“I met this guy who worked in a crematorium once…  You know how people always say they want to be burned because they’ve heard all these horror stories about funeral parlours and people fucking the dead guy?” asks Raymond.
            “Yeah, I heard those…  Although I saw this film where a hot chick was the one doing it.  I could never decide whether that was the ultimate compliment or an ironic insult.  I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t fuck me if I was alive…  Perhaps I could have just lain very still…”
            “Yeah, yeah… anyway… this guy was not a hot chick.  He was creepy…”
            “He wasn’t a fucking goth was he?”
            “No mate, he was almost normal… just really skinny and with these bug-eyes.”
            “How’d you know him?”
            “The company I work for makes urns…  Anyway, that’s not the point.  This guy…”
            “Yeah?”
            “He asked me if I wanted to do a couple of lines…”
            “He’s got coke?  Can you ask him for his dealer’s number?  I can’t find anyone in this fucking city.”
            “No… not of coke…  The dude was doing lines of ash…  He was snorting fucking people…”
            “You’re kidding me?”
            “No, I’m serious; he just tipped a little out of this urn and chopped it up on the desk right in front of me.  He said you get this really weird high off it… it’s like someone punches you hard in the adrenaline gland…”
            “No way…”
            “I’m serious… it was fucking horrible…”
            “Did you call the cops?”
            “Hell, I’m not even sure if it’s illegal and he’s a really good customer.”
            “Were you tempted to try it?”
            “A little… it’s not like I’d get many chances.”

            I think back to the conversation with Raymond as I stumble into the kitchen the next morning.  I can’t even remember how we got onto the subject.  I know we started the evening talking about what a whore his ex-wife is currently being.  Christ… did he say he was going to murder her?  Could that be how we got onto funerals?  Why did I have to get so drunk?  If he’s going to kill her he’ll go to prison and I’ll have to get another friend.  What the hell else could have gotten us to that point?
            I try to glue the two halves of the conversation back together in my head but it’s like a broken mug; there’s always a fragment you can never find.  It’s usually under the oven by the way.  Oh and never try and glue the handle back on; it falls off the moment you put anything hot in there.
            Ah shit.  I just spilt coffee on my dressing gown.  It’s just such a bitch to wash.  The damn thing turns everything pink no matter how many times I wash it.  Even worse, that’s breakfast lost.  I do try to wring some out into the mug but it comes out tinged pink.
            I think I’m just going to call in sick today.  I really can’t face going into that place after that whole thing with Shelly.  I knew we shouldn’t have gone to a bar.  When I get drunk I just tell people everything… I can’t stop.  She immediately told the entire office everything about Brianna.  I walked in and everyone there instantly treated me like some kind of psychopath.  I didn’t have a chance at telling my sober side of the story… the side with all the lies and modifications that make me look better.
            God.
            I’m not even going to call in sick.  I’m convinced that it’s more believable if you’re “too sick to reach the phone”.  I tried calling once when I was genuinely sick and spent half an hour trying to make myself understood.  I’m convinced it led to me developing full-blown pneumonia.
            Why did I have to tell her about Brianna?  Why do I always get roped into that “Oh my ex was just like that but worse” game?  It’s not like the police got involved…  I just wanted to convince her she’d made a mistake…  I guess they might be right when they say that the mistake was that second date.
            Oh Christ… every fucking morning I remember this…  Why does my brain hate me so?  I can’t even sit in the bath without remembering it...  I need a drink.
            I shuffle over to the cupboard and stare at the line of bottles.  After five minutes I remember that I have nowhere near enough practice to be able to use alcohol to forget.  I’m not an analogue drunk who can gently glide to the right level.  I’m a digital drunk who alternates between sober and vomiting both the truth and my dinner.
            I get another cup of coffee.
            It’s officially too late to go into work.  Here’s comes the sense of guilt and failure that makes it impossible to relax and enjoy the rest.  Along with it will come the paranoia…  I won’t be able to leave the house without feeling the certain dread that I will be spotted by someone on their lunch break.  Is that what I secretly want?  Do I want to get caught?  Do I want to get fired and escape the laughing of my colleagues?

            I need a drink.

            Why the hell do I keep thinking that?  I don’t like drinking…  I only say that in a moment of melodrama because the movies have told me it’s what I should be doing.  Every single time I’ve tried it I have thrown up sometime in the afternoon and gone to bed with a terrible headache.  I should accept that, while I may have my balls, I am a spiritual eunuch.
            Maybe I could go into work and just tell them I got laid…  That would make them think that there’s a woman on Earth that would put up with my madness…  That might set a precedent and the rumours would just die…  What if I went in there with a whore?  Not a cheap one… but one who’d dress up like a Normal…  Or I could get her to drop off my lunch in some sexy suit…  Would that work?  They’d probably just ask her if she knew about Brianna.
            I need a drink.
           
            I didn’t even bother to get up and look in the cupboard that time.  I’m the least romantic human being on Earth.  I’m like Rick if they’d forced him into the Casablanca branch Alcoholic’s Anonymous.  I’m not a haggard yet deep character hunched over a bar with a drink, a cigarette and a Frenchman.  I’m just a smoker who has to go outside in the rain and watch people laugh about me through the office window.
            I so wanted to be cool…  I wanted to be the rugged antihero who would bed a blonde a few times before having to grudgingly convince her that leaving me was the best thing.  It turns out I do convince women that leaving me is the best thing… it’s just not deliberate.
            I wonder if Brianna thinks that she might have made a mistake when she sits in the bath?  I was lovely when I wasn’t insane… it’s just that maybe I did a little too much of the insane…
            Ah fuck, I just dropped my cigarette in my crotch.  It’s burned right the way through the dressing gown and through my boxers.  To make matters worse I burned my fingers trying to pick it out.
           
            I stand in the bathroom, boxers around my ankles, dressing gown thrown open and my cock flopped over the side of the sink full of cold water.  I stare at the reflection in the mirror.  The big black bags beneath my eyes never seem to go away anymore and I only shave when my chin starts to itch.  My hair is a mess, the parting zigzagging randomly.
            I tap the cigarette into the toilet and listen to the faint “pss” as it hits the water.  Yes… that is the sound of my life.  That’s the sound of my golden years… from the tip of childhood straight to the yellow water of looming middle-age.
            I wonder if Brianna has gotten old…  I wonder if she’s now bloated and faded… perhaps a shadow of her former youthful beauty…  Would desperation reverse the tables and cause her to cling to me now?  Would my clinging insanity make me seem like a reciprocating security blanket?  With a cock?  That she’d do things to?
           
            I stare blankly at the television and ponder whether jerking off to the delusional resurrection of a dead relationship is worse than the fact I fought through the incredible pain every time I touched the burned area… or whether the two combined to possibly mark the greatest low of my existence.  Does that rival the time I looked at that vintage porn and, halfway through, realised that everyone involved was dead now… yet kept going?  I’m pretty certain it’s lower than even the most horrendous woman I’ve had sex with as… well… at least there was a woman there.
            I realise that the bathroom window was open and people are walking by outside.  Many of them are taking their kids to school. 
            I need a drink.

            I watch morning television.  Out of boredom I phone up in order to enter a competition where the prize is a day at a spa.  By some miracle I end up getting through only to be asked a question about lip gloss.  I become the only person in the history of the programme to fail to win the prize.  The hosts sympathise but also laugh at me for being a man calling in.  I lie and claim it’s for “my wife” but when I can’t think of a name quickly they laugh at me.  Then I do the worst thing possible.  I tell them my wife’s name is Brianna.  I do this while my name and location is up on the screen.
            It takes five minutes for the true implications of my act to occur to me.
            I reluctantly pick up the phone and call the office to tell them I’m quitting.  When I tell them who’s calling I can hear the entire office suddenly go quiet.  Some form of signal has probably been given to everyone.  I forgot they have a TV in the office break room.  Then I’m fired for lying about being sick again. 
            I need a drink.
           
            I really do need a drink.  But I know I’ll be sick.  I need to do something though.  I need something to cheer me up or I’ll take a bath with the toaster.  I stare around the room.  I stare at the mantelpiece. 
            Five minutes later I’m chopping a line of Aunt Agatha. 
When she hits the back of my throat she tastes like bacon grease. 

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