Oh Shit.

The thirst. Oh Christ that barren sensation; waking up, cruelly hung-over, is a sensation I’m all too used to. Its ten thirty in the morning this time, it’s six thirty another time, it was noon last weekend. It’s always too early. I always need more sleep; I’m always so fucking thirsty that I have to go and get out of bed.
Eleven o’clock; bloodshot eyes peel open against their will and I feel a clammy yet sandy sensation on my parched tongue. Oh I need water; I wonder just how badly. Maybe I can get back off, try and ignore the thirst, breathe through my nose and let glorious sleep take hold again.
I close my eyes; I try and empty my mind. I do what I always do, think of nothing, think of blackness. Think vast, empty, cool blackness. But what else is black? My mouth. The inside of my mouth. My cursed mouth, the parched crusty disgrace of the hung-over whole beneath my nose. Shit.
The air rushes through my nasal passage and straight onto my tongue, a dried slab of yellow meat resting heavily like a beached whale in my slackened mouth.
But what’s this? My senses are drearily returning to me, beginning to heighten to a still slightly drunken peak. I feel a presence at my side, a sense of some other; I can feel that the bed is weighted behind me. Its clear to me now, I’m not alone here. All of a sudden, the warmth under the covers seems overpowering. Someone else’s body heat is mixing with my own. I think..
Did I? No, I wasn’t that pissed, I’d remember. I look down now and its then, then I spot those hairy toes poking out from under my duvet.
That bastard.
He’s done it again. I realise now that I’m practically falling out onto the floor, I’m literally on the edge of my own bed, a bed that I joyfully embraced last night, a bed that I embraced alone. That fucking arse. I’m hung-over and Gareth is in my bed. Again.
Gareth is my friend; he was rendered homeless and unemployed by as he put it “a series of unfortunate events”. Basically his long suffering “selfish” parents left the country and he’s too lazy to find a job.
“Alright, fine, don’t worry about it mate; its all good. Yeah come stay with me. Don’t thank me man honestly. Mates are mates, I’ll sort you out.”
What a fool I was.
Because I’m a stupid naïve foetus of a friend I even let him stay,
“for as long as you need”
And for free, the only condition being that he’ll have to make do with a couch. I can see the logic now,
“No problem having Gareth here, he’s a laugh.”
I’d forgotten the fundamental truth though: your mates are your mates, but invariably, once you live together, you will grow to hate them. You won’t want to, you just will. Little things like washing up, their habits, and their moroseness all become exaggerated ten fold. You’ll stew things in your mind until the things that annoy you about them take over and your friend becomes a pastiche, a walking stereotype, a testament to pet hates. Eventually you end up sitting alone in your room or pretending to go to bed just so you don’t have to spend another minute in the living room with that boring uptight bastard. As soon as you both move out though, all is well. You’ll slowly start to realise that in actual fact, they’re not that bad. It’s a fact.
Never before though, has a point been so well illustrated, as in the case of my friend Gareth. The “borrowing” of my things, his incessant skin maintenance regime, his ability to just sit doing nothing but watch TV (that I know he doesn’t enjoy) for hours on end all day every day and his extended periods of grumpiness.
Worst though are his drunken antics. He never listens to reason and he reckons that everything is funny; everything is a joke, no matter how offensive or invasive it gets. He’s never wrong about anything and your opinion is always total rubbish, only last week in a drunken conversation about the merits of Jack Nicholson’s performance in the film Wolf he referred to my opinion as “trite, uninformed and downright jingoistic.” Jingoistic? The twat.
Anyway, back to my original point. Recently he’s started to drunkenly ignore the sleeping arrangements that I carefully laid out for him before he arrived, wherein he sleeps on the couch and I enjoy the privacy of my own room.
Five times now I’ve awoken next to him and the first that I know I about his presence is an arm draped lazily over my shoulders. A couple of times I have awoken with my face lying on the wooden top of my bedside table, one leg draped off the edge of my bed. I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you either, his personal hygiene leaves a lot to be desired.
So anyway, I’m lying on the edge of my bed completely still; my body is a ruler, it’s brittle and irritable. I pull at the duvet like a child, I want more sleep. How can I get this man from my bed? This creature of scant regard and ignorant contempt who so befouls my mornings.
I know from past experience that he has a real knack for making me seem like a petty bastard when I push him across the bed as hard as I can, pushing with my toes rather than the balls of my feet so it hurts more. The look in his eyes is too wounding even for me, so that’s out of the question. Maybe I could just shake him?
But oh I need a drink, Jesus Christ I need a glass of water. My bladder is flexing too, I must leave the bed, there’s no chance I can sleep till I’ve gone to the bathroom.
But he’ll still be here when I get back. He knows when the bed gets lighter, as my weight is removed; he knows just when to roll over and consume the entire mattress. Once that happens he’ll be there like a limpet and I’ll have to go on the couch. No I’ll stay here for a while, formulate a plan of action.
I’m lying there and my alcohol hazed mind is holding crisis talks with itself, I’m deciding, debating; plotting. My stomach rumbles as air shifts in the clogged dirtiness of my colon and in my mind germinates a plan, it dances to the rhythm of my stirring body as this seed of an idea blossoms and my stomach churns.
HA! I find myself grinning at the sheer naughtiness of what I think I’m going to do to my friend. Maybe it won’t get rid of him, maybe it will, either way it’ll amuse me on an immature level, my caveman level.
I ease myself off the bed as gently as I can and I drop my pants. He feels the bed grow lighter and his subconscious initiates takeover procedures, rolling over onto his stomach with his face looking right at me over the edge of the bed, blissfully unaware. I bend over so my bare arse is literally centimetres away from his nose.
I’m chuckling boyishly at what I’m about to do, I’m twenty seven years old, I haven’t broken wind in anyone’s face in over a decade. I pull apart my buttocks with either hand, a hand on each sumptuous cheek.
No sound Gareth. No for you my friend, just the sweet, sweet aroma.
“This’ll wake you, you bastard.”
The words are rattling in my brain, I try to suppress snorts and brays of laughter under my breath. I nearly lose my nerve; I had a kebab last night for God’s sake. Fuck it, I decide to do it anyway.
I push; gently trying to coax it out.
Nothing.
I need more power so I push harder, pulling my arse cheeks apart further and tighter. Literally though, the very moment that I do this, my stomach gives an almighty churn and a long thin jet of foul brown excreta explodes out of my arse, directly into Gareth’s face.
His eyes click open and he’s awake. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t be?
“OH SHIT!”
I’ve just accidentally shat in my friends face. I’m looking down incredulously at him and all I can think is that there is nothing I can possibly say to get out of this. Nothing at all.