In 1999, on the cusp of adulthood and newly in love, Jody White's whole world caved in, taking his breath away. He was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of acute leukaemia and given two weeks to live. After a whirlwind of intensive treatment, and close to death, he drifted between worlds, dreaming himself into the care of a wizened old cowboy, his own personal SWAT team and an old crone who wanders the desert collecting wolf bones.
That year broke him apart, before he slowly put himself back together again. Anyone touched by cancer or life-threatening events will know how this feels. We are forced to confront our own mortality and nothing can prepare us. Chimera is his attempt to describe how that felt, how a dance with death changes us, exposing the bones, the very core, of who we really are.
Jody spent the two decades since facing facts, recovering and integrating the fractured parts of himself, collecting understandings he once thought impossible. Eventually, he caught his breath. His arduous journey revealed itself as what he understood to be an alchemical initiation – a near-death experience framed by the innate, mythic stories that touch all our lives.
In 1999, on the cusp of adulthood and newly in love, Jody White's whole world caved in, taking his breath away. He was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of acute leukaemia and given two weeks to live. After a whirlwind of intensive treatment, and close to death, he drifted between worlds, dreaming himself into the care of a wizened old cowboy, his own personal SWAT team and an old crone who wanders the desert collecting wolf bones.
That year broke him apart, before he slowly put himself back together again. Anyone touched by cancer or life-threatening events will know how this feels. We are forced to confront our own mortality and nothing can prepare us. Chimera is his attempt to describe how that felt, how a dance with death changes us, exposing the bones, the very core, of who we really are.
Jody spent the two decades since facing facts, recovering and integrating the fractured parts of himself, collecting understandings he once thought impossible. Eventually, he caught his breath. His arduous journey revealed itself as what he understood to be an alchemical initiation – a near-death experience framed by the innate, mythic stories that touch all our lives.
Sometimes, life has a way of breaking us apart and dissolving the roots of who we thought we were, before slowly piecing us back together anew. In 1999, I was a shy and sensitive seventeen-year-old with only a single and a rather brief relationship to my name. After years of pubescent angst, I was excited to finally experience this new form of connection.
Tamsin was sexy and aloof and I constantly felt like I was dreaming while I was with her, walking on air because she had chosen me. We’d wander around Bridgnorth’s High Town together, looking in shop windows and kissing under the spring blossoms in Castle Park. Like so many before us, we’d hold hands in the back row of the local indie cinema, pausing at her doorstep on the way home.
To help express my torrent of feelings, I’d played her a track from a Q Magazine compilation – ‘Saint’ by Texas – in which Sharleen Spiteri pledges her entire life to her beloved.
She dumped me after a few short weeks. When pressed for a reason, her response was that I was simply too nice. Clearly, this fledgling take on romance had not worked in my favour. I was hurt and frustrated. Did that mean she wanted me to care less? Relationships aside, I’d done well to navigate the social strata on my journey through Bridgnorth Endowed School. I got along well with the football lads, the computer geeks, the shy girls, the it-girls, the awkward kids shuttled in from small surrounding villages, the laid-back music lovers, and the more open-minded teachers. I adored anyone who could adopt the role of class comedian.
The popular girls laughed at my sardonic humour and we’d hang out, but I was careful never to get too close. Instead, I admired them from afar, dreaming up elaborate, hormonally-charged fantasies in which they starred. I hadn’t the first clue about the art of seduction or how to handle the complexities of the opposite sex. Firmly in my favour were my well-honed skills behind a drum kit which had proved to be a real asset when it came to attracting attention.
Our band went by the terrible name of Identical Footwear, so-called because we all wore Kickers, the brand of choice for teenage males in the late 1990s. Rob, Rishi, Pete, and I would spend our lunch hours jamming away in the school’s music room. This display of youthful creativity began to attract a small crowd of our peers to the tall glass windows which lined three sides of the space. They’d crane their necks to get a better view as we cranked out surprisingly decent versions of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Rock N’ Roll’ and Smashing Pumpkin’s ‘Zero’. Not bad for a bunch of fresh-faced lads who could barely grow a bumfluff moustache, despite an uncanny ability to get served lukewarm pints of lager in the Carpenters Arms on any given Friday night.
Tasha hung around in the crowd who came to watch our band practices. We’d locked eyes briefly a couple of times. I had always been quietly fascinated by her but could count the times we’d actually spoken to each other on the fingers of one hand. She was friends with the in-crowd but she wasn’t really one of them. While they revelled in their premium status amongst the social hierarchy, she presented a smiling old soul that oozed kindness and a wild, barely hidden sexuality that signalled heaven to me. I thought she was perfect. Her tumbling, dirty-blonde bob had a life of its own, while experience shone from her sharp blue eyes. A streetwise tone coloured her edges as if she carried with her the weight of a secret burden. I wondered what it was.
She sat on the back row of GCSE geography, chatty and bright, charming the male teachers with her sweet maturity, equally as bolshy as the lads. Some people have a certain air about them, an invisible energy that draws others in. She was like that. Sexy, but not conventionally so. Feminine, yet tomboyish with her paint-splattered jeans and rusty-red Camper shoes. She was completely genuine and wore her heart firmly on her sleeve, a combination so unusual in this environment and consequently extremely alluring.
I willed courage into my body almost daily to gain the strength to talk to her and to look into those glassy blue eyes for just a few long seconds. I wanted to soak myself in that delicious tingle that snaked itself around my chest whenever she was around. It was no good just staring at her and then trying to hide it if she so much as raised her head in my direction. If it was a particularly good day I might even try projecting my feelings to her telepathically in an attempt to make her understand.
Finally, I realised I needed a little help. My friend Jamie took A-level Art. Tasha was in the same class and I knew they hung out together, smoked straights outside the school gates at four o'clock, and were both generally on board with the classic tenets of teen rebellion. Jamie was something of a wild card with a difficult home-life. He could be unpredictably mean yet it was clear age was making him kinder to those he actually liked. I approached him on the way out of last period, at the corner of the school where sweaty locker rooms met bleached-clean toilets, where the solemnity of the Maths department lay just beyond the threshold double doors.
‘Hey dude.’ ‘Oh hey Jode, how it going?’
‘Yeah good, good. Just wondering if you could do me a favour—’ I began. He shot me a quizzical grin.
‘Yeah, of course, mate.’
‘Cool, it’s just, umm, well… Tasha… you know her right?’
‘Yeah, Tash is cool. Do you like her then or something?’
‘Well, yeah, I do and I just thought, maybe, you could mention me to her?’
It was a relief to actually say it. I felt as if I was opening some kind of door to the future.
‘Ask her if she likes me, if she wants to go out with me… I'd really appreciate it.’
‘Haha, interesting… Yeah, she's a really sound girl. Actually, I think she split up with someone not long ago, but I'll see what I can do. We've got art tomorrow morning so she should be there.’
‘Thanks mate, I really appreciate it. Catch you later.’ ‘Yeah, sure loverboy. Laters.’ He smirked.
* * *
The Klixx vending machine clicked and whirred, making me a watery coffee. It was almost 9.30 am and most people had drifted off to class. Jamie arrived to report his dramatic findings: Tasha was into me too. I knew this was my chance to act, step up, and be the man who took a risk in the name of love, or whatever you might call this bizarre feeling. My heart began to pump faster, flushing my cheeks. I was scared shitless at the thought of seeing her armed with this new information. Minutes later, as I was about to leave the building, already late for English, and knelt down trying to stuff my jacket into a bursting backpack, I saw her. Tasha was walking up the stairs at the far end of the corridor. She was dressed in a short-sleeved checkered shirt that hugged her curves, her baggy blue boot-cuts sashayed this way and that, while round-toed scarlet shoes poked out playfully from beneath them.
She would have to pass me. We would have to speak. Oh fuck.
I panicked, almost balked, almost said nothing. I fumbled nervously with the zip on my bag. Just as she was about to draw level, her eyes flashed to mine.
‘Hey,’ I blurted.
‘Hi.’
‘Can I talk to you?’
‘Sure.’ She smiled, a flush of pink in her cheeks. A faint smell of cigarette smoke.
Can I talk to you? I cursed my linguistic shyness. What the fuck sort of a line is that? What an idiot.
For a minute or two, we skirted around the obvious, talked about friends and school, and then—
‘So did Jamie mention anything the other day…?’ I asked.
A long pause.
‘Yeah, he did. I'm flattered, I… I don't know what to say.’
She doesn't like me, she thinks I'm an idiot. Say something.
‘I’ve kind of just split up with someone and I'm not ready to start anything else just yet.’
Shit. Fuck. Darkest of black days, torrential apocalyptic thunderstorms, a whirlpool of epic proportions sucking me DOWN DOWN DOWN…
‘But we should hang out sometime. How about Friday night, you going to be out?’
Sweet Jesus, I’m saved.
‘Yeah, I should be around. Everyone going to the Castle as usual?’
‘I should think so. Me, Anna and Laura will be there. You should come along, it'll be fun.’
That sideways smile, those dazzling eyes.
‘Ok cool. I will.’ Could she hear the sound of my heart thumping in my throat?
Months of yearning, praying and attempted telepathy had somehow paid off. The girl I wanted was within my reach. It was July and the nights were long and warm. Fridays were the highlight of the social calendar in Bridgnorth. The route between pubs would develop organically over the course of an evening, with arrangements and rendezvous points quickly spread through a new technology called the text message.
The Old Castle was ramshackle in the classic English style, replete with an ageing jukebox, fruit machines aplenty and a knackered pool table in a room of its own out back, its luminous green felt dotted with small rips and the odd fag burn. The too-old-to-still-be-drinking propped up the bar while the too-young-to-drink gathered for the first few rounds before the next establishment was decided and the herd gradually moved on. Pints, shots, alco-pops. Tipple after tipple. I wasn’t much of a drinker. I’d have a few too many if it was the right sort of night; the ones where you can feel friendships being forged and where boundaries melt away, but I knew my limits and didn't enjoy obliterating my brain cells anywhere near as much as everyone else.
This particular night, however, called for a special effort. I took a long shower, fastidiously cleaning and lathering every limb and crevice then swilling off the bubbles with the steaming hot water. I spent time blow-drying my hair and applying dabs of hair putty. I even stole a few puffs of Mum’s hairspray. Then I had to decide what to wear – what would impress her?
I was of medium-slim build, though I’d recently introduced a few eager sit-ups and push-ups to my morning routine. Following the progress of my muscles in the mirror satisfied my unfolding teenage ego. I swiped a small bottle of Belgian lager from the fridge and sat in my room listening to Rage Against The Machine, the furious music imparting a sense of purpose, priming my confidence for the evening ahead.
I checked my Nokia, no new texts. As was traditional, I met my good friend Rob at the junction of Queensway Drive and Dunval Close and together we sauntered towards the bustling town centre where over a dozen pubs lay within a few minutes' walk of each other. After getting our pints at The Castle’s main bar, we moved past the old-timers to the terraced garden where all the kids hung out. Immediately, I saw her. Tasha was sat at a picnic bench drinking a White Russian, shining like a beacon in a tight white shirt.
That night was dreamlike, rare in its lucidity. As the laughter rang out and the drinks flowed we exchanged lingering looks, flirting with the tension, territory marked out by the closeness of our bodies. Hours flew by. Things became fluid, softly blurred at the edges. My confidence soared.
The group mind shifted and the next location was decided. The Carpenter’s Arms was a small and lively pub on the other side of town, a particular favourite amongst those who straddled the boundary of the UK’s legal drinking age. Tasha and I pitched up at the bar, leaning over the towelled mats and stainless steel drip trays to make an order. Jack Daniels and Coke was the drink for this point in the evening, the sweet, black elixir with a kick in the tail. Laura ordered Bacardi Breezers, nudging me in the ribs with a less-than-subtle wink, and we all sat down around a small wooden table. Just me and three lovely young ladies. I felt like a king.
Tash caught my eye. ‘You ok?’
‘I am definitely ok,’ I replied with a grin. ‘
Well that’s good.’ She kissed my cheek, leapt up, and shimmied her way over to the jukebox, putting on some Stone Roses, and danced her way off to the toilets.
As she sat back down, I took a deep breath. It was time for a little boldness. Under the table, my right hand slipped smoothly onto Tasha’s left thigh. She smiled but continued her conversation across the table with Laura. Then, taking a sip of her drink, she responded with a reciprocal manoeuvre, her eyes flicking to meet mine.
After this daring first move, things went better than I could have hoped. Leaving the pub, we walked the length of the High Street hand in hand, tipsy and giggling, not caring who saw us. An indie-disco was held every other Friday above the Comrades Club in a large wooden-floored room. You could drink until 1 am, so we all flocked there after last orders at the pubs.
Inhibitions truly dissolved, we hit the dance-floor, holding each other close, snaking in time to the beat and the pulse. Beneath the smoke, flashing deep reds and greens lit up our bodies. The rest of the room fell away, only her eyes remained in sharp focus. Suddenly I kissed her and all at once she became mine. Our mouths pressed together, all soft lips and trembling tongues. Perfume. Cigarettes. Sweat. The testosterone flowed. I lost all track of time.
At 2 am, the staff began kicking us all out.
‘I’ve got to go now Jode, but I've had such a great night.’
‘Me too Tash, when can I see you again?’ I was breathless, hungry for more. ‘I’m going away for a few weeks over the summer, all the girls are going to Tenerife and then I'm going to Africa with my family. But I'll send you a postcard, let's swap addresses,’ she instructed, handing me a piece of tattered blue paper and a pen from her bag.
Details duly imparted, we withdrew to the main doorway, where we hugged and softly kissed again. Then she was gone, her smell on my t-shirt and the watery, indescribable taste of her on my tongue. I was dazed and drunk. It was long gone two and sleep beckoned. I decided to walk home, still not quite able to take it all in. What strange magic was this? This smart, sassy girl was truly into me. I felt invincible which worked wonders for my wavering self-esteem. For a brief while, life felt perfect.
Summer bloomed into lazy days with nowhere to be and nothing to do, a time that seems to exist only in the haze of teenage memories. We barely saw each other, though every couple of weeks, a cute illustrated postcard would arrive with details of where she’d been and what she’d been up to. The first one had a garish Tenerife sunset slapped on the front and a message scrawled in thick red pen over most of the reverse, with absolutely no concern for the neat four lines of allotted space. I pictured her bumming a pen from some helpless shopkeeper:
Hey you! Having a great time in Tenerife, all the girls say hi. See you soon, miss you, T xx
I spent much of my time daydreaming about her. I’d ride my bike down through the suburbs of the town, across the river and along to Severn Park, following the path along the riverside to the wildflower meadows at the far end, the part where they didn’t cut the grass as often and where no-one really went.
My backpack contained a bottle of water, my smoking tin, and a selection of books. Half stuck to the inside pocket was the remains of a sticky bag of boiled sweets. I’d sit by the river, plugged into my music player, a battered notepad close at hand. I wrote poems, diary entries, all my wishes and fears, thoughts, and impressions. It was as if some dormant cognitive function in my brain was now fully active. I felt renewed and inspired, completely buzzing with vital life force energy.
In Ibiza, my family had rented a small villa on the outskirts of Santa Eularia. We baked our bodies on and off for almost two weeks in the Balearic heat. I spent the days lying on the terracotta tiled roof, gazing up at the endless blue sky, then wandering down to the beach in the afternoons to cool off in the glassy Mediterranean. I devoured a couple of Russell Hoban books. My parents laughed a lot and got mildly sunburnt. My two younger sisters, Jemma and Jessie, dunked each other in the pool, while my little brother Josh watched, grinning from ear to ear, before boldly taking a running jump into the water himself. We ate freshly baked baguettes smothered in thick garlic aioli, ordered steaming paella, and sipped bottles of chilled San Miguel.
In the darkness of my bedroom, wrapped in a sun-kissed glow, I envisioned Tasha lying next to me. As I fell asleep, I tried to calculate the distance that lay between us. Where was she? Who was she with? Was she thinking of me too?
As we took our last trips around the island, I became aware that such thoughts were being slowly replaced by a creeping sense of paranoia. We’d be in the car driving back from lunch on the beach or a walk around a small fishing village and a sudden feeling of dread would descend upon me. My bountiful happiness wavered. The rash that had been appearing on and off since we arrived had finally decided to hang around and make itself noticed. All across my stomach and spreading around to my back was a raised area of pinky-red skin that itched like hell. It had spread along the inside of my left thigh too and any amount of cream wouldn’t persuade it to leave. My muttering and complaining was starting to affect the general mood.
‘Calm down, you’ve probably just overdone the sun a little,’ Dad said matter-of-factly. From the kitchen, Mum shouted something about making sure I was using Factor 30.
‘Give it until we get home, I’m sure it’ll have gone by then love… and listen to your mother.’ His confident smile eased my worries. He turned back to his book, a chunky Len Deighton, took a sip of his beer, and adjusted the position of his faded baseball cap. I believed him. Parents have a knack for knowing just what to say to sooth their offspring’s frazzled edges.
* * *
Monday the 6th of September. The first day of the rest of my life. Our first days as A-level students. We’d graduated from secondary school and were now entering the twilight of our teenage years. We were losing our innocence, slowly maturing.
I had barely stopped thinking about Tasha all summer and had worked myself up into a nervous wreck before breakfast. This was it. We would finally get to cement our relationship and make it real. I knew she felt the same. She had to. She knew they were no ordinary kisses, it was not just another Friday night out on the town. We had started something there, under the flickering strobe lights.
At 8.55 am Mr. Phelps, the head of sixth-form, ambled into the common room from his adjoining office. ‘Alright you philistines… shut up, shut up!’ boomed his deep Welsh accent. A few titters bounced around the room but no one wanted to make a fuss on the first day back so we gamely took our seats for the register. She still wasn’t here. My heart was pounding. I tried to ignore it.
‘Matthews…’
‘Here sir.’
‘Miss Jones…’
‘Sir.’
‘Mr Davies…’ he repeated. A few sniggers leaked out.
‘Mr Davies…?’ he called once more. He paused to survey the room over the top of his thick black spectacles, then rolled his eyes.
‘If someone would be so kind as to suppress their giggles and inform me of the whereabouts of Mr Davies then I would be eternally grateful.’
‘He’s taking a dump sir,’ someone said. More sniggers.
‘Fantastic. Ahem, where was I…’ He cleared his throat, ran his forefinger down the list.
He was about to continue when the double doors swung open and Tasha burst through, her skin tanned and smooth, her cheeks flushed. Turning, she picked me out of the crowd and flashed a quick smile, I thought I might crack.
‘Sorry sir. We had a problem with the car on the way in.’ She grinned and took a seat next to Anna. ‘Thank you Miss Clode. Now, where were we…'
I became flushed and self-conscious and looked away, fiddled with my laces, slid my hand inside the front section of my backpack. I wrapped my fingers around the paper bag which contained the few small gifts I’d selected at the hippie market in Es Canar and gripped it like a trophy.
After registration people wandered out to the first lessons of the day. A few groups lingered, catching up on the gossip. Tasha was sat with two of her friends by a window that looked out over the faded concrete of the year 11 yard. I approached them, trying to look confident, trying to feel at ease. Anna noticed me first, then Laura with a knowing smile. Tash turned to me, her blue eyes sparkled. I thought I might turn to stone but somehow I managed to force out some words. Anna and Laura got up and left and suddenly there we were, just the two of us.
‘Hey, you ok?’ I started.
‘It’s been a weird morning Jode, but yes. All the better for seeing you.’
She gave me a big hug. My heart danced.
‘How was your summer? I missed you.’
‘I missed you too. Did you get my postcards?’
‘Yeah, I loved them.’ ‘It was a funny summer. I’ll tell you all about it later.’
‘I brought you these…’ I began, sifting through the contents of my backpack to find the market gifts.
I watched as she unwrapped the contents, praying I hadn’t gone too far.
‘Oh wow, I love them!’ She blushed, smiling. ‘Thank you.’
Tash planted a soft kiss on my burning cheek and looked right into me with those piercing blue eyes. At that moment, I decided I would do everything in my power to keep that look on her face.
As we walked, I slipped my hand into hers, her warm fingers gave a light squeeze in reply. Reaching the door where our paths divided, I moved to kiss her but before I could, she hugged me and said, ‘Let’s meet at free period.’ She pecked me on the cheek and bounded away. I watched her go. As she reached the corner and was about to vanish, she turned back, flashed me a grin, and was gone.
Without really trying, we fell into a natural groove and spent much of the next few weeks together – kissing, talking into the early hours, getting tipsy on weak beer, and high on cheap hash. I lost my virginity to Tasha in the living room of my parent’s house on their red and green floral sofa one late September afternoon when we should really have been at school. She had a little more experience than me, which helped my confidence. We got so carried away in the moment that at some point in the proceedings, I realised we hadn’t even bothered to close the curtains. With my face pressed to her bare breast, a wave of embarrassment hit me.
‘Tash, the curtains…’
Barely opening her eyes, she pulled me closer, and whispered into my ear, ‘Leave them.’
* * *
By October, autumn had truly arrived, with its dramatic colourways and particular quality of light. The slowly bruising sky told me it was late afternoon and the school day was winding up. A bunch of us hung around in our usual common-room spot, the corner seats by the floor-to-ceiling window which commanded a general’s-eye view over the playground. Laughing and joking and general piss-taking ensued, everyone participating in the comedy of the moment. The CD player pumped out the new Incubus album which held us in raptures. Tasha walked in. The double doors swung back and the rest of the world slowed to a crawl. I drank in the high dimples in her cheeks that shone when she laughed. She winked at me.
Jamie, sitting off to the right of the group, caught my eye. I felt the sweat start to form patches under my arms and tried to steady myself, leaning back from the chatter bubble. Tasha and her friend Hilda, a German exchange student, headed straight for the corner, taking their seats along the row of blue chairs with a volley of upbeat hellos and how’s-it-goings, a quick kiss for me. A few strongly machined coffees and some cheap chocolate bars later, there were only the four of us left. Everyone else had classes to go to, cigarettes to smoke, or pubs to frequent. Jamie and I sat opposite the girls. Tash squeezed my feet while he practiced his flirtation techniques on the helpless Hilda. Eventually, Tasha and her friend left to catch their lift, and Jamie went off to his car.
After they’d all gone, I noticed a small piece of crumpled white paper on the seat where Tash had been sitting. I picked it up and unfolded it. It was a page ripped from her school workbook, over which were scrawled various games of squares and several love sums. Across one corner in blue biro were the words:
Tasha Clode loves Jody White
‘The use of metaphor or myth to make sense of life is unavoidable for us humans’, Jody White argues in Chimera, his deeply moving account of his personal battle with leukaemia in his late teens. The reason being, he goes on to state, is that ‘we live within the universe of a collective mythology’ and, as such, ‘layers of metaphor underpin all that we do.’ ‘Adopting mythology as a cancer survival strategy’, therefore, ‘was instinctive’ to him. In making this argument, White implicitly interrogates some of the claims made by Susan Sontag in her seminal work of critical theory, Illness as Metaphor, in which she endeavours to strip away the ‘layers of metaphor’ that illness has accrued. In doing so, White not only carves out his own original stance within the so-called “illness memoir” genre, but, in answering back to some of Sontag’s claims, he raises an important counterargument. Sontag believed that the metaphorization of illness was dangerous and may inhibit some from seeking the treatment they needed. Drawing on his own experience, White posits that, by framing his cancer battle as a mythological heroic quest narrative of sorts, he was able to muster the mental and physical strength needed to pull through.
This is not to say, however, that White ignores the ways in which real life fails to measure up to mythology. In Chimera, he provides the reader with a visceral and deeply personal account of life during cancer treatment and in the immediate aftermath of being told his cancer was in remission. It is during this stage that he comes to realise that, while mythology gave him the right mindset in which to fight his cancer, he has to abandon his self-mythologised “quest” in order to tackle the new challenges life after cancer throws at him. Moreover, White is able to relate the mythologies he constructs around his cancer battle to the wider currents of global politics, such as rampant individualism, unscrupulous populism, and the environmental crisis.
Overall, Jody White has pulled off quite a feat with Chimera: not only has he challenged some of the received wisdoms on how illness should be written (and done so with intelligence, nuance, and sensitivity), he has also managed to situate an intensely personal experience within the wider political landscape. On top of this, Chimera stands as a testament to the power and importance of storytelling, arguing that the stories we tell ourselves can hold transformative powers over our lives.