Matthew Revert - The Tumours Made Me Interesting

There were about forty of us teenage boys (the girls received a different lesson), sitting cross-legged on the youth centre’s gymnasium floor. A mannequin was wheeled out by a man in full chimney sweep regalia. The genital region of the mannequin was obscured by a skull and cross bones. We were then each handed what was called a ‘modesty patch’ that also bore the skull and cross bones image and asked to place it over our own genital region.

For the next 19 hours, we were made to sit through videos of men watching women give birth and listen to doctor impersonators reel off lists of sexual diseases. When we arrived at the topic of our own bodies, the mustachioed man broke down in tears. He informed us that he once succumbed to the temptation of self-pleasure before lowering his trousers and showing us the purported result. Where one would expect to find genitalia, he possessed a rutabaga. He claimed this fate had befallen him because he didn’t understand the importance of shame. Not wanting our wangs to become rutabagas, we were quite keen on heeding his advice. For quite a while afterward, whenever I believed I was under attack by feelings of desire, I had to listen to Rembetika music, which usually killed the desire very quickly.

I never informed my mother about the contents of this class. In my mind, I now understood what sex was and how to fight it. I didn’t have to bother her with it. My sexual knowledge, as far as I understood it, was complete.

Very occasionally, my mother liked to wet her whistle and feel the sweet fuzz of intoxication. I’d hold a cup with a long straw toward her mouth and watch as her demeanor slowly changed in response to the alcohol.

During one of these rare binges, shortly before my 16th birthday, my mother inadvertently let slip an anecdote that I never forgot. Feeling the effects of gravy wine, she apologised to me for contributing to my weaknesses. Apparently the sexual encounter that resulted in my conception was a deeply unsatisfying one. My mother and father had slipped into that robotically scheduled sex life that so many married couples fall victim to. Each Thursday night they would enter into a few minutes of sexual contact out of a sense of marital obligation. The drab mechanics of my father’s biology would ensure just enough blood flow to achieve the rigidity required to successfully insert himself into my mother. My mother, devoid of desire, would accept my father into her passionless body and wait until he left. Rather than swimming, I imagined my father’s sperm fast asleep as they were mechanically ejaculated from his body, floating like dead fish in the seminal fluid. I imagined my mother’s egg completely unprepared for possible insemination. The egg was busy minding its own business and BAM! a sleeping sperm collided with it. I was the result of lifeless sex. My mother told me this. The tears accompanying this admittance were enough to convince me of the reality. I was once the sleeping sperm who violated the egg. With a start like this, did I really have any hope?

I couldn’t look at people the same way after that. In my eyes, people were a manifestation of the events surrounding their conception. I looked upon bright, dynamic individuals as the result of spontaneous, passionate lovemaking. I looked upon those we’d call ‘the damned’ as a bad fuck gone too far. This revelation imbued me with something akin to freedom, only the freedom was more of an excuse… an excuse not to try.

I don’t think my mother ever remembered telling me this. I’m sure if she did it would horrify her. And I don’t blame her for telling me either. How can you blame someone who tells the truth?

The events that shaped me all swim about in a pond called experience. They coexist in this stagnant pond showing great reluctance to leave. These events form a web too intricate to understand or tame. All I am and all I’ll be have its roots in this web and each new development is enslaved to past developments. That is to say, we’re trapped within ourselves. That is to say, I don’t actually respond to the world around me… my past does.

Isat at my dining table with Vince, Rhonda, Arthur, Belinda and her dead mother playing canasta. We had a deck of cards, but none of us had any idea how to play it. Canasta was just a game I remember hearing reference to in some movie I’d recently seen starring that man who looks and sounds like stairs. We were passing cards to each other in an aimless fashion, glancing at them briefly and passing them to someone else. Occasionally one of us would announce they were the winner and the rest of us would give them a polite clap. Vince took frequent delight in accusing Arthur of cheating, which almost started a fight until Rhonda reminded them that it was impossible to cheat on a game nobody understood.

I stared at the card in my hand — 11 of napkins — and announced myself the winner.

“Looks like your luck is starting to turn around,” said Vince.

“It had to happen sooner or later,” I replied.

“I hate being dead,” said Belinda’s mother.

“I wish I had a lizard,” said Belinda.

Belinda loved watching us interact with each other. She felt like our collective child, which was a nice feeling. Each night she’d help Vince cook us all wedding cake soup and occasionally she’d play Kid Icarus on Nintendo with me. Her mother wouldn’t stop moping about how dead she was, but even this was becoming endearing. We decided to completely tear down the wall that used to separate me from the Stotsons, giving us one large apartment. We all moved around freely and shared our possessions without restraint. We each had something to add to the overall foundation of the household and Fiona’s project. As a unit, we were honed and calibrated.

I withdrew a cigarette from the collective packet on the table. My obsession with smoking had spread to the others with gusto. The others followed my lead and withdrew cigarettes of their own. Whatever suggestive narcotic Fiona had laced these with (she admitted they were laced but wouldn’t say with what), made us feel so damn cozy. We tapped our cigarettes together in the interest of camaraderie before inhaling. A thick cloud of smoke wafted overhead and together we contributed to a puddle of phlegm, courtesy of our hacking coughs.

“Is Fiona taking more electroencephalographic readings today?” asked Rhonda.

“Not today,” I replied, "I need a little while to recover from last night’s recording session. That microphone had a fat head and she really had to force it up there.”

Fiona had made several magnetic tape bowel recordings, which she was selling to members of her group. It was unusual listening to my tumours for the first time. They made a warbling sound, which Fiona swore was rudimentary communication. She had an array of microphones, each with different dynamic ranges, which she used. Last night she was interested in the lower frequencies and had to use a large mic. She virtually had to hammer it home like a tent peg.

“Will we get a copy of the recording?” asked Vince. “They’re such intriguing things. Rhonda and I frequently make love to your last one.”

“You don’t say!” replied Arthur. “You two insist on intercourse at the highest decibel level imaginable. I could remove my ears and still find you deafening.”