Bit of a Weird One Where You Go to the Bathroom and Realise You’re Quite a Bit More Pissed Than You Thought You Were Before You Stood Up and Have a Full-on Wobble About it?

November 16, 2018, 8:16am

Woah OK woah I: huh OK hmm, kind of didn’t really know you were this drunk before you got up and came to the bathroom, but here you are anyway, leaning on the cool white tiles of the cubicle ( don’t think about how much piss has made it up here, do not think about how many errant old piss particles are currently pressed against your forehead) and sort of panting like a wounded hog, and you know you’ve been here long enough now that it’s weird – the friends outside have cycled through “probably having a shit, lol” to “probably died in there, lol” to “maybe they just left and we didn’t notice, in which case they are dead to me now” and you can hear the sounds outside your cubicle – the dull pound of music, the opening and closing of doors, men in calf-length coats walking energetically towards a urinal and making overly friendly smalltalk at it (“You having a good night, yeah?” please sir, my dick is out), and you press a piece of cheap toilet paper to your mouth to mop up the spit and you are like: god, fuck, I actually have to take myself home, how pathetic, and you go and sit back down and a couple of people have left and everyone else is talking about something far too deep for you to insert yourself into now anyway, and you have a pint of Coke in front of you but you don’t finish it, and you spend ten minutes finding enough blood and energy to power your legs up and out of the pub – “right then sorry see you” – and now you’re out here, swaying, squinting at the blurring white lines of the bus signs, and you walk for a while to try to get On A Level again, and you end up out at some kebab shop halfway towards your house with loads of sober and unfamiliar men in front of you ordering Friday night shawarmas, and nobody else seems pissed, nobody else asks for chips like you do, and god fucking hell what’s happened to you: you used to be able to take a beer after work, didn’t you? You used to be able to handle a sesh. And now it’s not even midnight and you’re burping and swaying and praying for bed – Uber rating too low to get a cab, but you’re definitely thinking about it – and what’s wrong with you? Maybe it’s the diet lately; that’s definitely gone to shit. What about the stress? You’ve been worrying about work a bit too much lately (you told yourself as a youth you would rather murder your own head off than worry about work, and now look at you: the faint scent of a half-promotion in the water and here you are taking your laptop home at night)? You haven’t called your mum. You’ve been getting up early and going to bed late. You realise with a groan your room is a tip.

Maybe you should sort your life out, you think, narrowly avoiding buckling one-legged into the road. Maybe get up tomorrow and have a clear out. Learn to poach an egg. Maybe… a week without… drinking? A fortnight… maybe? But no, you do what you normally do: fall into bed all hot without brushing your teeth, watch YouTube videos for I cannot believe I’m saying this but two-and-a-half hours, fall asleep with your shoes on, wake up in the morning hanging, breakfast is four paracetamol and two frozen garlic breads, which you burn together in the oven while simultaneously watching a re-run of Sunday Brunch and re-downloading Tinder.