To paraphrase Johnny Cash, "I woke up Thursday morning with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt". Drinking on school nights is a practice that should be restricted to students and the unemployed. They have the energy to keep going and the opportunity to sleep in the next day. Bankers of a certain age have no such advantage and I'm paying the sorry price for that now. Twenty four hours ago, the beer was flowing and the craic was mighty. I gave no thought to getting up for work the next day and neither did my drinking buddies. We were just intent on proving that the Global Financial Crisis wasn't going to stop us from partying.
We were entertaining a visitor from Singapore and trying to prove that Melbourne has a midweek nightlife. In practice, that proved tougher than finding a bacon buttie in Tel Aviv on Yon Kippur.
But there were ten of us and that tends to create its own dynamic. All boys are competitive, except at different things. Some like to show their alpha maleness by reaching the pinnacle of their profession. Others prove themselves through sport or by hooking up with supermodels. God decided that my killer instinct is invoked whenever I’m drinking beer in company.
People who know me are aware that I like a beer. In fact some have commented that I am one of the few people in life who consider beer more important than oxygen and one ex girlfriend cruelly described me as a not particularly complicated biological machine for turning beer into urine. It may come as a shock to these people that I can happily go weeks without touching the amber nectar. But put me in a situation where other men are drinking and I turn into Michael Schumacher. I can’t help myself; I have to drink faster and longer than anyone else in a desperate attempt to prove my manliness.
That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I didn’t get hammered on Wednesday night because I’m immature and reckless. My DNA made me do it.
I have my alarm set up to turn on the radio each morning and I'm usually met by the soothing tones of Red Symons on ABC, who jokes his way through the news and eases listeners into the day. As luck would have it, when the alarm kicked off this morning, Red had moved to a story about the Italian Film festival and I was woken to the sounds of machine gun fire and piercing screams.
I groped manically for the snooze button and desperately tried to get a grip on reality. My mouth was as dry as a Quaker’s wake and my tongue felt like it had been ripped out in the middle of the night and replaced with one that didn’t quite fit.
The act of showering and dressing took longer than normal and I knew something was really up when I sat down for my daily bowl of cornflakes and found that I was eating them individually.
It was 9am before I was ready to meet the day and I stumbled down the road to the tram stop. The 96 tram goes through a metamorphosis at 9am. Before that point, it is full of sleepy commuters heading into their office jobs in the City. It’s usually packed and dominated by Ipod wearing, Aravind Adiga readers.
They are safely tucked up at their desks by 9am and at that point the tram is taken over by a bohemian mix that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of Trainspotting. The first to board are the tramps who sleep rough around Acland Street and have just been rudely woken by shopkeepers who take exception to them kipping in their doorways. A comfortable seat on the tram is clearly the best way they can find to ease themselves into the day. Unfortunately, they have a fairly random acquaintance with hygiene and trams are a pretty enclosed space. So my liberal sympathies are very quickly overtaken by a need to protect the volatile contents of my stomach.
So I make my way to the front of the tram and bury myself in a book. Two stops later and we’re on Fitzroy Street, home to fast food restaurants and hostels that cater for drug addicts and the generally bewildered. The wind was strong and several emaciated figures were huddled in the small shelter. That was exactly where the front door of the tram stopped and pretty quickly I was surrounded by six twitching junkies with dark sunken eyes hidden behind sunglasses and skin like old boot leather.
I was feeling pretty judgmental, particularly as none of them bothered to buy a ticket. I’m guessing that they were on their way to the City to engage in financial transactions involving illegal drugs and shop lifting. Strange how you become a right wing scare monger when you have a hangover!
The only other passengers on the tram were a motley crew who had boarded at St Kilda Junction. They were dressed in similar fashion to the junkies but looked healthy and out of place in their clothes. I had seen groups like this before but in my hungover state, it took me a few moments to place them. They were plain clothes ticket inspectors sent in swarms to catch the 90% of passengers who don’t buy a ticket. The tramps and junkies had beaten me to it however. In the few seconds it took my addled brain to work all this out, they had jumped off the tram like ghostly pirates and disappeared into the nearby park.
I flashed my ticket at the inspectors and huddled more tightly in the seat. The click clackety click of the metal wheels rebounded in my head as though somebody was smacking my eyeballs with a hammer from the inside. A smell of stale body odour and year old chewing gum hung round the tram and attacked my senses with every intake of breath. I got off three stops early to breathe in some air and to find a café selling oversized sausage rolls.
Johnny Cash had the right idea. If you’re going to wake up feeling like this, it’s best to do it on a Sunday morning when you can crawl back into bed and at least be comfortable when you lie to yourself about how you are never, ever, ever drinking again.
No comments:
Post a Comment