Shake, rattle and too much rock ’n’ roll

It started as an absent-minded habit he indulged in when he was thinking of something else. This little thing he did with his thumb and forefinger, a little rubbing action.
Then it became a tic, a little tremor. He first noticed it one evening when he’d just finished jamming with the band. He was having a cigarette on the patio outside the jam spot, when he looked down at his right hand and saw ash falling from his shaking hand. He thought, “Hang on, I’m not shaking my hand. It’s shaking itself!”
He thought he was just a little buzzed from the rehearsal, or his hand was tired from strumming the guitar. It went away after a few minutes.
But a week later it came back. He was chilling in the cafeteria at college, having a fruit juice, when he noticed concentric rings, little waves, in the bottle of Clover Krush he was drinking.
He was trembling again, and it was like that scene in The China Syndrome, where the power station’s nuclear meltdown caused ripples in the coffee cups. There was something seriously amiss here.
RSI was the first thing he thought of. Repetitive strain injury from all those years spent playing guitar. Then he started thinking it might be something to do with circulation. Simon hadn’t weighed himself in more than a year, but it was a safe bet that he was well overweight. Deep into triple figures. One-twenty or so, he estimated…
Maybe it was circulation. Hopefully it was just circulation.
So Simon made his doctor’s appointment largely seeking confirmation that he’d let himself get too fat, and that was somehow cutting off the circulation to his right hand. And of course he hoped, he needed, he was praying to hear that he didn’t have the big P. Or perhaps the big A. Was Parkinson's the one that made you tremble, or was that Alzheimer’s. He could never remember.
It was either that, or carpal tunnel syndrome, he told himself. Or maybe deep-vein thrombosis, from the time he flew to Cape Town for his mate Chombit’s wedding.
He had no medical aid either, so the 400 bucks for the appointment was coming out of his own pocket. Well, the Roxy’s pocket, since that’s where they played their last gig. His split of the bucks came to exactly R400.
The afternoon before his appointment, his top lip started trembling, and that’s when he knew it was definitely Parky’s. He was dying of Parkinson’s, same as Michael J Fox. All that remained was for Dr Meier to confirm it.
Perhaps he could get the band to do a Parkinson’s benefit gig while he could still hold a guitar. Or write a song called, oh, I Feel It In My Fingers. No, not that. Been done.
So that night he breaks down and tells the band okes that he’s dying: “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep playing with you okes. I’ve got this syndrome, and it’s getting worse…”
“Ja,” said Chunley, the bass player. “I been drinking like a fish lately too.”
Fuckall sympathy. He decided the band didn’t deserve to know about his plight. They lacked basic empathy, so he would soldier on and bear the load of his impending death alone.
Anyway, he goes to doctor Meier, pays the 400 bucks and hesitantly outlines his bleak and ominous symptoms. The trembling, the facial tics, the poor circulation…
The guy says he needs a full check-up, pokes and prods him, takes his temperature, weighs him, probes him, for crying out loud, and then takes blood for testing. Says it sounds like it might be Bells Palsy.
On the return visit, by which time, Simon’s getting tremors all over his face and making twitchy winking moves. The oke tells him he’s got a static tremor. He says he should try dopping a bit less and it should be cleared up within a week or so.
Another few hundred bucks later, sure enough, the tremors are gone and Chunley wants to know if he’s still dying and whether they should start auditioning new singers.
It’s not funny, and Simon tells him so. In the end they do write a song about it. It’s called Probity.
In between gigs and band practice, Simon eyes the exercise bicycle in the corner of his room and rubs his thumb and forefinger together.
Sometimes it makes him drop his cigarette.