By Working at a record store taught me a tragic truth; no matter how much you love your favorite albums, they’ll never be as popular as they deserve to be. Each month at Merry-Go-Round Magazine, I dust off some long-overlooked records, revisit my pretentious past, and explore how this music forever etched itself into my history. Eventually, all your memories get marked down and thrown into The Bargain Bin.
*deep breath*
I put on the new Yo La Tengo to relax. I smoked a bowl, hoping it would soothe my soul. Instead, I found a lump.
My hand traveled south while I lay on my worn-out mattress on the floor. I closed my eyes and thought about Lake. I thought about the spot on her neck that made her melt downstream when kissed. I thought about what it felt like to run my hands down her side, the twists and turns of a landscape dug by water, tracing the curves with a light touch of my fingertips like pebbles skipping off the surface of her namesake. I unbuttoned my jeans and slid my hand under my boxers. I thought about grasping her hip to pull her body up against mine. I thought about marbles as I ran my finger over a perfect sphere protruding from inside me.
“How strange,” I thought. “How long has this been there?”
A solid mass slightly larger than a pea protruded from my right testicle. I squeezed it lightly between my thumb and pointer finger to see how firm it was. Pain shot through my torso enough to make me yelp. It felt like a ball bearing had fused to my nut. I could only think of two words, endlessly screaming in my head, that wouldn’t stop until I said them under my breath.
“I’m fucked.”
The dread I experienced through the thick mondo bass line that repetitiously underscores the 10-minute-plus album opener “Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Good Kind” is what I imagined it must feel like to be acutely aware of the Earth rotating on its axis. I imagined I could feel the speed at which we were moving around the sun. Six notes played on a loop, consistently spiraling like water running down the drain in the kitchen sink. I felt aware of my mortality for the first time. One day, I’d stop noticing all the spinning, stop noticing anything at all. Seasons would keep changing without me; I wouldn’t know. I’d be gone, man. My chest started to tighten; it became harder to breathe.
“Where did this thing come from? Wouldn’t I have noticed something growing here, getting larger? This seems fully formed. What if it’s cancerous? Did this protrusion spring up overnight after I passed out during GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS? Coffee’s for closers, but is cancer for me?”
I didn’t expect that album to begin with screechy psychedelic guitar solos that exacerbated the feeling of existential dread boiling up deep inside me. I wanted to live in that song forever. It held such a significant moment of uncertainty.
“If it wasn’t cancer, what else could it be?”
It felt like nothing. Blank like the bedroom walls in the spare room of my father’s home I was laying in. The walls were painted a pale cream, the floor covered with pink shag carpet save for some grey blotches from accidentally spilled ashtrays I never had the drive to clean up properly. I continued to isolate myself from family and friends who didn’t smoke weed. If I wasn’t working at the record store, I was here in bed, sleeping through evening classes because sitting at a desk in a room full of strangers made me want to tear off my skin. I spent my downtime trying to erase hours of my life, quietly begging for Death to ferry me away. Maybe I had just gotten my wish. Perhaps I was dying. This knot of matter could be my end, or it could be no matter at all.
“Oh, please, sir. Take me now. I’m tired. In pain. So tired.”
At least smoking couldn’t be blamed for the lump. Right then, I needed to balance it between my fingers to give myself something to do. To keep my mind focused on one thing. It took the edge off. It was something to do with my hands to keep them from mapping out the lump.
“Fuck. I need a cigarette. I need 20. I will smoke 20 cigarettes to feel something other than fear. If I already have cancer, why not try to add some more?”
I smacked the bottom of the pack against my left hand. It was an odd part of my smoking ritual I’d picked up from watching folks who’d had the habit much longer. I never understood why they did it and never questioned it. It just felt right. The sound of flesh slapping plastic was satisfying. It became muscle memory, as meditative as it was isolating. I flicked the metal cylinder with a scrape and click, releasing a spark as my thumb hit the fork. It opened the chamber to cause the fuel to burst. I wobbled the lighter back and forth to watch it dance like Jell-O on a plate—a rumba of heat swaying left to right. I stared deep into the orange and pale blue, sucking in chemicals as they fizzled between my lips.
“I could sleep. I could smoke a bowl and sleep and dream about nothing.”
I had kept myself steadily stoned in some form or another for over two years. An unexpected side effect of always being some degree of high was I had stopped dreaming. Or the act of waking up erased them from my memory. I wasn’t concerned either way. I hated having dreams. All the best ones left me feeling unfulfilled by morning, and I didn’t want to fuck with the chance of having any nightmares. As far as I knew, the power was off in my brain when I passed out. Sleep was like imagining how I believed experiencing death felt. It was pitch-black—a void. Nothing.
“Is this lump the first? Will there be more? Will it just grow and grow? Would the lump grow its own lumps? I wonder if I ignored it, would it just disappear? Maybe it will heal itself. I should just sleep.”
Even when Lake is around, I feel alone. I knew she had been stealing my Adderall when I was in the bathroom. I used it to help me stay focused at school. She just wanted to get high on any substance she could get. When I confronted her, she denied ever swiping them, but it was hard to believe her when she was talking so fast that little bubbles formed in the corners of her mouth like a rabid dog.
“OhJackieWhatdoyoumeanIwouldneverstealfromyouHowcouldyousaysuchathingIamsooffendedIcan’tbelieveyouwouldthinkyourlovingandcaringgirlfriendwouldactuallystealfromyouThat’scrazyyousoundjustlikemysisterShe’salwaystryingtogetmeintroublesayingI’mtalkingtoofastandImustbeondrugsbecauseI’mgrindingmyteethSomepeoplejustgrindtheirteethIcan’thelpitHeyI’moutofcigsWillyougobuymeacartonIswearIwillpayyoubackwhenIgetpaidnextweekI’llbuyyouacartonofTurkishSilversOfcourseIwillHowcouldyousaysuchathingOhmygoshJackieSeriously…”
She either thought I was a fool, or she just didn’t care. I don’t think she had much actual love for me. She loved the convenient bits and ignored the rest.
“Will she care if I’m dying? Will she cry, or will she feel a bit of relief? Will she belittle me if it’s benign? It doesn’t matter, really.”
I remember reading something once about that famous cyclist. Back when they still called him a capital-H Hero. It said he was having extreme pain in one of his testicles. He figured it must be just a normal part of being a cyclist. He sat on his balls sometimes. He was reluctant to seek medical attention, even with the pain, even after his testis swelled three times its normal size. It wasn’t until he started coughing up blood that he thought, “Yeah, I think I should have someone check this out.” The dude sat on his nuts for a living and was too embarrassed to ask for help. If that’s what a Hero would do, consider me a Coward.
I grabbed my thick-as-a-brick Nokia phone and clicked out a message in T9. My thumbs hesitated momentarily, floating above the tiny buttons in a text message limbo.
“Do I ask for help or ignore it and hope for the best? Whatever this thing is, I’m not afraid of it, and I will beat its ass.”
I started typing:
Hey, Mom… I found a lump.
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