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Scene One
Hey!
Pause.
So – Okay – what’s the best way of putting this? So you know how the B-set dudes –
Relentlessly hardworking, wall-to-wall highlighter on every single page of their set texts –
(Whispers.) But just a tiny bit tragically slow – sorry – always start off their essays? The Oxford English Dictionary defines –
Man.
Mimes blowing off head with a pistol.
Fuck it – I’m totally gonna be at one with my dimwitted bredren soon – so let’s try it on for size –
The OED defines Glee as ‘great delight, especially from one’s own good fortune… or another’s misfortune’.
Now, there’s a bunch of both sorts of glee in this – good glee and bad glee –
So it kinda works as a title, I reckon –
Glee & Me.
Punchy, right?
I thought about calling it Glee-ma & Me – with the ‘oma’ in brackets –
But that’d be a massively depressing downer, I reckon –
Wanted to keep it nice and light –
(Miss World voice.) All inspiring and heart warming…
Beat.
With the odd bit of soul-coring anguish tossed in, admittedly –
Kinda like a vinaigrette of despair poured over a salad of joy? Does that work?
Anyway, Glioma’s short for Glioma Multiforme –
The OED defines Glioma Multiforme as – nah, I don’t have the heart – put it this way –
If you google it, the top hit’s a neurological paper with the title – wait for it:
‘Glioma Multiforme – colon – The Terminator.’
Swear to God.
Cheers for that, US National Academy of Science – you sick fucks.
Such a beautiful name, though – Glioma Multiforme –
Totally sounds like a languid seductress in a Netflix costume drama –
(Fruity BBC costume drama voice.) My name? Glioma Multiforme – pray come hither to my bedchamber, sir, so I may know you carnally.
She’s a femme fatale, put it that way. Literally.
Much more glamorous than
(Geek voice.) Grade Four malignant brain tumour, anyway.
And Grade Four sounds – so so – like somebody who’s pretty shit at the cello – not quite Grade Eight material. Workmanlike but scratchy.
But it only goes up to four – so four’s as good as you get – well, as bad, obviously –
So I had to settle for Grade Four.
Bummer.
Otherwise, in terms of names, you’re left with GBM 4 – which sounds like the name of a German heavy metal group?
GBM4 in das haus!
So we’ll stick with Glee & Me, okay?
Cuddly euphemism for you.
Scene Two
So, here goes –
Standard Wednesday night – English essay, go to bed, read a book, tiny bit of a headache –
Middle of the night, my mum bursts in – apparently I’m having this massive full-on fit – flailing around convulsing and drooling like Regan in The Exorcist, all like –
(Exorcist voice.) Your mother sucks cocks in hell.
Fingers crossed I didn’t actually say that to Mum, though –
Right?
I don’t remember anything about the seizure – you don’t, mercifully –
Mum initially reckons I’m High On Drugs – totally her go-to position is that Lola’s To Blame For Everything – then clocks I’m terribly, terribly unwell – calls an ambulance.
Bunch of tests, endless waiting around in hospital corridors drinking vending-machine coffee – brain scan.
Week later I’m sitting in a neurologist’s office with Mum – Rickety chairs, computer older than I am, blind stuck halfway down – standard knackered NHS chic –
Awkward hellos, introductions –
Neurologist clearly hasn’t decided whether to talk to me like a liddle child or a grown-up – veers wildly between Talking. Very. Slowly. And. Calmly – and full-on impenetrable medical chat –
Classic self-important doctor bellend –
Mum’s chatting to him about the seizure – all nervous smiles and noticeably posher voice for the doctor – I zone out a little, clock a photo on his desk of him and his family skiing – absolutely chilling forced smiles on both the kids –
Mimes this.
Like they’ve been forced to do a cheese at gunpoint or – clearly hate their dad as much as I’m starting to –
Kinda fancy the son, though –
But then I notice – in his defence – Pompous Doctor Twat’s got a Bounty Bar on his desk, by his keyboard – and while a part of me feels the presence of a chocolate bar in a treatment room is somehow wildly unprofessional –
The more generous part of me thinks, aw bless, he’s only human – underneath the bow tie – I mean bow tie – and anyone who rocks a Bounty Bar can’t be all bad –
I look up at him, smile –
But the fucker won’t catch my eye – can’t – which feels like a bad sign all of a sudden –
Awkward pause –
Then he’s all like – it’s not good news, I’m afraid –
And then he does catch my eye – for a moment – and suddenly it’s really hard for both of us –
I know he doesn’t want to say it, feels fucking shit for saying it –
But he does –
Very rare – very aggressive –
Left temporal lobe, responsible for speech and language –
Fuck.
And before I’ve had the chance to even minimally process the catastrophic earthquake of what he’s just said –
He’s straight in to chatting about surgery, chemotherapy, managing symptoms, but You Will Die is the subtext, for sure –
That he’s skirting around with what he reckons to be his reassuring kiddie voice –
And Mum, by now she’s – her whole body’s just –
Mimes shaking.
The magnitude of what he’s telling us going full ten on the Richter scale through her whole body –
And I’m – it’s like I’m watching it from a distance – like I’m a character in a film or –
’Cus this is all so fucked up and unlikely that it can’t actually be happening in real life –
And I swear to God I –
You know when you’re at a funeral or a job interview or taking a bollocking from a teacher – any serious, solemn thing you wanna picture –
And sometimes the nervous tension gets – too much – and you can’t bottle it up any more –
And you just burst out laughing?
For no reason at all?
Yeah. When I heard that I was going to die I pissed myself laughing.
Like, found it hysterical.
Corpsed.
Which is what he was literally telling me I was about to become, so it was a fair response, I reckon.
And they’re both shocked that I’m laughing –
Dude looks at me over the top of his glasses, like –
Mimes stern look.
Mumble sorry, biting my lip.
All the time my mum’s been frantically writing notes – her tears dripping down onto the increasingly grim sentences she’s scrawling into her Muji notepad –
And you know how shit the paper is on Muji notepads? Each tear makes the paper kinda blister, like her tears were acid –
And the words start dissolving into inky nonsense on the page –
Like my own words will, eventually – as Glee progresses –
Pause.
Yeah.
And when I clock Mum’s notebook I stop laughing.
And it starts to sink in.
Pause.
But yeah, most of what I remember about being told I was going to die is – well – laughing –
See, told you – nice and light, this.
Scene Three
We don’t speak in the lift back down to ...
