Spare

You’re welcome, mate.

I left the bathroom, giggling, and walked straight into my mate.

What’s so funny?

I told him he needed to walk into that loo right now and have the experience of a lifetime.

What experience?

Can’t describe it. You have to see for yourself. Meeting Batman pales by comparison.

He was wearing a big puffer jacket with a furry collar, exactly like the one I’d worn to the North and South Poles. Without taking it off he walked into the loo.

I went to make myself another tequila.

Minutes later my mate appeared at my side. His face was white as a sheet.

What happened?

Don’t want to talk about it.

Tell me.

My puffer jacket…became a dragon.

A dragon? In the loo?

And tried to eat me.

Oh dear.

You sent me into a dragon’s lair.

Shit. Sorry, mate.

My delightful trip had been his hell.

How unfortunate. How interesting.

I led him outside gently, told him it would all be OK.

87.

The next day we went to another house party. Inland, though the air still smelt like ocean.

More tequila, more names thrown at me.

And more mushrooms.

We all started playing some kind of game, some kind of charades—I think? Someone handed me a joint. Lovely. I took a hit, looked at the rinsed creamy blue of the California sky. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, said they wanted me to meet Christina Aguilera. Oh, hello, Christina. She looked rather mannish. No, apparently I’d misheard, it wasn’t Christina Aguilera, it was the guy who co-wrote one of her songs.

“Genie in a Bottle.”

Did I know the lyrics? Did he tell me the lyrics?

I’m a genie in a bottle

You gotta rub me the right way

Anyway, he’d made a boatload from those lyrics, and now lived in high style.

Good for you, mate.

I left him, set off across the yard, and the memory trails away for a time. I seem to remember yet another house party…that day? The next?

Eventually, somehow, we made our way back to Monica’s. That is, Courteney’s. It was night. I walked down some stairs to her beachfront and stood with my toes in the ocean, watching the lacy surf come forward, recede, come forward, for what felt like ages. I looked from the water to the sky, back and forth.

Then I stared directly at the moon.

It was speaking to me.

Like the bin and the toilet.

What was it saying?

That the year ahead would be good.

Good how?

Something big.

Really?

Big.

Not more of the same?

No, something special.

Really, Moon?

Promise.

Please don’t lie to me.

I was nearly the age Pa had been when he’d got married, and he’d been considered a tragically late bloomer. At thirty-two he’d been ridiculed for his inability or unwillingness to find a partner.

I was staring thirty-two in the face.

Something has to change. Please?

It will.

I opened my mouth to the sky, to the moon.

To the future.

Aaaah.

Part 3 Captain of My Soul

1.

I was sitting around Nott Cott, scrolling through Instagram. In my feed I saw a video: My friend Violet. And a young woman.

They were playing with a new app that put silly filters on your photos. Violet and the woman had dog ears, dog noses, long red dog tongues hanging out.

Despite the canine cartoon overlay, I sat up straighter.

This woman with Violet…my God.

I watched the video several times, then forced myself to put down the phone.

Then picked it up again, watched the video again.

I’d traveled the world, from top to bottom, literally. I’d hopscotched the continents. I’d met hundreds of thousands of people, I’d crossed paths with a ludicrously large cross-section of the planet’s seven billion residents. For thirty-two years I’d watched a conveyor-belt of faces pass by and only a handful ever made me look twice. This woman stopped the conveyor-belt. This woman smashed the conveyor-belt to bits.

I’d never seen anyone so beautiful.

Why should beauty feel like a punch in the throat? Does it have something to do with our innate human longing for order? Isn’t that what scientists say? And artists? That beauty is symmetry and therefore represents a relief from the chaos? Certainly my life to that point had been chaotic. I can’t deny hungering for order, can’t deny seeking a bit of beauty. I’d just come back from a trip with Pa, Willy and Kate to France, where we’d marked the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, honored the British dead, and I’d read a haunting poem, “Before Action.” It was published by a soldier two days before he’d died in action. It ended: Help me to die, O Lord.

Reading it out, I realized I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live.