The Tumours Made Me Interesting

by Matthew Revert

“Did we fuck?” I asked bluntly.

  She fell silent for a while as my words sunk in. Her face scrunched in confusion and then broke into laughter.

  “No! I did not fuck you! I would never fuck you. Besides, you’d shit yourself, you freak.”

  Her reply broke my focus. I became aware of the rapt audience our confrontation had attracted. All eyes were boring into me. There was total silence. Even the jukebox had decided to shut up and watch.

  “Don’t lie to me,” I stammered.

  Jerry’s hand fell on my shoulder, warm and firm.

  “We should leave, dude,” he said. “This is getting sticky.”

  I shrugged his hand away and persisted with less confidence than ever.

  “Don’t lie to me,” I repeated.

  The expression on tent girl’s face turned sour. She tore at the tent that enclosed her, slowly revealing her body to the bar. It was stunning. The kind of body you only ever see in Photoshop.

  “Look at me,” she said. “Do I look like I’m in your league? I would never lower myself to your level.”

  The underwear model started to snicker with self-assurance. Faint laughter blossomed from the crowd of onlookers. The laughter grew in volume and fervor. It made me dizzy and assailed me from every direction. I reached for my last cigarette and sucked like a baby.

  Don’t let them treat you like this, said the tumour queen. You’re better than them.

  “Fuck you!” I screamed. “I’m better than you people. I’m special. I’m not what you think I am.”

  The underwear model took a step toward me and removed his shirt. He began to flex and grunt.

  “You’re absolutely nothing, pal,” he said with confidence.

  The onlookers clapped in response. My stomach clenched like a thousand fists, knocking me to the ground. The tumours began to pound from the inside. They barked and moaned. I rolled onto my stomach and flailed my arms like I was drowning.

  “Somebody call an ambulance,” came a voice from the crowd.

  If you won’t do anything, we will, said the tumour queen.

  I winced in pain as my bowel inflated. A scream escaped my mouth and flew through the front window. People ducked to avoid the shards of glass. A tumour was leaving me. I tried to clench my arse but it pushed against the resistance. It shot out of me like a potato gun. People panicked and cowered beneath tables. The pain was gone.

  I rolled onto my back, trying to snap my vision into focus. Tent girl was standing, mouth agape in shock and staring at the underwear model. He was standing upright, rocking back and forth very slightly. Jitters pulsed through his arms. Where his obnoxiously attractive face used to be was now a gory cavity. Blood and meat sloshed out in a sloppy soup. Moments later he slumped to the ground and the jukebox started again.

  “We really gotta go, man,” said Jerry. He grabbed my leg and dragged me toward the door.

  3.

  I was sitting on Jerry’s bed as Jerry paced in front of me.

  “This is fucking wild, man!” he said. “You have fucking super tumours or something.”

  “I need a cigarette,” I said.

  “Want me to go out and get you some?”

  My body fell back in defeat. “It’s no use. I need the special cigarettes Fiona gives me.”

  I studied the ceiling in Jerry’s bedroom. It was plastered with posters of naked men tattooed with naked women. One of the women tattooed to the arm of a burly sort looked like my mother before she got sick. I hadn’t seen my mother in a month. Fiona wouldn’t allow it. The money we were making would ensure her care was the best available. I was told that my constant micro care was robbing her of the independence everyone deserves. I was stifling her, enslaving her to utter dependency. I believed every word because it was true. I stopped viewing my mother as a mother a long time ago. Although I loved her more than I could ever love anything else, she only existed via her illness. I was her caregiver, her one salvation. Ever since my father was carried away by a falcon when I was nine, there was only me. The situation made me feel important. I empathised so thoroughly that I became her. She fell into a cycle of helplessness – a cycle I was only too happy to facilitate.

  “I miss my mother,” I confided to Jerry.

  “I’m going to make you some soup, dude. Soup fixes everything… except for too much soup.”

  As Jerry walked into the kitchen, I felt lonely. I fondled my empty cigarette packet, wishing it would replenish itself. I should have thought to bring more with me. The sound of breaking dishes wafted from the kitchen like a tendril, reminding me that I was still here. The tumours were growing hungry for nicotine and attention. I stroked my belly, willing them to be calm. They responded to my request, giving me the illusion of control. The tumours had killed a man. I was terrified and proud. They were clearly as powerful as I was told they were. I really was that special. My only regret was that I’d now lost one of them. When the tumour forced its way from my body, it was like a child running away from home. I missed him. I was always going to miss him.

  By the time Jerry had returned with soup, daylight was breaking through the windows.

  “Sorry that took so long. I’ve never made soup before.”

  He dragged a card table from the corner of his room and placed the soup before me. It had the consistency of mashed potato and was garnished with whole persimmons.

  “What sort of soup is this?” I asked.

  “It’s supposed to be tomato, but I didn’t have any of the ingredients.”

  He shovelled a heaped spoonful into his mouth and started to chew. His eyes watered into pink scabs and he let the muck fall from his mouth back into the bowl. It landed with a wet splat.

  “Seriously, dude, don’t eat that fucking soup,” he warned. “It’s an affront to nature.”

  I was more than happy to heed his warning. It smelled like neglected cat litter. My desire for a cigarette was beating at my skull with increasing anger. I needed to get home and replenish my supplies. Then I had to see my mother. If I was smart about it, there was no reason Fiona would find out. And even if she suspected it, it was unlikely she would be able to prove it. Mum had to know her son was good at something. I wanted her to be proud of me before I died. I had never been able to give her the gift of pride.

  The sun was out in full force now. Jerry’s apartment didn’t look quite right in daylight. It had the grime you associate with noir back alleys and Tom Waits songs. The bed I was on smelled like what I imagined sex to smell like and empty liquor bottles slept on the carpet with blurry Z’s floating from their necks. What really hit me was the sense of loneliness. This wasn’t how I imagined Jerry to live. I had always envisioned a swinging bachelor pad circa 1963 with smooth jazz moving through egg-shaped speakers.

  Jerry was lost in thought with what looked like a tear beading on his eye. His legs were nervously shaking with unconscious abandon. My instinct was to look away and deny ever having seen it. He was tired and had yawned or maybe he had allergies, but he sure as fuck wasn’t crying… surely…

  “Are you okay?” I found myself asking.

  Jerry looked at me and snapped out of his introspection.

  “I’m cool as love for a whore, dude,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to say. I gave a polite smile and nodded my head to music that didn’t exist. We remained still and watched the dust dance in the sunlight.

  “It’s just… you were talking about your mother…” continued Jerry.

  “Yeah?”

  “Well… you should go and fucking see her, man.”

  His head collapsed into waiting hands and his whole body began to shake with the eruption of dormant tears. My head kept motioning to look away but I forced myself to look. I needed to see this. He wouldn’t let me see his face, perhaps out of fear or maybe due to shame.

  “What happened to your mother?” I asked.

  He looked up. I could see how wet and swollen with pity his eyes had become. His mouth kept opening as if to spea
k, but nothing came out. I stood up and sat beside him and very gently, as if about to touch a snake, I placed my hand on his shoulder. His shoulder felt foreign and infused with dangerous electricity. I wanted to pull my hand away, but something inside wouldn’t allow this.

  “You can… umm… talk to me if you want,” I said.

  As these words left my mouth, I wanted to snatch them back, but Jerry’s ear had already swallowed them.

  “Yeah… she died a bunch of years back,” he said eventually. “We didn’t really talk much.”

  If emotional terrain could be imagined as a pirate map, the area Jerry and I were currently in would read ‘Here Be Monsters’. I was terrified, but I pressed on.

  “How did she die?”

  “She got trapped in a photograph.”

  I scratched my head, clearly unprepared for this response

  “It was my fucking dad’s fault,” he continued. Permission to finally speak had been granted. “He got this stupid piece of shit camera from one of those roadside fruit stands you see when you’re driving in the middle of nowhere. It was this orange, plastic fucker. It looked like a toy. It took this film they don’t make any more and there was only one roll available for my dad to use. So he’s excited like some stupid fucking kid and he comes home with this thing. I remember him gathering us all up in the kitchen and he placed the camera smack in the middle of the table. I’m staring at it and thinking, who gives a shit? and my mother and sister are just as underwhelmed. Dad was always doing shit like this, though: picking up some worthless piece of crap and acting like he’d just found the holy fucking grail. He didn’t care that it was junk. He never did. He makes a big show of loading the film and bragging about the photos he was going to take of us. Me and sis weren’t letting him snap us with the stupid fucking thing so he ropes mum in on it. She never refused him, no matter how fucking stupid his ideas were. Later that night, he had her posing in the kitchen dressed as a dromedary camel. I was watching from the sidelines, pissed off at dad for roping mum in and pissed off at mum for letting dad do it to her. So he aims this piece of shit at her, tells her to smile and say ‘cheese’ and BANG! He takes the photo and she disappears! To fuck it up even more, he drops the camera in shock and it smashes on the ground. The film inside is damaged and he goes to every camera store in the fucking country to try and get it developed. It’s no good… she’s gone and we never see her again.”

  Jerry grew silent again as I tried to process his story.

  “She was literally gone in a flash, dude,” he added.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I admitted. “That’s really fucked up.”

  “Yeah… it is. And to make it worse, I never spoke to my mother. I was 16 and way too fucking cool for that sort of shit. I spent all my time getting drunk and stoned, avoiding my mother like she had a contagious disease. So, yeah,… go see your mother, dude. Shit… it’s just as important for her to be there at the end of your life as it is for you.”

  I nodded in complete agreement. I removed my hand from Jerry’s shoulder and felt the residual warmth fade away. It was a melancholy sensation.

  “There’s something else I should probably tell you, dude,” continued Jerry with an element of caution.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s about that fucking tent girl you were banging on about…”

  “Yes?”

  “So… the two of you never did anything… there was no coital tango.”

  I rubbed at my tired eyes, not sure if I wanted to keep listening.

  “You didn’t even suck her tit, man,” he said.

  “Then what the hell happened?”

  “So you were acting like one rowdy fucker and you’d chucked all over the floor. You should’a seen it, man… you were driving people out of there like a bomb threat. So this tent chick starts dragging you into the kitchen, just to get you away from everyone. Then she tells me that if I don’t get your sorry arse outta there, she’s calling the cops… so that’s what I did.”

  “But I thought you left with those midgets,” I replied in protest.

  “There were no fucking midgets, dude. Fuck… I wish there had’a been. The only person I left with that night was you. Let’s just say, I’ve done better.”

  I ran through the series of events in my mind, but the intoxication of that night only allowed the vaguest imprint to remain. One image that wouldn’t abate, no matter how much reason I tried to apply, was that of me sucking on the breast. That had to have happened.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “I’m sure I sucked a breast. I can even feel the residual nipple in my mouth.”

  Jerry shuffled uncomfortably before standing up. He began pacing back and forward, stopping every so often to check the bottles littering his carpet for signs of remaining alcohol. After this proved unsuccessful, he stopped dead and directed his eyes right at mine.

  “Look, dude,” He lifted his shirt, “does this look familiar?”

  I stared at his man breasts, paying attention to the thick curls of hair circling his nipples.

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “You sucked my tit, dude. You were one insistent fucker about it too. You kept going for me during the whole taxi ride home.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “It’s true! I have no idea why you wanted to suck my tit and I have no fucking idea why I let you. I kinda wasn’t planning on telling you.”

  Jerry and I stared at each other for some time. Awkward silence smothered us both. I let my mind drift away from Jerry, not wanting to linger any longer on his revelation. Without distraction, my body started kicking up a violent stink about the absence of nicotine. My body tensed and my tumours howled at invisible moons.

  “I’m going to see my mother,” I yelled over the howling. “But first, can you drop me off at home? I need some cigarettes.”

  My home had changed a lot in 12 hours. The burst pipe had now filled the apartment with a foot of water. Everyone was wading through it, refusing to acknowledge it as a hindrance. I shuffled my way through the lounge room, trying my best to avoid the numerous objects that floated past.

  “I need cigarettes,” I said.

  Within seconds, the Stotson’s, Arthur, Belinda and her mother were holding cigarettes within centimeters of my lips. I snatched them all and crammed them into my mouth. They each held their lighters up to ignite the godly sticks. It was like sucking on an exhaust pipe and the blast of smoke knocked me backward into the water. It was beautiful. Each cell in my body stretched in relaxation. The tumours fed like starving dogs, leeching every nutrient they could. My limp body slowly drifted in the water, knocking into things like a pinball. The ceiling rotated above me.

  “Fiona’s going to be so pleased you're back,” said Rhonda. “She’s so excited.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Don’t be a big silly! A tumour left your body, love. This is big news. It wasn’t very polite to leave like that without telling anyone, but I think the results were worth it.”

  I flailed about in the water, trying to find my footing. I didn’t really feel like seeing Fiona at the moment. I desperately wanted to go and see my mother and having Fiona anywhere near me, was not wise.

  “When is she coming over?” I asked.

  “I just gave her a call,” said Vince. “She’ll probably be here in 15 minutes.”

  I swore to myself and waded toward my bedroom. The burst pipe continued to spew water into the apartment, filling it bit by bit. It wouldn’t be long until it reached the ceiling. It wouldn’t be long until all my possessions were destroyed. The others weren’t terribly interested in leaving, almost like they were prepared to drown for no good reason. Belinda’s tuxedoed quail swam by, kicking its feet and billowing steam in little whistles. I motioned to pet it, but it snapped at my hand so I let it be.

  All of my clothes were soaking wet. It almost wasn’t worth changing, but I wanted to look nice for mum. She used to knit me jumpers before she got sick
. Each jumper bore the same basic design of a ninja turtle. They were poorly made, but I couldn’t part with them. The coarse wool she used always made my arms and neck break out in a painful rash. They were torture devices more than clothing, but I loved them. I imagined my mother’s able hands working the needles. These were important relics of my mother’s flirtation with health. I slid one of these jumpers over my head and felt the wool scratch at my skin.

  I waded toward the front door.

  “Where are you going in that dreadful jumper?” asked Arthur.

  “It doesn’t matter where I’m going,” I replied. “I’ll be back soon. Just tell Fiona I had to pick something up from work.”

  Arthur stood before me, pan flute in hand, gearing up to give me a performance.

  “Look, my lad… don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t believe you. Where are you really going?”

  The others joined Arthur and crowded around me, refusing my exit. Even Belinda seemed intent on stopping me.

  “What are you guys doing? Let me out.”

  “Fiona wouldn’t like that at all,” said Belinda’s mother.

  “I don’t care what Fiona would like. I have a right to see my own fucking mother.”

  I swore to myself again, absolutely livid that I let my true intentions slip so easily.

  Vince approached me with a length of rope dangling in his hands.

  “I’m so sorry, Bruce,” he said. “I think you know full well that we can’t let you do that. It goes completely against the rules.”

  They all restrained me as Vince slipped the rope behind my back. I fought against it, but my physical deterioration was such that the fight was fruitless. Regret danced about their faces as they manoeuvred me into a chair. Arthur contained my arms while Rhonda worked on my legs. Vince wrapped the rope around and around until it squeezed me like a hug from grandma. Belinda climbed on my lap and placed a lit cigarette between my lips, which I sucked upon gratefully. The coils of smoke stung my eyes as it rotated toward the ceiling.

  “I don’t understand how you could do this to me,” I said. “We’re like family.”