Cabin Fever

Standing, the room feels upside down, a cabin aboard a ship sinking to the sea floor, and I’m queasy and despondent. Finding Connolly’s sheets, they feel as if made out of Crayola paste and I cling to them trying not to lose my grip. Dragging myself along the bed, grimacing, through tobacco grains, human grease and discount paperback lit. Crime and Punishment. Can’t lift my head and I almost laugh remembering morning’s of Connolly’s Stretch Amstrong bollocks spilling onto the bedsheets. In the end I only groan. Jack and Bance just left for the 3pm shift and I’m whimpering for them like a grounded puppy with worms. Tempted to cry. Didn’t want them to see me cry but realise I wanted to cry just so they could see me capitulate and maybe they’d have burst into infantile spasms of tears too. We’ve suffered an Exodus. Turner’s Gondola. On ‘temporary leave for family reasons’ amongst the Venetian waterways. Connolly’s flown back to Mullingar for his Granny’s 90^th. Tony and Calvin just bolted. Too soon, too soon I’d insisted but not anymore. I just want to go home. To lie, foetal on the couch, with Mom watching shite telly and complaining about shite chocolates, while my Dad’s complains about shite telly and devours shite chocolates.

What the fuck had happened? This had been forecast. The meltdown. Jacks neuroses have been made flesh and I can feel them gnawing and slashing at my guts and liver and almost every other sentient part of me. ‘The drink is a curse’, Bance solemnly prophesises. I’m in the throes of the DT’s with no preacher for an exorcism. Realise I haven’t had two consecutive days without a drink in over a month. Mass glasses clink in my head and the impact is as shattering as anvils on dentistry. Soon I’m begging and pleading but there’s no one listening. Bargaining with an invisible jury. Overruled. Texts are fired at random targets and ‘message sending failed’ pings on repeat. The room is perpetually dark and dank and it’s my fucking coffin. Helped off the U-Bahn by a German pensioner couple. Lost my keys on the 100 metre walk from the station to the door and know I’ll never find them again. No lenses, can’t see. Can’t hear anything clearly. Through the walls, the muffled shifting of pots, mattresses, furniture. The lads will be back but don’t know what time. Cabin fever.

I need a fag. Hope I remember how to roll. Grope myself for that pouch of American Spirit dust. Wek. Verloren. But it was there only seconds ago. You’re imagining it. Stop please... I know, I know. Roll over and smash onto the wooden floor. Frenzied hands sifting through hills of dirty jocks, filthy socks and mustard mosaic smurf blue t-shirts. In the ensuing maelstrom of cold perspiration almost every square centimetre of the room is tossed up. The search party has failed. Hope is lost. Chest heaving, I sit on the bed and moan in childlike confusion and pound my fist into various points of my skull to distract from the headache. After a few minutes, I lean back resigned to finally being the first of the lads to completely lose their sanity in Munich, when suddenly I hear a crinkling. Opening my legs I see a Native American Indian sternly staring up, half crushed beneath my arse. It’s not quite sanity but it’s a small step back and I’m on the metal grid step loving and hating every drag as it cuts my throat and dopes me. Watching the dark lavender sky and the knotty pines loom like blurry totems, I lie on the concrete and await rescue.