the lump

I gripped firmly at the porcelain surround of the sink. It was cold to the touch. I hitched my boxer shorts down to my knees and narrowed my eyes almost shut as I pushed the bare tops of my thighs into the hard white rim. My face looked dead in the light of the bathroom, mottled and pasty, capillaries making a bid for freedom, forcefully emancipated from the prison of my skin. The eyes were small and sunk back in deep black rings. I examined the inner crevices of my internal mouth, my gums were bleeding and I could taste the richness of the blood like raw meat. It crept in fine rivulets from between my teeth, discoloured and rotting, forgotten enamel.

Softening truth with the distance of reflection I glanced down at my balls. The scrotum seemed too big for them, hanging wrinkled and dense like the superfluous growth of an elderly person. I held onto them gently with my left hand, familiarised myself with the spatial dimensions of their paradoxically imperfect spheres.

It was definitely a lump.

I had thought it was, when I first checked all those months ago, but it had been hard to tell then, or maybe I had been reluctant to extend myself the relief of acceptance, of certainty. How often do you really feel your own balls, your nuts, your nads, your knackers, your family jewels, man tonsils, stones, your bollocks, your gonads? A grope here and there, a scratch, an idle fingering, a tug or a squeeze perhaps. But really feel them? Taking each of the balls in turn, between your favourite fingers, and rolling it like a small piece of fruit, feeling the softness and fragility of the gland and noting any differences to its day-to-day normalcy. There is a bizarre sensation that befalls the man who clasps his own balls there in his hands. It is a desire to keep on squeezing. I don’t know why it happens, and I know I never would, but it is always there, that curiosity, as if I expect to hear a pop. With my fingers on my balls I can close my eyes and imagine their surface like a soft alien landscape. I remember medical documentary shows where a camera enters a body cavity and an instrument that looked like a tiny ice cream scoop scrapes harmful tissues from infected areas. The scrapings of the scoop make me think of balls, wispy spirals of inexplicable matter. Fibrous melon balls, dumplings, Swedish meatballs. But the texture of testicles is truly its own.

There was no reason for me to assume that the lump – and I admit, it had felt like a lump – was anything untoward. It might just as well have been a simple idiosyncrasy to the personal presentation and superficial construction of my individual balls, a minor quirk like the noses on our faces or the toes on our feet. The balls were such a mystery to me, something unsettling about their dangling presence and their great power. I was humbled by them, frightened of them, and I would avoid them as I would avoid a man with whom I didn’t want to make conversation in a nearly empty public place. And so as I massaged the balls with thought and gasped slightly as my fingers darted over the lump, I just as immediately set to work dismissing its existence, subjugating its reality to my own youthful frivolous certainty that when I was going to die it wasn’t going to be the balls that killed me.

Months had passed now and it hadn’t gone away. Recently my wife had been talking about a baby, or rather the possibility of our having one, and all of a sudden the gravity of the lump was brazenly lauding itself over my day-to-day trivialities. I’d have probably continued to ignore it had it not been for mention of the baby. What kind of a man would I be if I couldn’t give my wife a baby? I wanted to look in its eyes and see a bit of both of us, wanted to melt into evenings with its weight in my arms.

I moved my fingers over the lump another time. It didn’t hurt. Surely it would hurt if it was something bad? It must just be a routine anomaly, nothing a quick procedure won’t remove, whip it off and patch me up and back home in time for dinner. Two healthier testicles I have never seen sir, says doctor.

I pulled my trousers back up and fastened them around my waste. Everything felt numb, subdued, as if it were happening underwater. I flushed the toilet, although I hadn’t used it, and went into the kitchen. My wife was there, making tea for us. She had already poured the water on the teabags and was looking out the window whilst the tea brewed. She turned to me and smiled, and her face was so radiant in the sunshine the bled through the window. The expression on my face must have betrayed me and she her own expression turned immediately to concern. I took in my arms and looked in her eyes. I could feel that I was going to cry.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “What is it?” Her voice was quiet and fragile.

“It’s a lump,” I said. I wanted to bury my head in her neck, to engulf myself in her goodness, but I couldn’t.

“A lump?” she repeated, desperately echoing a truth to push it away, to hide it.

“On my testicle.” It sounded absurd, picking this moment to say testicle, as if I were a scientist or a medical professional.

“I don’t… how long has it been there?” Her voice was losing its serenity with every sentence. I felt so bad about this. It must be hard for her, without any warning or preparation. It’s hard the way that life can suddenly turn itself upside down, pull the rug out from under us, and all we can do is watch, like spectators to our own end, without a hope in hell of making a difference.

“A couple of months,” I said. Was I whispering? “Three.” I could feel her gaze, her frustrated gaze. It burnt two holes right through me, but I didn’t dare look at her eyes. What she thought, her frustration at my cowardice, my stupidity, it was all true. Everyone agrees that you should catch these things early, gives you a better chance of beating it, but there I was, months down the line, sitting back while the lump became a part of me, conjoined to tissue somewhere deep within in my balls. I had the chance to be more than an observer, to get involved in the path of my life, but I left it. I waited, and contemplated, and deliberated, I hid from the power of the truth that infected my body.

“You stupid bastard,” she said. She didn’t sound angry, but hurt, and afraid. I was afraid too. “You stupid, stupid bastard.” She was crying, her fingers were digging into my flesh, she held me tight like she would never let go. I could feel the warmth of her tears through the cotton of my shirt. We cried together in the kitchen.

I waited for the light bulb to blow above our heads but it didn’t. Everything just carried on.