Part 4
'I'm taking the tuna with me'

From the bottom of this here glass, even this guy looks pretty hot. In a drunken smelly guy sort of a way. Wait… or is that me? Oh, it’s just the toilet I’m sitting next to. Yeah, that’s it. Bloody frickin’ toilet. Close the damn door or something! Lock it up! I’ll swallow the damn key. It’ll probably taste better than this smells... smells better than this tastes. What do you mean I can move? Of course I can move but I don’t want to. No! Leave me the hell alone with my smell.

I’m drunk.

I am thinking of Astrid and what she has done or what I think she has done and I am thinking of whether I will ever see her naked again or if I could ever find anyone else that I love and is hot and is all that Astrid is. I feel that what I am thinking may be frowned upon by some as superficial and I am thinking where such a voice is coming from in such a drunken state.

Am I really drunk?

Is this all real?

Will I wake up in the morning to find that it was all just a bad dream?

Does she seriously think he’s better-looking than I am? Surely not! He was short. He had bug eyes and the mouth of a horse. Surely she has eyes!

Is this biased?

Is there a God?

Is that a beer stain on my pants or did I just wet myself?

I need to pee.

_____

I’m talking to this guy, right. He’s been sitting next to me all this time and he’s a little shorter than I am and a few years older, and I think he’s fully covered in flannel but that seems unlikely. He’s saying… um… no, I’m saying ‘Would you leave your wife if you found her sleeping with another man?’ and he says ‘Your life is bleeping with another fan?’ I say ‘Fair enough’ and he hesitates, but then nods in enthusiastic agreement and pats me on the back, shouting ‘Good man!’

But, well, of course she may not have been cheating on me at all. I have, to be sure, often seen her on top of guys naked before. Although it’s never been the case where the man ends up creeping out the front door. It typically ends in blood. A lot of it. ‘You see,’ I tell him, ‘she’s a witch.’

He nods again. With a positively solemn sincerity that only drunken men can exhibit, he pats me on the back again and says ‘Me too, mate. My wife is also a bitch.’

‘No, I said “witch”!’

‘She’s rich?’

I try to say no but he’s already patting me on the back again.

‘Good man! Better to leave it all on the cricket pitch, I say,’ he tells me and I nod even though I have no idea what he’s on about.

‘It’s OK that you live in a ditch.’

And that’s when I leave the conversation. He extends his hand and tells me ‘the name’s Mitch’ and I tell him my name and he says ‘good man!’ I turn to leave and that’s when he grabs my hand and, looking almost sober, tells me ‘I know magic… if you ever need any.’ I wave the drunken man away and I say ‘magic is the last thing I want to hear about right now.’

_____

I suspect it’s not so late when I stumble out of the pub, although it could be anytime, really. The walk home seems surreal in its quietness. I look up at the sky and the stars are bright blurry dots constantly coming in and out of focus.

When I come home I have sleep on my mind. Momentarily I remember that I haven’t had dinner yet, but it doesn’t bother me enough to do anything about it. Even though, from where I am, I can see the eighteen cans of tuna that we had bought for 99c each from Coles.

In the morning I wake up with all the pretty symptoms of a hangover. I get up off the couch, which I decided to sleep in last night, and I go upstairs to the bedroom.

It looks normal, I guess. As normal goes the morning after you’ve just witnessed your wife naked and on top of another man but without a ceremonial dagger. The bed is still unmade. Astrid rarely makes the bed in the morning. I leave the house a little later usually, so oftentimes that’s my job. But it seems a little more unmade than usual this morning. You know… yeah.

I stand there for a few minutes, not moving. I see from the alarm clock that it’s actually 3pm or thereabouts. Not morning at all. Then I pick up the sheets and put them in the washer to rid it of the human sin that has soiled its usual pristine white lustre. I consider burning them but decide that I’m not that much of a drama queen.

There is anger within me. Yoda would not approve.

My head still throbs so I go to the potion cabinet and get myself some anti-pounding-head elixir. Unfortunately, while it works wonders to soothe a throbbing head, the elixir has a nasty side effect of intense blistering of the foot. So I quickly down a teaspoon of no-foot-blister powder with a glass of water. This powder has its own side effect of a tick in the neck for ten minutes after consumption. But that, I can live with. Happily.

With a clear, non-pounding, head, I feel only slightly less crap than before. I turn on the TV but that’s mostly crap too at this time. I have no idea what to do. Passions is on and I’m less than passionate about that show even at the best of times.

I start to write Astrid a letter but my writing goes funny every time my head jerks involuntarily to the side. And what if she decides she would rather talk to me instead? I don’t want to talk to her. I really don’t. At least not yet. I wouldn’t know what to say. Do I want to leave? Do I want to stay?

Maybe I can go away and leave the note. But that would be too dramatic, wouldn’t it? And I don’t even know what to write. This is hopeless. This is terrible. And maybe I need to find some Anti-tick-in-the-neck potion. It’s starting to annoy me. And it’s been 20 minutes at least.

On the ABC now there’s some British show from the 70s or early 80s that’s set in a pub similar to the one down the road and there are these two guys talking, both drunk, looking pretty much like me and Mitch did last night except what they are talking about is different. This one guy, who actually looks more American than British (if that makes sense!), is telling the other guy about some woman he slept with the other night and he’s describing it all rather crudely, or at least it’s suggestively crude because the language itself was M15+ at most and it is late afternoon free-to-air TV we’re talking about. And so the other guy is responding in pretty much the same manner and making drunken suggestive hand actions and stuff and it’s all quite disgusting and way over the top. This should be funny. There’s canned laughter in the background to tell me that it’s supposed to be funny. But in no way am I laughing right now. I kinda just stare at the screen without absorbing anything, really. Almost creating my own dialogue and my own show in my head. And suddenly the two guys are no longer Mitch and me. But it’s the guy. You know. That guy. And he’s with some work colleague, some bozo in a suit, sneaking in a quiet late afternoon beer and he’s telling him about this hot chick that he was banging last night and how good she was but then her husband walked in on them. Only this guy, the husband, is a gutless, useless loser who didn’t really get all that angry and instead just walked out the room with his tail between his legs and started watching some dumb documentary about pyramids or something while he got dressed and calmly went out the front door. Now what a stupid tosser this guy is who sees his wife screwing someone else and just does nothing about it. Nothing!

_____

I think I know now that this is not a dream. If anything, it’s waking up from the dream. The happy home. The beautiful wife. The magic of it all. I need to go. At least for a while to clear my head. I’ll take some clothes, some CDs and the car. I’ll finish that letter and tell her that I need some time out. I’ll tell her that I’m taking all of the eighteen cans of tuna that we got for 99c each at Coles, and some bread. And then I’m taking this book of hers. It’s called Magic for Beginners. By some German guy named Alexander Wurz. It’s a glossy, full-colour, fully illustrated coffee table book laid out like one of Jamie Oliver’s cookbooks. From what I can tell, it’s like an overview of all types of magic from around the world. And I am going to read this book from cover to cover and if I find something magical in it about sitting naked on top of a guy without a ceremonial dagger, I’ll come back home. Actually, I’ll come back home soon, regardless, but that’s what I’ll tell her in my note anyway.

Yes, I know. I’m a fool.