Doing It (22 page)

I went back and let everyone sniff my finger in the vague hope that I’d somehow got it in there without actually realising it, but they all agreed. No way.

I wasn’t all that worried, to be honest. It had to be something totally obvious that I just hadn’t thought about. You know what I mean? Those patches of ignorance? You get them all the time. You just have to hang on and see what happens next. And then, of course, when the answer comes, it’s so simple you can’t believe you missed it, even though it was impossible to work out just the night before. This had to be one of those.

So, the next night, me and Lucy took another walk and went into the bushes, and … exactly the same. No fanny. I scratched around for ages. I couldn’t ask her, could I? Excuse me, where’s your fanny? I know you have one, Alan Noble made that very clear, but I need to know where it is. Not possible.

That’s when I got dirty and started feeling around in a more adventurous fashion, further down. She didn’t mind, somewhat to my surprise. I mean, that was bum territory, as far as I was concerned. I knew that girls were supposed to enjoy having their fannies felt, but even that seemed a bit doubtful – although I suppose if she didn’t have a fanny then her bum might be the next best thing. So, anyway – I pushed further down and found – bits. Fleshy bits. I probed, I felt – and then suddenly, right down there, I mean right down there practically up her arse – there it was. She let out a little gasp as I found my way in. Bingo! I thought … Aaah, so that’s where she keeps it! Amazing! And how embarrassing for those poor girls, having your private parts about half an inch away from your dirt box. Planning! I mean, who thought of that? It isn’t even hygienic.

All those lessons in biology and no one ever told me that women keep their fannies practically halfway up their backs. I thought it was on the front. I mean, that’s where your willy is, isn’t it? Not right down between your legs. It sticks out in front. When blokes shag a girl, their bums go up and down, not to and fro. It was a logical assumption that fannies were in the same place.

Of course, looking back, it’s obvious. I mean, those diagrams you get in biology – it’s all down underneath her. But that’s just diagrams – you can’t take them seriously. I mean, if it was down to diagrams you wouldn’t have a clue what a fanny actually looks like. All that red. And those bits. And it goes right from the back all the way up to their navels, practically. You don’t get a real sense of the thing out of a diagram.

But it explained a lot. Like, for instance, why my willy stuck up in the air. Think about it; if fannies really were on the front, your knob ought to stick straight out. I used to worry about that too. I used to try bending it down so it stuck straight out, but of course it always just sprang back up again. That day with Lucy Small, I discovered the basic physiology of minge, and I’ve never looked back.

So now I know what it is, and I know where it is. All I have to do now is put Mr Knobby in it.

It’s tragic really, but it’s also unbelievably stupid. Only someone like me could ever get into such a mess about something so duh. So. Here it is. Ready? Well …

Hush now! It’s a secret. Mr Knobby must never know. If he does – disaster. Total utter disaster. No Sex For Ever. It’s because … Oh, my God, it’s so stupid and embarrassing and awful at the same time.

Here goes. OK. Mr Knobby has …
I
have … cancer.

There you go. Look. Well, you can’t see it now, while Mr Knobby is fast asleep, but when I get an erection, there it is, halfway up the shaft. A big, squashy lump. Cancer. It’s obvious … What? … No, don’t laugh, not so loud, he’s waking up – don’t mention the word, if he hears it’ll destroy him. Whatever you do don’t mention the word
CANCER!

‘What?’

‘Nothing!’

‘What!’

‘Nothing!’

‘Really nothing?’

‘No nothing!’

‘What was that about cancer?’

‘Yes! Yes! It’s true! I can’t hide it from you any more. There, that lump. That’s it!’

‘
Ahhhhh
!’

‘Yes!’

‘I thought it was a vein. Take me to a doctor, quick!’

‘No!’

‘No? What do you mean, no?’

‘Because if we go to a doctor and it
is
cancer …’

‘Oh, my God!’

‘Yes!’

‘You mean …’

‘They’ll have to
chop you off
!’

That’s it. I have cancer of the knob. Luckily it’s been dormant up till now, but if I do anything silly like repeatedly sticking it in and out of Deborah for instance, the friction’ll almost certainly set it off. And then … Well, then I’ll have to make the worst choice any man has ever made. Death – or no knob.

I expect you think I’m joking. I’m not. It’s stupid, you say? Oh, yes, I know that. The truth is obvious. It isn’t cancer at all; it’s a vein. Knobs are veiny kinds of things. That’s why the lump gets bigger when I get wood. It swells up, same as the rest of it. Cancer wouldn’t do that –
would it
? Ah, but who says? Who knows? You? Really? You know that? You’re a knob expert? How sure are you? I mean, OK –
maybe
it would, but maybe it wouldn’t. We don’t know.

The obvious thing, of course, is to take Mr Knobby along to the doctor. And we all know what the doctor would say. He’d say, No, don’t worry, this is just a vein, Jonathon, nothing to worry about, everything’s fine. But.
But.
Although he almost certainly
would
say that, he might not. He might, even just a thousand to one chance, might take a long cool look at it and say,

‘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.

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 else, 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.