#12 RELAXING
Let go once in a while. You are a loose lily floating down an amber river. 💆♂️
My mum walked into the living room and stifled a laugh. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked. I thought it was perfectly obvious: the curtains were drawn, the candles were lit, and Eva Cassidy’s rendition of Fields of Gold was softly emanating from the CD player. ‘I’m relaxing,’ I replied. All that was missing was a glass of red wine and a cigarette, though these additions had not yet occurred to me, for I was nine. You’ve got to assume I had seen an adult doing this and thought, that looks good. I wasn’t wrong. I’ve enjoyed putting my trotters up for as long as I can remember. Given my early introduction to idling, by now I’m pretty much an expert. But even the best lay-down plans often go awry.
The Medina Treatment
I wasn’t exactly naked in the dark; I was wearing a paper thong. I was also slathered in some kind of grey sludge and wrapped up in layers of gauze. Sure, I hadn’t been injected with paralysing venom and spun in reams of sticky spider’s web but, in that moment, I did feel like Frodo Baggins in Shelob’s cave. This was phase four of the Medina Treatment. It was supposed to be luxurious.
I was probably meant to be drifting off into some semi-conscious state of intense calm, but I had become increasingly curious about the items that had been placed over my eyes. Naturally I’d imagined slices of cooling cucumber, like in all spa-day stock photography, but these were something warm, something weighty. Instinctively, I tried to reach my hand up, but I had been swaddled with the ritualistic attention-to-detail of an Ancient Egyptian embalmer and the clinical restraint of a straitjacket. Time to try a different tact. I wriggled my right eyebrow up and down in an attempt to glimpse the edge of one of the objects. To my delight, it began to work, but my final wriggle was overzealous and the item began an unstoppable glide down my face, flopping onto the table next to me, remaining a mystery. As I adjusted to my newfound monoptic state, I made a mental note for my next Halloween costume: pirate mummy.
With the lights dimmed and nothing but a compilation of calming ocean sounds for company, I decided to concentrate on the music. I didn’t want to get in trouble for not being serene enough when the woman came back to unwrap me. I breathed in through my nose, out through my mouth as I listened to the waves crash, the whales bellow, and the soothing squawk of seagulls. Ah yes, peace at last. The track ended. Instead of the expected ambient sounds of wind whistling through leaves or Mongolian throat singing, to my surprise the next song to spit out of the speakers was some middling French rap. Perhaps it was an exercise in mindfulness, though A Clockwork Orange also springs to mind. It must have been added to the playlist by accident, but in any case, I was quite literally in no position to skip it. So there I lay in the gloom for what felt like an age, fully bound but for one eye, marinating in an unspecified substance, listening to a teenager flex about his various assets and exploits. A picture of tranquility.
🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒
Rating: 7 cucumber slices out of 10
An Indulgent Treat
I needed to chill out. It had been a busy, exhausting Christmas, as Christmases are wont to be. Though I didn’t know it yet, the only thing holding me together was the thought of laying on the sofa at home and inhaling the fumes of a posh diffuser I had decided to treat myself to after discovering it at a friend’s house earlier in the month. All I had to do was collect it.
The plan was simple: pick up my package, pick up some bits for dinner. Then, the next day, finally, at long last, go home. Aaaaand… relax.
I fell at the first hurdle. I was so determined to get into the building that I failed to notice it was very much closed. I walked straight into the glass door. Another strike on my already strained sanity. Once I’d dusted myself down, I came face-to-face with an unexpected adversary: holiday opening hours. Now, this was a rookie mistake on my part, and one that I was too frazzled to accept. If my home wasn’t gently imbued with the ultimate floral fusion of Costa Rican tuberose and wild jasmine lifted with bright bursts of lime and bergamot, I may never unwind again. Surely the good people of John Lewis would understand that I had been living out of a backpack and necking nog for a fortnight and I needed a goddamn miracle, stat.
Through the glass I tried to reason with the staff as they closed up. ‘It’s just a collection!’ I attempted to appear breezy, but my reserves of cheer and merriment were running seriously low, ‘I could wait here while you grab it!’ At that point, it hadn’t occurred to me that these teenagers just wanted to go home to nurse their own hangovers. Yet here I was, in theory an adult woman, pleading for “premium home perfume” like my life depended on it.
Then, one of the bigger boys came lumbering toward me, my very own Angel Gabriel hopefully heralding good news. Maybe Jesus, Santa, and the John Lewis adverts were real after all! ‘We’re shut, come back tomorrow,’ he mumbled, gesturing to the temporary trading times suspended on the pane between us. But I couldn’t come back tomorrow. I was leaving the country at 7am. This particular brand – which actually describes itself as “a movement rooted in the art of scent” – was not available anywhere else in Europe. Before I could convey the importance of this purchase to him, he had disappeared back among the ravaged aisles of remaining sale items.
That gossamer thread holding me together snapped, and I am not proud to admit that I began to cry. Chris did the grocery shopping on his own while I felt sorry for myself in the car. As he loaded the boot, he assured me, ‘you’ll laugh about this one day’. Indeed, he was laughing already.
🌸🌸
Rating: 2 wild jasmines out of 10
Submission by Binks Mooney
The Cup
Huddled in bed, shaking the last dried pieces of what might be sand out of my tobacco pouch, I conclude I need to venture out into the real world for a refill. Abandoning the safe warmth of my bed, I get out the front door before realising my predicament: I’m in Munich, the Sahara desert of late-night kiosks, and it’s 2:15am.
In my cold-turkey desperation I set off in the car in search of a gas station, A.K.A. my only hope. Not three minutes pass before a police officer is waving me down with STOP batons. Fuck. I think to myself as I pull over. My tail lights are kaputt. They got me.
I take a deep breath and quickly go over the training tape in my head: ‘gosh, officer, it’s the first time I’ve seen it... I’m awfully sorry, I’ll head to the mechanics posthaste!’ But before I can open my mouth, the head cop is asking me about my drug habits. I stupidly admit to having taken something or other, many years ago (note to reader: ALWAYS LIE). She looks at me with disdain and demands a drug test, pushing a paper cup into my hands. ‘Where?!’ I cry, looking around the empty streets.
‘Choose a place. Wherever you feel comfortable.’
I revel for a moment in being legally allowed, nay, demanded to piss in public, in a place of my choosing.
‘There!’ I proudly point to a parked lorry and head towards it, cup in hand.
‘WAIT!’ the officer commands, ‘Lars will go with you.’
I realise, as Lars shadows me behind the truck, that this might not be as wonderful as I thought. I suffer from pee shyness.
I’m stood in the shadows, dick in one hand, cup in the other, with Lars looming nearby. Here we go. A long minute passes... Nothing.
‘Just. Relax.’ Lars barks over my shoulder in German. He’s trying to be helpful, but his tone feels more suited to a hostage de-escalation situation.
‘Relax, and just squeeze a little bit out.’ He tries to encourage me.
I’m staring into the cup, trying so hard to give Lars the sample that he wants, and somewhere between the squeezing and relaxing... A small fart comes out. A single audible whistle in the otherwise silence of the night.
Lars puts his hand on my shoulder, and tells me to go and sit down. We can try again in 5 minutes.
🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃
Rating: 6 cups out of 10
Rec Room
Listening to Bella Freud (the world’s wispiest woman) interview Susie Cave (the world’s second wispiest woman) about frou-frou dresses will put you to sleep within 4 seconds, guaranteed 👗
Words by Beau Brace. Images by Flora Hibberd.