It was a gradual feeling of realisation that I’d been moving around,
changing positions for at least the past twenty, thirty minutes; though I
couldn’t be sure. My damp half of the duvet was completely drenched in
sweat; bladder aching with a dull and strangely comfortable pain; which
funnily enough, I wasn’t so desperate to relieve at once.
Instead
I lay there on the edge of cloud-cuckoo-land, trying to remember what
the hell kind of world I’d only just been dreaming about a few moments
before - swirling into and out of semi-consciousness, shapes and voices
moved slowly away, barely out of grasp.
My girlfriend on the bed
next to me was giving off heat like some kind of burning radiation
device. My own personal living, breathing hot water bottle. The last
thing I needed in the middle of summer in a place like this. And then,
as the sweat continued to ooze from my pores I began to notice a
familiar buzzing in the room. The high pitched wheezing noise of a
mosquito we must have missed earlier on. Now there was no way of me
getting back to sleep.
I picked up my Casio watch from the tiled floor beside me and pressed the light.
2:33.
This meant… not counting her reading, me reading and our usual goodnight, I’d been asleep for hardly an hour.
I
moved on to my back, then again to the front, flattening my face
against the pillow. Then I was pushing the palm of my right hand against
the smooth floor, hoping for some of the coolness to filter through my
body, allowing my bare foot to do the same and it helped a little; but
not enough. I needed a cigarette. A glass of milk. A piss. I needed to
get up, out of this bed, this room.
Sliding silently out from
under the duvet, I grabbed a t-shirt, glanced briefly at the lump in the
bed to check my girlfriend was still asleep, carefully opened the
bedroom door and before I knew it was standing in front of the fridge in
the kitchen searching for milk, water, some juice, a beer, something to
quench my sudden thirst. All I could find however were the remains of
my girlfriend’s unfinished vodka and lemonade; the tumbler carefully
covered with cling-film, preventing, I supposed, the last few remaining
bubbles from escaping so easily.
I ripped the film from the glass
and downed the contents, looking around afterwards for anything else to
drink, rechecking the fridge before settling for a cigarette and mildly
painful piss in the bathroom.
I ran the tap, opened the window,
flicked ash into the sink and outside intermittently … considered
risking a couple of gulps of tap water before deciding not to and taking
a few deep breaths of outside air instead.
I dragged on the end
of my cigarette, wondering what to do next. I didn’t feel like going
back to bed. Maybe a bit of TV for a while would go down well. Though
without anything to quench my thirst … possibly I was gonna have to
think about hydrating myself as a priority.
I flicked through the
TV channels anyway, being careful to hit hard on the decrease volume
button as soon as the screen lit up. News, a cooking programme, shopping
channel, some girls playing pool in bikinis, another girl telling me
about her likes and dislikes whilst suggestively playing with her
bra-strap, baseball, more baseball, wrestling, yesterday’s basketball
game, news … back to the girl telling me about her interests who was now
down to just a bra and panties. I gazed at the monitor knowing exactly
what was gonna happen next but waited anyway. This girl liked long walks
on the beach, eating sushi and going to the spa. She had a tattoo of a
purple rose on her thigh, long fake eyelashes, deep blue eyes, short
thick dyed yellow hair and red underwear. She had the thumb of her left
hand hooked around the top of her panties while the other hand was
waving around in rhythm to her giggles as she let me in to knowing all
about her secret love of swimming naked.
And there it was,
straight to adverts just as her hands were moving up to behind her bra:
Adverts with lots of other girls waiting for my call or text. So I
switched off the TV, knowing that yet another girl would only be
appearing after the break, all ready to tease me into reaching for my
credit card which I had no desire or need to be getting myself into.
I
returned to the bathroom to grab my cigarettes, pulled a pair of jeans
off the back of the sofa; checked the pockets for money, finding a
couple of decent notes inside. I took another look in the bedroom to see
if my girlfriend was still asleep; which I guessed from the look of the
lump that she was; but I whispered, “Just popping down the 7-11, be
back in a while,” anyway.
