Doing It

by Melvin Burgess

  ‘Hmm. Yes. A tumour of some sort, nothing to worry about, it’s probably not malignant but just to be sure we’d better do a few tests …’

  And then.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Green, but I’m afraid you have a nasty case of knob cancer. Amputation is the only answer.’

  So, OK, it’s stupid, but it’s got me. And the other thing is, it’s so embarrassing. I mean, could you do it? Show another man your knob and ask him to examine it? Worse, I’ve been seeing that doctor for years. I could go in on an emergency appointment and get anyone who happens to be there to look at it. But that would be worse. It could be a woman.

  That’s where girls are so lucky. Doctors are always examining fannies. It’s the first thing you do when you get a fanny, you take it down to the doctor and get it looked at. If you’re a girl and you go down to the doctor with even a sore foot or something, the doctor looks at your foot and says, Fine, OK, ointment, bandages, whatever – Oh, and while you’re here would you like me to look at your fanny? And the girl says, Yeah, sure, might as well, and off they go. It happens all the time. Girls are used to it. But willies are different. No one ever shows the doctor their willy. Name me one person. I bet you know loads of people who’ve had their fannies examined. You know, smear tests and things, they happen almost once a week. But name one single person who’s shown their knob to the doctor. You can’t, can you? There’s even a profession dedicated entirely to looking at fannies, gynaecologists. Have you ever even heard of a single doctor who specialises in knobs? A knobologist? Doesn’t exist. Now, see, if a man goes down the doctor’s and says, I want you to check my knob out, you’d get thrown out of the surgery just like that. What do you mean, you pervert, you want to show me your knob? Right, nurse, ring the police. What’s more, I’m going to put this down on your medical records … There. Tried to show me his knob. So that it’ll go down in history for ever and ever for any doctor and his mates to see ever after. Tries to show people his knob. Not to work with women and children. And if it was a female doctor, it’d be even worse. You’d get done for indecent exposure. She’d start screaming, Put it away, help, help. And that’d be it. You spend the next ten years in prison, dying of knob cancer.

  And anyhow. I’m shy.

  It’s a horrible trap, sprung on me by my own mind. The thing that truly amazes me about myself is that I’m actually more scared of being embarrassed than anything else. I’d rather die than get a doctor to look at my knob. Isn’t that unbelievable? But can you imagine what life would be like with no knob? I’d have to have no friends, ever. They’d all be looking at me. See that lad over there? He’s the one with no knob. Yes, I know. I saw it in the changing rooms. It was horrible. Even my family would be unbearable. My mother would be sickeningly sympathetic, my father wouldn’t know what to say. I’d be a hideous freak.

  I’ve been worried about it on and off for years now. I’ve developed a hand technique that avoids the cancerous area, avoided thinking about it, told myself it’s nothing. For long periods I’ve managed to forget all about it. Then, every now and again it comes back, and I worry a bit, and then I forget again. But this time, now that it’s actually time to shag, I can’t think of anything else.

  Please, please, please let me not have cancer of the knob. Nah, won’t work – too much like a miracle. How about, Let me stop worrying about my stupid vein. Or: Please let the cancer, if such it be, go away. Or: Let my vein get small again. Or finally, and I know this is the wish I need to wish, because it’s the only possible one: Please, let me be brave enough to go down to the doctor’s and get some decent medical opinion on the subject.

  I’d rather die first.

  27

  dino

  And then, of course, when everything is absolutely perfect it all falls to pieces around you. One minute, One and One makes Dino. The next, it makes the biggest heap of shit you ever saw in your life.

  First thing was my mum and dad. The weird thing was, it all looked as if they were getting on with it. Everything was just like normal. Socks in the drawer, breakfast on the table. No, that sounds bad, but you know what I mean. Like, if you were rude to her he’d tell you off, that sort of thing. Normal. They went out for drinks, they kissed goodbye, they smiled and made jokes and teased each other, you know?

  Except, looking back, there were these few things that happened – kind of isolated things that’d rear up their heads and then disappear again. There was the time I woke up in the middle of the night, in total darkness and there was this hysterical sobbing coming from the landing. It was horrible. I thought, Poor old Mum. I lay there and listened and then went back to sleep. But the worst thing about it was, when I got up in the morning, Mat whispered to me, ‘Did you hear Dad crying last night?’

  All the hairs on my back stood up on end. Really. I didn’t even know I had hairs down the middle of my back, but they went all bristly then.

  ‘What do you mean, Dad? It was Mum,’ I said.

  ‘Was it?’ he asked, all hopeful.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. But the thing was, I knew he was right. It had been Dad.

  ‘Oh, I thought it was Dad,’ he said, and he looked loads more cheerful, the little prick. Because, you know, it’s bad enough to have your mum sobbing hysterically outside your door – but your dad? Sounding like your mum? Arghhh! And Mat had felt more miserable than me because he knew it was Dad, but now I knew it was Dad and he thought it was Mum, which meant he’d given all the extra misery to me. I was so cross, I kicked him, and he wailed and Mum came over.

  ‘What was that for?’ she hissed.

  ‘For being a crud,’ I told her, and stalked out of the kitchen with both of them yelling at me.

  See what I mean? And then Dad comes down for breakfast all suited up and friendly and dadding about the kitchen, slurping his tea and teasing everyone and then dadding off out of the door as if nothing had happened. Just like normal. And they were normal that evening and normal the next day and normal the day after – it made me feel normal too.

  Of course, they had to pick that particular Saturday morning just when everything else was about to fall to pieces. That’s what really gets me – the way it all happened at once. They got me just after breakfast. Mat had gone to play footie down at Beadles and they came into the room like a pair of coppers and sat me down in the living room around the coffee table.

  ‘You know things have been difficult between me and your dad,’ Mum began. Oh yeah? I thought. So whose fault’s that, then?

  ‘So?’

  She glanced at Dad and he said, ‘So we’ve decided, the best thing is for me to make a bit of space and … and move out. Just for a while.’

  ‘How long for?’ I asked. My heart was going away like mad.

  ‘For as long as it takes to sort things out,’ she said.

  ‘Not too long, I hope,’ said Dad, and he gave me this stupid little smile, and I thought, You idiot. Why should he go? I mean. Who was it shagging other people in the front room?

  I just came straight out with it. ‘Why should you go?’ I said. ‘She’s the one who was being unfaithful.’ I saw her scowl at me. Well, it was true, wasn’t it? ‘Why should you stay here and he gets booted out?’ I asked her, and I saw him look at her and she nudged him with her elbow. You know? Like, go on, give him the line, ACT TOGETHER.

  ‘It’s our decision. A bit of space … time to think things through, clear the air …’ he mumbled.

  ‘What, do you want to go?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I don’t see why he should go,’ I told her. I was so pissed off! It was unfair.

  ‘That’s what we’ve decided,’ she said crisply.

  ‘That’s what you’ve decided,’ I told her. ‘Why should he go? She’s the one who was doing it with Dave Short …’

  ‘Dino!’

  ‘Don’t speak about your mother like that!’ he said.

  ‘It’s true, she did. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? She fancies someone els
e, so Dad moves out? It’s not fair. If you want some space, you should move out, not make him move out when he doesn’t want to.’

  ‘Dino, I have to go.’

  ‘Then I’m going with you,’ I said.

  ‘You can’t,’ snapped my mum.

  ‘You can’t stop me,’ I said.

  ‘Tell him,’ she told my dad, and he said,

  ‘Well, we haven’t talked about this yet, have we?’

  ‘We didn’t need to, we knew the children were staying here.’

  ‘Why should he go? Why don’t you go, you’re the one who … mucked it up,’ I told her.

  ‘Dino, your father works full time …’

  ‘Why should you get the house and both of us and everything?’

  ‘Because your mother is the main carer,’ said Dad. ‘She does all the mum things.’

  ‘You do all the dad things.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ And the poor twat looked at her to help him explain why he was being a twat.

  ‘Dino, this isn’t a discussion,’ she went. ‘We’re telling you. We’ve talked it over and decided that this is the best thing. You’re old enough to understand. These things happen, however difficult it may be. Our relationship … needs a break …’

  ‘What about my relationship with Dad? What about Mat’s? So why’s your relationship with him so much more important than ours?’

  ‘It’s what we’ve decided. We’re telling you before Mat because you’re older and we thought you’d be able to understand better …’

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘if it’s just a break, how long for?’

  ‘Not long,’ said Dad.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Mum.

  ‘Well, let’s put a time limit on it, then,’ I said.

  ‘You can’t put a time limit on these things …’ began Mum, but I said,

  ‘At least then we know it won’t go on for ever. Put a time limit on it. So we know what’s going on. So we can plan,’ I said, which was a good one, because that’s what my mum always says. You have to plan things. Yeah, sure. Unless it doesn’t suit her.

  She looked across at Dad.

  ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘We could say, three months? That’d be long enough for you to … have some space. That’s what you said.’

  Mum glared. I’d got her.

  ‘Six months,’ she said crisply.

  ‘Four,’ I said, and Dad said, ‘Four,’ at the same time. So Mum pinched her lips together and nodded and I thought, Oh, yeah? See? I knew it was her all the time. She goes off shagging someone else and then tries to bully him into leaving home. And he’s stupid enough to go along with it too.

  I was furious with Dad too, though. Letting her push him about like that. I mean, it’s a bit pathetic having to have your son stand up to your wife, isn’t it? But I was really pleased that I’d got a limit on it. If it was up to him he’d just go and do whatever she told him to do.

  ‘OK, if that’s the way it’s going to be, but I don’t like it,’ I told them. I could see Mum glare at me as if to say, you know – like, what’s it got to do with anything whether I like it or not? ‘But I still want to go with my dad. OK?’

  And my dad looked really pleased, and my mum looked so totally pissed off.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it.’

  ‘We don’t have enough money,’ said Mum. ‘You’d have to get enough room for him. Somewhere with two bedrooms and so on …’

  ‘Oh? What exactly did you have in mind for me, then? A bedsit, was it?’ he asked. And she didn’t say anything, and he said, ‘My God, it’s right, isn’t it? You want me out and in the cheapest little hole possible. What am I going to be eating in this hovel of mine? White bread and marge?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

  ‘Well, how did you mean it, then?’

  ‘Well, there’s not much point in …’ She paused.’ … in spending too much,’ she finished, and she winced.

  ‘Oh! Not much point in spending too much? So that you don’t have to go without, is that it? So that the kids don’t have to suffer getting a cheaper pair of trainers? So that …’

  ‘Stop it, Mike!’

  ‘Oh, stop it now, is it?’ he ranted, and she began ranting back and …

  I got up and left them to it.

  So that was a shit start to the day. What a pair of dorks. It was only another year or so before I left home to go to Uni., they could have waited that long. It was for Mat, see. If it was just me she’d have bloody gone, but of course Mat had to have his bloody mummy. So she took her wishes into account and Mat’s wishes into account, and me and Dad just had to trail along with it, and why? Because he’s too weak to stand up to her.

  I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. It was shit, but I still had a life to get on with. I had a date with Siobhan.

  28

  set-up

  They met in the Arndale Centre – the Aardvark Venture, Siobhan and Violet called it. Dino was feeling nervous. He’d heard a great deal about Siobhan’s friend Violet. Siobhan evidently adored her.

  They mooched about at the bottom of the escalator, something which Dino felt uncomfortable with, partly because he was worried about being seen with Siobhan, and partly because he was worried about being seen hanging around at the bottom of the escalator. That was for poor people. Siobhan was carrying an old plastic bag with some books and a couple of items of clothing in. Her parents, it seemed, gave her a clothing allowance, and she’d spent some of it before Dino turned up.

  ‘What about the books?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, they always like me reading books. If I spend the clothing allowance on books, they give the money back to me.’

  Dino looked at the books. They were heavy, thick things. ‘Picasso – A Visual Biography,’ he read. ‘I didn’t know you were interested in art.’

  ‘I’m not. It’s just, like, it’s for free, innit?’

  ‘Right.’ He flipped to the back cover. ‘£32,’ he read. ‘Christ, they’re generous, your parents, aren’t they?’

  ‘Vets earn quite a lot, especially when they do dangerous work for zoos and things,’ said Siobhan. ‘Dad did a job for Woburn the other day – taking the tonsils out of a hippo. It’s tricky, you have to put your whole head inside and if the hippo yawns you can lose your life.’

  ‘Don’t they use anaesthetic?’

  ‘Just local. Hippos react badly to going under.’

  Dino picked out another of the books. ‘Stalingrad,’ he read. ‘Wow. Do you actually read this sort of thing?’

  ‘I’m fascinated by war material. Hitler and all that. You know?’

  ‘Wow.’ Dino goggled. He hadn’t realised how clever she was.

  Siobhan and Violet burst out laughing. ‘You dope – it’s a present for my dad. It’s his birthday next week.’

  ‘Right.’ Dino did his best to laugh at himself, but it came out rather hollow. He poked back in the bag and took out a CD.

  ‘It’s a present.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘For you.’

  ‘Really?’ It was ‘Spangles the Movie’. He’d been after that one. ‘Wow, thanks, that’s really generous.’ Dino felt mean, because he was, after all, only in it for the shag. He put his arm round her and she pressed herself into him and wriggled in a way not really suited to a shopping mall.

  ‘What are we doing today?’ he whispered to her.

  ‘Later.’ She pulled away. ‘We have some more shopping to do first.’

  They rode up the escalator to the floor above and made their way to Debenhams. Dino was dismayed. He’d expected to have a good time. Instead he was going to get bored.

  ‘Do we have to do this now? Can’t you do it later? I thought we were going somewhere,’ he complained, but Violet glared back at him so ferociously he sighed and shut up.

  ‘She just wants to shop,’ she hissed.

  ‘It won’t take long,’ said Siobhan.

  The girls went to the Miss Selfridge area an
d started raking their way through the clothes, while Dino lurked on the edges, feeling like a spare part. It went on for hours. Violet and Siobhan conferred, tried on a few things, conferred some more, asked Dino for his opinion, went back into the changing rooms, conferred some more. Dino thought he was going to go mad with boredom. At last they’d done – that’s what he thought, anyway. They walked off together through the store, but in the perfumery, they told him what was going on.

  ‘There’s a great little top, I’ve got to have it, but I can’t afford it.’

  ‘How much is it?’

  ‘Eighty quid.’

  ‘Whoh!’ said Dino. ‘Sorry,’ he added, getting the impression from the way they were looking at him that something was required of him. Eighty quid was not something he could do anything about.

  ‘We’re not going to buy it. You’re going to nick it.’

  ‘What? No way!’ Dino started to laugh, but they weren’t laughing back. ‘Really? No way!’ He began to back off. The girls followed him, scowling and pressing in.

  ‘Come on – what’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Don’t be a wimp,’ hissed Violet.

  ‘I’m not nicking anything.’

  ‘Why not? Not scared, are you?’

  ‘No. Yes. It’s stupid. What if I get caught?’

  ‘You won’t get caught. Just do as we say.’

  ‘If you’re so good at shoplifting, you do it.’

  ‘Oh … all right then. But I think it’s mean of you,’ said Siobhan.

  ‘Are you really going to nick it?’

  ‘Yeah, ’course we are. You can watch – see how it’s done.’

  ‘Er …’

  ‘Perhaps it’d be better if he waits outside,’ suggested Violet. ‘I don’t think he’s much good at this sort of thing.’

  ‘OK, then,’ agreed Siobhan. ‘Here.’ She handed him her plastic bag. ‘Take this for me and wait outside. We’ll see you outside Marks, OK?’

  ‘Right.’ Gratefully, Dino took the plastic bag and moved quickly off. Those girls were crazy, man! Shoplifting! You always got caught sooner or later. Imagine the humiliation, the fuss, getting nabbed outside the store, the police, the court case, his parents finding out! Unbearable.