Matthew Revert - The Tumours Made Me Interesting

Vince, Rhonda and Belinda’s mother rose from their seats to match Fiona, Arthur and myself. Belinda remained seated, wearing a goofy grin and lost in the kind of daydreams only permitted to children. Everyone else encircled me and announced their intention to lift me from the ground as a means of celebration. Maybe they didn’t approach me from the right angle, or perhaps their hearts simply weren’t committed to the task, because I’ve never witnessed a more awkward attempt at anything in my life. Arthur, refusing to put down his cup of tea, scooped an arm between my legs. Rhonda bear hugged my waist. Fiona pushed her hands hard into my chest and Vince placed his hands below my chin. Without a countdown to align their efforts, they all began lifting, pushing and hugging at different times. I felt my body being pulled in every direction at once. I yelped, while my would-be lifters muttered exacerbated swears. Then, in a ball of inept humanity, we slowly fell to the ground. Rigid, uncoordinated limbs engulfed me as our combined bodies, entwined beyond reason, sat in the middle of my lounge room. We remained in this position for some time. We all agreed never to mention the incident again.

With everyone on board to play Fiona’s game, it was now time to learn the rules and discover our individual roles.

Fiona’s role was as supervisor and cigarette provider. The household was allocated two cartons a day which, as long as I had as many as I needed, could be distributed amongst the others. Each day she was to visit at 8am and 6pm. The 8am visit would be a one on one session with me where she would assess my progress and ensure I was adhering to an exercise regime which she had carefully developed. The 6pm visit was for the others. She would discuss strategies and troubleshoot potential issues and, most importantly, I was forbidden to attend.

Rhonda had been given the role of nurse. She would tend to the myriad problems that would surely develop and make sure I was kept clean and, as much as possible, comfortable. She also insisted on keeping the apartment clean, which Fiona agreed to.

Vince was named house chef and restraint implementation coordinator. His job was to cook all meals required by the others. But, most importantly, he had to maintain a vigil over me and if at any point I tried to escape or hurt myself, he was required to restrain me until Fiona arrived. Vince’s role intimidated me the most, but he seemed to take on the responsibility happily.

As Belinda’s mother was adamant about being dead, no official role was given to her. It was just asked that she stay out of the way and make herself available wherever possible.

Belinda was given a role befitting her ‘child’ status and was named ‘Games Consultant’. It was her responsibility to keep me occupied and entertained. She was given a Nintendo Entertainment System with a copy of Kid Icarus to aide her efforts.

Arthur’s role was slightly ambiguous. He was the Musical Director and was responsible for providing us all with regular music performances. He was given a penny whistle along with a book on advanced penny whistle technique and instructed to start practicing immediately.

My role was both the simplest and most complex. I simply had to obey everyone else and forget what autonomy was. My 13 years at The Nipple Blamers ensured that autonomy was a foreign notion to me. It was unlikely I’d start craving my own agency any time soon. That aside, I wasn’t looking forward to my continued degradation. Growing the perfect disease struck me as particularly tiring. In many ways, it was more about the tumours sustaining me in order to reach maturity than anything else.

The most problematic aspect of my role in this episode was a contract I had to sign promising I would make no attempt to contact my mother. Failing to abide by this contractual requirement would render it null and void and all care promised would be withdrawn. My life expectancy was estimated at two months, which if reached, would be the longest amount of time I’d gone without seeing my mother. I had to trust that the provided care was adequate or risk losing it completely. It was an uncomfortable notion that I had to suck down cigarette after cigarette to forget. The rationale behind what, at first, struck me as a cruel contractual condition actually concerned safety. Fiona handed me a brochure entitled DON’T KILL YOUR LOVED ONES that outlined several case studies wherein family members of those going through a similar experience to me were rendered unwell and, in some cases, even died as a result of emotional exposure to the diseased. Being that my mother was already in, what was termed, a ‘volatile’ condition, it was possible that exposure to my degradation would be extremely dangerous to her health. So, as hard as it was, I agreed not to contact my mother in any way and, quite worryingly, placed her in the care of Fiona.

We were all set and enthused to begin. Over many hours we developed a group handshake that we promised to start and end each day with as a means of bolstering unity. Arthur sought space back in the ceiling to practice playing his penny whistle. For the next several hours we were destined to hear a mistake-ridden rendition of Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag. Rhonda was already hard at work preparing my bedroom with a palliative aesthetic designed to keep me comfortable. Vince was cooking a vast hyena meat goulash for supper. Meanwhile, Belinda was wrestling with my television, trying to connect the Nintendo. All the while, Belinda’s mother stayed in the background like the ghost I was starting to believe she was.

All my trepidation and anxiety aside, it was bound to be rather interesting.

I’m not sure if I found it difficult to spend my youth looking after my mother. In all honesty, I never really thought about it. It was simply something I did. I’d work at the University until 3pm Monday to Thursday and spend my time outside of that making her as comfortable as I possibly could. It’s interesting… I spent so much time with my mother, but I never really knew that much about her. The nature of my close proximity didn’t make learning about who she was very easy. She was her illness, and all that mattered was whatever her illness dictated. There never seemed like a good moment to probe into the other and learn anything substantial.

Like most people, my teenage years were confusing. I was constantly fighting my encroaching puberty. The changes that began to occur terrified me, and not having anyone to talk to about it, I turned each new pubescent evolution into something deeply sinister. Whenever hair would sprout from anywhere other than my head, I’d burn it off with sunlight and a magnifying glass. I reasoned that pimples were nasty insect bites and made it my goal to capture and kill the insects responsible. I’d conduct military raids on my garden with homemade weaponry in tow, always ready to thwart the non-existent pimple bug. I counteracted my breaking voice by sucking on canisters of helium which I’d steal from the University’s school of science. Rather than seek re-assuring words from my mother, I actively kept my puberty away from her. Given how thoroughly it ravaged my body, I couldn’t bear the thought of inflicting it upon her.

I was trapped inside a body that had started to respond sexually to various ambiguous stimuli, yet I had no real understanding about what sex was. Thanks to the local civic society, this was about to change. When I was fifteen, the civic society offered sex education to everyone in my age group. At the behest of my mother, I attended. Only rather than calling it ‘sex education’, they termed it ‘shame management’. A man whose face was completely obscured by his moustache was brought in from an external shame advocacy group in order to impart his ideology on all of us awkward teens.