist. I understand they shave. Something to do with aero dynamics, apparently.

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.