All Yesterday's Parties
October 24th 2007 06:58
I had a run-in this morning with the law. Murphy's lesser known third law.
"Self-abuse catches up with you, but especially so in middle age."
Driving to work after an enjoyable evening spree spent drinking with teenage daughter and an old friend hooked on pot, I realised I was incapable of pursuing the mission ie) to actually continue onto work and do my day in the salt mills. Feeling creeping death and sickness at hand I pulled over and stopped the car. At a stroke the national drug authorities worst fears were being confirmed, at least it seemed in my case. Drugs were bad for business and the economy. The driver at the helm of Ford station wagon VSB *** was frail proof for what Major Watters everywhere had been carping all along.
“Keep it up mate and just see what happens to you.”
In a tree-lined avenue by the racecourse in quiet Canterbury I recognised,some-what disbelievingly, the reason for my lack of forward progress. It wasn't the usual rigours of the 'hangover' which in my case were more aptly a 'hang around', rather I'd just had what my grandma Maude might have deftly described as 'a nasty turn'.
In the driver's seat I sat contemplating the very real possibility that my time had finally come. Other things worried me about this sudden state of affairs. Not being able to ingest freely or at all since I'd be dead I saw as a real problem. Then whether burial or cremation mattered to one nearing the hereafter. Yet here was my old and trusted body, like a smart mutt in a kid's flick, trying to tell me something important.
"What is it Lassie? What's the matter girl?" echoed somewhere down a musty corridor in my head.
I examined the real situation for a moment. Cars and buses filled with healthy looking people en route to work buzzed past. Through watery eyes I stared out through the windscreen. For a moment I recoiled in glimpsing the long, asphalt curve of employment stretching out to the observable rim of my universe. But hat if yesterday had been my last day at work? My very last night 'getting on it"?
Needing calm I switched off a Vatican cleric on radio busily bagging out 'The God Delusion'. as I sat and dealt with fresh delusions of my own. My legs felt as though they'd turned to water, my vision was blurred, I had pins and needles running up and down my neck. See I'd not had this kind of thing before, certainly not followed through on braving the work front come what may, come Hell or high water. I felt in bad need of a drink but that it was out of the question. A beer ad on a bus passed further deepening my bleak outlook. Thoughts turned to death stalking the scene, of ambulance officers assisting me like uniformed bridesmaids through the dark portals of the afterlife.
I've always been funny about the notion of dying in public (save state sanctioned execution) and the chance of doing so in a non-descript suburban street didn't fit with my private visions of deathly grandeur. Popping off in full view in your own vehicle didn't strike me as an illustrious exit either. I always felt for others "on the scene" when unfortunate people keeled over in a supermarket or staff canteen. The banal always seemed to reward the Reaper far more than his due.
Feeling as poorly as I now did I didn't want a pretty young thing all over the road because she'd found a man's body stewing in a car not far from the stables. The Sydney metropolis was in the grip of a horse flu pandemic raging and its effects on those in contact were being broadcast far and wide. It was certainly how I felt right at that moment, like an aged gelding full of snot. More than that the last thing I wanted was a stranger whinnying with fake grief because they'd been luckless enough find me dead at the wheel in the suburban backblocks. I glanced down at the car clock as punch-in time drew neigh knowing I needed to make a decision: to go or not to go, that was the question. I comforted myself with the thought that I'd be of little aid at work in the event I actually did croak or, more importantly, submitted to embarrassing myself by suffering a stroke or 'bleeding out' ebola style from the eyeballs or ears or elsewhere. For all that I was struck with but one great insight: my rock and roll lifestyle had finally caught with me. Twenty plus years of ruthless pissing on and partying were officially exacting a toll and here was the evidence. So I turned the car around and started for home hoping I'd make it. My dear lady wife just happened to be home that day and is it not better to die in the arms of the one you love than be carted away to a funeral director until the family are notified? Seeing the selfishness inherent in that I drove home feeling just darn awful, clammy and quite overwrought mentally.
Ah, the late 40's! What a swirling sludge pool of confusion and woe these none so salad years are. The party animal in you still wants to party. The beast in you still want to live in wanton tubs of lubricant and lust yet sex seems to allude you at every turn. You know more about life than you ever did just as your body is busily bulging and prepping you for the big descent into Dirt Nap Central. Pulling up outside my house I saw I'd finally reached what my father had once called the 'realm of invisibility'. That place in life where a man without millions or minions begins to literally vanish in front of his own eyes, never mind younger women or the mentally impaired.
I walked in and my wife's lovely face signalled concern.
'What's the matter? What are you doing back home darl?'
I said I'd just suffered some kind of 'spell' and didn't think that I'd get through the day and so had headed home.
'Will I ring a doctor?'
'No, I just think I've really overdone it lately. And the kids are driving me apeshit every morning.'
'Are you sure I shouldn't be ringing the doctor?'
'No thanks, I'd prefer to just lie down, if that's OK? I'm really sorry but I feel like crap.'
'C'mon sweetheart. Come and I'll keep an eye on you.'
The wife put me straight to bed and laid down beside me and read, keeping an eye on me to see how I slept. Did I mention the great fortune of having someone like her to love you when you're pushing 50 and flabby and snore like a chainsaw? It makes any death bed look just a shade more enticing.
Maybe I'd try going back to work again tomorrow, maybe I wouldn't. My wife wants me to rest for a few days ands see how I go. But that October morning there was no denying that time was no longer on my side. Decisions of a very mature and tedious nature would soon need to be made.
I wondered how my necklace of addictions felt about that. And what would the kids think of a father gone the straight and narrow?
Probably more than they ever could for a dead man.
Tonight I'll try and take it easy. For all concerned it seems the only reasonable course of action.
I don't want to grow up but I fear the day has arrived in time with the advent of the jacaranda season. Purple blooms dot the hillsides everywhere in this big, tired old gal of a town. How appropriate that purple be the colour of loss and mourning.
I guess that the truth is that you can't mourn what you no longer have. Wish me luck on getting out of the pits and on the road to recovery.
24/10/07 1350 words.
"Self-abuse catches up with you, but especially so in middle age."
Driving to work after an enjoyable evening spree spent drinking with teenage daughter and an old friend hooked on pot, I realised I was incapable of pursuing the mission ie) to actually continue onto work and do my day in the salt mills. Feeling creeping death and sickness at hand I pulled over and stopped the car. At a stroke the national drug authorities worst fears were being confirmed, at least it seemed in my case. Drugs were bad for business and the economy. The driver at the helm of Ford station wagon VSB *** was frail proof for what Major Watters everywhere had been carping all along.
“Keep it up mate and just see what happens to you.”
In a tree-lined avenue by the racecourse in quiet Canterbury I recognised,some-what disbelievingly, the reason for my lack of forward progress. It wasn't the usual rigours of the 'hangover' which in my case were more aptly a 'hang around', rather I'd just had what my grandma Maude might have deftly described as 'a nasty turn'.
In the driver's seat I sat contemplating the very real possibility that my time had finally come. Other things worried me about this sudden state of affairs. Not being able to ingest freely or at all since I'd be dead I saw as a real problem. Then whether burial or cremation mattered to one nearing the hereafter. Yet here was my old and trusted body, like a smart mutt in a kid's flick, trying to tell me something important.
"What is it Lassie? What's the matter girl?" echoed somewhere down a musty corridor in my head.
I examined the real situation for a moment. Cars and buses filled with healthy looking people en route to work buzzed past. Through watery eyes I stared out through the windscreen. For a moment I recoiled in glimpsing the long, asphalt curve of employment stretching out to the observable rim of my universe. But hat if yesterday had been my last day at work? My very last night 'getting on it"?
Needing calm I switched off a Vatican cleric on radio busily bagging out 'The God Delusion'. as I sat and dealt with fresh delusions of my own. My legs felt as though they'd turned to water, my vision was blurred, I had pins and needles running up and down my neck. See I'd not had this kind of thing before, certainly not followed through on braving the work front come what may, come Hell or high water. I felt in bad need of a drink but that it was out of the question. A beer ad on a bus passed further deepening my bleak outlook. Thoughts turned to death stalking the scene, of ambulance officers assisting me like uniformed bridesmaids through the dark portals of the afterlife.
I've always been funny about the notion of dying in public (save state sanctioned execution) and the chance of doing so in a non-descript suburban street didn't fit with my private visions of deathly grandeur. Popping off in full view in your own vehicle didn't strike me as an illustrious exit either. I always felt for others "on the scene" when unfortunate people keeled over in a supermarket or staff canteen. The banal always seemed to reward the Reaper far more than his due.
Feeling as poorly as I now did I didn't want a pretty young thing all over the road because she'd found a man's body stewing in a car not far from the stables. The Sydney metropolis was in the grip of a horse flu pandemic raging and its effects on those in contact were being broadcast far and wide. It was certainly how I felt right at that moment, like an aged gelding full of snot. More than that the last thing I wanted was a stranger whinnying with fake grief because they'd been luckless enough find me dead at the wheel in the suburban backblocks. I glanced down at the car clock as punch-in time drew neigh knowing I needed to make a decision: to go or not to go, that was the question. I comforted myself with the thought that I'd be of little aid at work in the event I actually did croak or, more importantly, submitted to embarrassing myself by suffering a stroke or 'bleeding out' ebola style from the eyeballs or ears or elsewhere. For all that I was struck with but one great insight: my rock and roll lifestyle had finally caught with me. Twenty plus years of ruthless pissing on and partying were officially exacting a toll and here was the evidence. So I turned the car around and started for home hoping I'd make it. My dear lady wife just happened to be home that day and is it not better to die in the arms of the one you love than be carted away to a funeral director until the family are notified? Seeing the selfishness inherent in that I drove home feeling just darn awful, clammy and quite overwrought mentally.
Ah, the late 40's! What a swirling sludge pool of confusion and woe these none so salad years are. The party animal in you still wants to party. The beast in you still want to live in wanton tubs of lubricant and lust yet sex seems to allude you at every turn. You know more about life than you ever did just as your body is busily bulging and prepping you for the big descent into Dirt Nap Central. Pulling up outside my house I saw I'd finally reached what my father had once called the 'realm of invisibility'. That place in life where a man without millions or minions begins to literally vanish in front of his own eyes, never mind younger women or the mentally impaired.
I walked in and my wife's lovely face signalled concern.
'What's the matter? What are you doing back home darl?'
I said I'd just suffered some kind of 'spell' and didn't think that I'd get through the day and so had headed home.
'Will I ring a doctor?'
'No, I just think I've really overdone it lately. And the kids are driving me apeshit every morning.'
'Are you sure I shouldn't be ringing the doctor?'
'No thanks, I'd prefer to just lie down, if that's OK? I'm really sorry but I feel like crap.'
'C'mon sweetheart. Come and I'll keep an eye on you.'
The wife put me straight to bed and laid down beside me and read, keeping an eye on me to see how I slept. Did I mention the great fortune of having someone like her to love you when you're pushing 50 and flabby and snore like a chainsaw? It makes any death bed look just a shade more enticing.
Maybe I'd try going back to work again tomorrow, maybe I wouldn't. My wife wants me to rest for a few days ands see how I go. But that October morning there was no denying that time was no longer on my side. Decisions of a very mature and tedious nature would soon need to be made.
I wondered how my necklace of addictions felt about that. And what would the kids think of a father gone the straight and narrow?
Probably more than they ever could for a dead man.
Tonight I'll try and take it easy. For all concerned it seems the only reasonable course of action.
I don't want to grow up but I fear the day has arrived in time with the advent of the jacaranda season. Purple blooms dot the hillsides everywhere in this big, tired old gal of a town. How appropriate that purple be the colour of loss and mourning.
I guess that the truth is that you can't mourn what you no longer have. Wish me luck on getting out of the pits and on the road to recovery.
24/10/07 1350 words.
| 105 |
| Vote |
Comments (1)
Add Comments
