Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

It started off simple enough I guess. A bit of sun here. A bit there. Holidays in Spain. I was brown; crisp. But not brown enough. When I got that second job I decided that I had enough for membership to the fitness club down on Tennyson Street. 1000 bells a year, but the booths were cheap after that. Ten Squid a shot, and I really could afford it. So I started going once a week, and the tan has really started to come on. I’m getting darker, and despite the fact that they have started calling me paki at work, I know it’s worth it.

Mum’s worried though. Says I’ll get skin cancer. Every time she sees me without my shirt I see her eyes sort of wander round my chest, over my shoulders – down my back. She’s looking for moles. After a while I make sure I’m always wearing at least a tee shirt. Later on, I keep to shirts.

I go to the booths twice weekly. At lunchtime. At work, they ask if I’m seeing someone. I always leave at twelve, and Dave in Accounts heard me making a booking. ‘Just the hour’ I had said. I let the gossip run its course.

Mum’s taken to leaving leaflets and newspaper clippings pinned to my bedroom door. I feel like there’s something new on there everyday. She reads the Daily Mail. Pays particular attention to the health sections. I hate the Daily Mail. One day I find an article on colonic diseases pinned up there. Next to the square patch I painted yellow. I think it must be a mistake.

I go to the booths four days a week. I’ve started going to two clubs now. Some days if I’m feeling low, I’ll go twice. Once to each of them. It’s a forty-minute bus ride between the two, and I have to finish work later because my lunch hours are so long. Everyone is sure I’m involved with someone. I tell them that I am. I call her Melanie. ‘Melanoma more like’ says Dave, and everybody laughs.

My skin feels too wet and loose. Each night I lay in bed in the dark, and run my fingers across my face. I can feel every imperfection. If I concentrate hard enough, I can feel the oil seeping out; sinking into my fingers. Poisoning my blood. Mum leaves a note from a doctor Richards on my door. A Head Doctor. Richard the Head Doctor. Doctor Dick Head.

I’m going to the booths every day now. They banned me from the club on Tennyson Street. Refunded my membership and everything. I go to this place the other side of town. It’s a real dive. I don’t know if I’m getting browner or just dirtier.

Work’s gone a bit bogus. I wasn’t doing enough work they said. Fired me there and then. Said I was lazy. I’ve been feeling tired. A little run down. I said. They said. You should see a doctor. Doctor Richard the Dick Head Doctor I think, but I just agree and leave. On the way out, Dave turns his back on me. Did we used to be friends?

When I walk to the booths on the other side of town, I see people stop, look at me. Some youths surround me. Call me leper, shit face, the incredible sultana. They push me over. I knock my head on a wall as I fall, and afterwards the cut takes ages to stop bleeding.

When I eat food, I throw most of it up. Mum’s a wonder with a fryer, but I’ve gone off the fatty foods. They aren’t good for you. Most nights I’ll take my dinner upstairs with me, and when I know she’s hooked on Eastenders, I’ll take it into the bathroom and flush it down the toilet. There’s only so much cholesterol a body can take, but she’s got no idea of what’s healthy and what is not.

I wake up one morning, and find myself in bed. In a hospital bed. I have these bluish clear tubes in my arms, up my nose. In my side. Mum sits next to me. She’s holding my wrist and the top of my elbow, and she has her face pushed into the top of my forearm. I feel water collecting on the side of her nose, and then it breaks off and trickles cold around the curve of my arm. I move my arm. She says, You’re as stubborn as he was. Your father… Just like… and then her voice sort of breaks up. She stays quiet then, and I can’t think of anything much to say. She stands up, whispers to some nurse and then leaves.

Dad died of cancer of the colon when I was five. I don’t know what that has to do with me. I never knew him.

They check on me every twenty minutes, and some old Grandad three bays up has power over the remote control. I watch Emmerdale and some crap about an angel who ‘just wants to be a man’. I ask one of the nurses to help me lie down and then stare up at the ceiling.

When the lights turn out, and the television is turned off, and the other people in the ward stop talking, I put my fingers to my face and move them backwards and forwards. Stroke my cheeks and then my forehead. It feels dry and smooth. Tanned.