They say it helps you sleep. And I can confirm it does. If someone had said to me, “There’s this drug you can take that will help you sleep and you won’t wake up at 4am in a cold sweat,” I’d have taken it. If they’d said the drug was called, “Not drinking,” I would have paused. Who wants that? To me, the side effects sound worse than the problem they are curing. Even so, I could not have anticipated how much worse those side effects would be.
There I was, at the skip on the far end of the dirt car park, halfway into the recreation ground, turning my plastic tub upside down. The empty wine, gin and whiskey bottles clanked and tinkled until they were followed by a dribble of brown sludge. As the tub rotated fully, I recoiled in disgust at the slugs clinging to the base — slugs that could have deposited themselves on my wind-cheater or in my car. So, disgust, but where was the familiar pang of shame?
They call alcohol a social lubricant but it’s surprisingly accommodating to the lonely and alone.
The first evening was the hardest. Two blocks from work, I stopped at the local supermarket — the ‘Big G’ —run by Bill and Donna. They had a line in ready meals. No, that’s not true. They had several lines in ready meals and that’s what kept me coming. Each night, a different meal-for-one until I worked my way back to the beginning — butter chicken, lasagna, cottage pie, fresh spinach pasta with Napoli sauce… I have never been fussy but I like a good feed.
Bill waved at me then continued to pile avocados onto a broad-based pyramid. There was no sign of Donna but one of the Year 10s from school who was just old enough to stack shelves greeted me by name and with a broad smile. Country kids are like that. In Melbourne, if you saw a kid off campus, they would burrow their eyes into the ground. But not here. They were always friendly. Polite.
At 4am I would think about such matters. I knew I could not go back to sleep until they were resolved and even then, I was probably stuck awake. I’d roll from my left side, to my back, to my right side, then return. The under-sheet would lose its moorings and the resulting creases and folds would offend me. Well, anything offends the sleepless — even a strong wind or a rasping possum. So, I would lie there and wonder why country kids were friendlier. Was it the interdependence? Are country folk accustomed to needing each other more? When the bush fires blow in, the rivers break their banks, the crops fail or the mice get out of control, do we rely on each other in a way that city folk don’t?
I avoided the wine section at Big G entirely and that meant I could be served by one of the youngsters on the checkout who had a yellow sign advising they were not old enough to serve alcohol. Instead, my basket contained some diet ginger beer, spinach pasta, Napoli sauce and a bar of white chocolate with raspberry.
I felt something approaching anger. It was unfair. What did I have to look forward to? Was it the chocolate? Was there a good show on one of the streaming services?
Bill approached as I stood in line. He bid be a good evening and looked at my basked, “Ginger beer?”
“I am doing a dry month,” I explained.
“I’ve never really understood that,” teased Bill, “but good luck.”
I had read that I would sleep better, but I was worried how long it would take me to nod off in the first place. My normal trigger was a small scotch whisky with water — malt when I was feeling flush but blended most other times. So, I took a hot shower and ate my chocolate. Quite at odds with what I was expecting, I fell quickly into a deep sleep without brushing my teeth.
I was woken by the alarm, which I normally preempted by up to three hours. My teeth felt sticky and wrong as I drowsily levered myself out of bed, down the hall and into the bathroom. I could have been imagining it. I must have been imagining it. But my face was less red and blotchy than usual. My knobby red Rudolph nose was not commanding attention in the way it usually did and the mirror was less of a trial. One night off could not do that, I corrected myself. Only my perceptions could have changed.
You may have gathered that I live alone. There is no partner to set rules for me to fail to keep and then either scream at me or bottle their disappointment as quiet rage. See how I put a positive spin on it? I am an independent man which, I have to note, sounds far less impressive than an independent woman. Yet that is what I am. A school teacher who never left school. A man who failed to launch and for whom there are no second chances — no opportunity to rewind.
Look, I think people misunderstand. I have feelings too. I was in love at university. Wasn’t everyone? But that was from afar and did not count. In my 20s, things were different. I had a friend who I cared for deeply but she let me know I was just too nice — only there to pick up the pieces when she crashed. Which she often did. This was baffling because I’m not nice at all. I am mean and selfish, lazy and greedy. And then, one day, she must have noticed because I suddenly wasn’t too nice. A day became a week became six months. But it did not last. It never could have done. You know why.
I could date. People suggest it to me, unaware of what a gross imposition it is to propose how I should live my life. It’s like telling a couple to have children. Nobody other than a close relative would go near that and yet well meaning people — I say ‘people’ but I mean ‘women’ — will insist I should join this website or download that app, all while I am just trying to eat my lunch in peace. Something about me seems difficult to process and grates on them. I guess I am an irritating puzzle.
Yes, I could upload myself to an app, but I cannot think of anything more absurd. Even as a young man, I was never close to obtaining that elusive modeling contract yet now, in middle age, even I cannot tolerate myself. I am balding and chubby. When I am not looking, thick black hairs sprout out of my nose or ear lobe and I walk around for days like that before I come home, look in a mirror and notice. I have twice the usual allocation of chins and a belly that spills out over the top of my pants. I have tried wearing baggy clothes, thinking this would avoid broadcasting the defining lines of my body but somehow, that looks even worse.
In all conscience, I would not impose that body on anyone. It would be far too impolite. No woman could be genuinely attracted to me. They would only pretend, either through desperation or pity. I don’t want that. I have my life and it works for me. I don’t need that.
But I need something.
By the middle of day three, I had begun proselytising about the benefits of the big dry in the staffroom. I spoke about rest and how I was sleeping through to the six o’clock alarm. In fact, waking up was becoming the kind of imposition I remember from my 20s when I would press ’snooze’ twice, the only brain activity being a swift calculation of just how little time I needed to get ready and out the door. These were the days of a snatched bacon sandwich on the way to work when I never worried where all that fat would go.
However, that first weekend kicked me pretty hard and the anger and irrational sense of unfairness came back strong. It doesn’t matter how many streaming services you subscribe to if there’s nothing on any of them or if a show looks promising only for you to quickly realise it’s in foreign. I have never been one for reading subtitles. It’s too much work when all you want to do is unwind. So, late on Friday, I went out, bought a huge bar of peppermint chocolate and ate the lot.
I was discovering new things to feel guilty about.
I did not set the alarm on Sunday and slept right through until 10am. When I woke, my eyes were glued together and the under-sheet was off the corner of the bed with the elasticated edge awkwardly underneath me. I felt uneasy. I had been dreaming and this was the source of the unease, but the surprise of looking at the clock and seeing the time filled my mind completely, to the extent the dream had snuck away, as dreams do.
On Monday, I woke at 4am for the first time since going dry, needing to pee. But it felt different to the 4am wakeups I knew. I was confident I would fall back to sleep and so I tried hard to control it. Could I dream of pretty women, I wondered? That would be good — a refreshing start to the day. But no. I was in a dark place with a dark staircase. An uncanny gravity pulled me down the staircase and I knew it was a dream. But I didn’t like it.
Then my alarm went off.
Have you ever been watching TV, drifted away and had an eventful dream? Places connect to places, long journeys are taken and characters evolve. You move from one scene to the next to the next to the point where the first makes no sense. A beautiful vista or a horrifying revelation stands before you. And then you jolt away and it is the same TV scene, two seconds later. Do you wonder whether dreams run on their own time?
I found it even harder to pull myself out of bed. I staggered to the little bathroom down the hall, bracing myself against the wall a couple of times. Every muscle yearned for bed. Every thought, interrupted. My eyes drooped.
That lunchtime, I fell asleep in the staffroom for the first time in my life. It was aided by the fact I had arrived before the usual crew, whose mix of duties, overrun classes and senior students to help one-to-one led to me sitting on the sofa alone. I leafed through The Age, taking mild interest in a story about the state government’s capture of the civil service before some siren song eased me back in my seat. And then I dozed. I think they might have thought I had died when they shook me gently back to life.
Have you ever woken from an afternoon snooze and felt worse than you did before? That’s how I felt and I still had to teach maths to Years 7 and 9. I stumbled a couple of times as I made my way around the classroom.
The next day, I slept through my alarm. When I eventually roused, I tried to catch the dream, deliberately keeping my eyes closed and not looking at the clock. It was black. Dark. I remember a figure there. There was something about making a deal. I was trying to put things together and make a deal with the figure. I was roving around the landscape and cityscape, asking for… something… to give to the figure. It was a glasshouse then a gentleman’s club. The same place was both, as is the way in dreams.
When I finally turned to the clock, I jolted. It was 10am. I had missed a class.
I was leaden. There was no life in my muscles. I was stuck there as I started to drift away again, but with some summoning of will, I managed to sit up. First, I rang the school. I apologised, said I was unwell and that I would set work for my classes for the rest of the day. But I did not set work for my classes for the rest of the day. Instead, I sat in dread. I could not get up and I wanted to lay down but I knew that if I did so, I was gone.
Or did I know that? It’s hard now to say.
I must have sat for an hour. Eventually, I managed to summon the strength to rise and made my way unsteadily to the kitchen where I brewed a cup of tea. I needed caffeine. That would fix it. Just caffeine.
Then I sat on the sofa.
“All this could be yours,” said the figure.
And I laughed because I knew it was a dream. “What am I? Am I Abraham, now?” I asked, “Could you bring me dancing girls? In bikinis? Serving large gin-and-tonics from big, bowl glasses? And a fatted calf? And a bowler hat?” I heard myself saying, but the part about the hat was not mine. “I hate the way that even when I know it is a dream, I cannot control it and I get to look at you, some dark creature from the back of my broken mind, rather than something pretty,” I snarled, like a small, pretty dog.
The figure stood silent. I noticed the wall and the door and the black flowers in the planters. If I was dreaming, that must mean I was asleep again. This was wrong, somehow. I knew that much.
“You must stay,” said the figure. “You are late here. Come through the door and all this could be yours,” he gestured. And there I was, stood right in front of it. There was a latch that lifted like on an old garden shed or the door into a walled garden. Was it a wooden door or a large emblazoned shield? I reached to open the latch.
I often feel fear in dreams. That’s the only feeling, really. Is that what you feel, too, or do you experience other emotions? I’d like to experience other feelings but if I’m honest, that’s the only one I remember. Even when I am naked or my teeth are falling out, I don’t feel humiliated, just puzzled and mildly annoyed. It is only fear that I truly feel.
I am running too slowly, as if against a wind that lifts me up. All my energy is channeled into resisted bounds that land and take me little further. I could walk faster. And something is coming to get me. That’s what I mean by fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of pain. Death is always there, somewhere. As if this is practice.
But as I reached for the door, I felt something else. A longing. As if a party was on the other side. Not the kind of party full of awkward conversations and people who don’t like me or don’t care who I am — A party full of kindly grandparents and people who were interested in me and want to be in my company. Maybe there was even a woman who wanted to talk to me and walk with me.
Is this what is mine? Is this what I could have all of? Was it a trick? With a bleak sadness, I turned my face away.
I awoke with a pause then, with a desperate gasp, I sucked all the air from the room. Panic sat behind my eyes. I had stopped breathing.
Adrenalin coursing through me now, I began to shake. I leapt from the sofa with ease, knocking the half cup of tea off the table. I righted it and dabbed at the puddle on the wooden floor with a handful of tissues then, without aforethought, I grabbed my car keys, climbed in the Mazda and drove to Big G. I did not take a basket because I was only after one thing.
When I arrive home, I grabbed a glass from the shelf above the drainer, poured my red wine and gulped at it, greedily, selfishly.
A familiar warmth flushed through me and I realised how cold I had been.
Have you felt that warmth? Have you felt that cold?