Sitting in bed writing this, 8:52am, had a coffee and two slices of toast (one marmite, one honey), and the footsteps of my flatmates above through the creaky floorboards are so loud every morning it makes me want to throw a brick at the ceiling (if only I owned a brick). Why do two humans need to walk around so much: that is my first thought upon waking every day. Why do two humans need to pace back and forth eighteen times over the space of half an hour: tell me. Their bed is on one side of the room, their drawers are on the other. There is nothing else in the room. So: what is going on up there.
Still sober – over ten weeks now. Ten weeks. I’ve not been sober that long since I was born. Sobriety is working wonders for me – I am getting so much done. And not in a frantic, nauseous, Lisdexamfetamine-addled, ice skating-around-the-border-of-burnout fashion either; no. Just in a very quiet ‘I want to do this’ sort of way. If my mind struggles with following one train of thought – fine. Lean into it. Switch tasks when it feels right. I am my own boss, I can do what I want. Writing going slow on one book? Fine, work on the other one. One silly book, one serious book – one for each mood. It sounds mad, probably, but it’s actually – get this – it’s actually working. For the first time in my adult life, I am somehow making progress in everything I wanted to at the same time.
Leaving alcohol has confirmed a long-held suspicion: that, for me at least, something in the chemical make-up of booze acts as an anti-habit forming agent. How many times before now have I begun some new hobby or healthy behaviour, made promising progress with it, only to abandon it on the back of a couple of bad hangovers in a row? It’s a motivation-sapper, and I’ve unknowingly been bleeding all the gusto from myself three times a week for over a decade.
Still got love handles though. Not like, heavy, eyebrow-raising ones – but enough to prevent the casual viewer from being immediately impressed by my torso. I would like to change that; I’d like to be able to lounge in t-shirts, safe in the knowledge that there are no unsightly bulges when viewed from certain angles. Why do I care? I don’t know – I know I shouldn’t. But I do.
It’s hard though – working from home means spending a lot of time sitting down; it’s a very sedentary career, no matter how much I fidget and spin in my chair. I try to combat this by running everywhere in the house, scurrying downstairs between lessons to make a coffee, then dashing back up (and spilling it all over the stair carpet, swearing loudly and forlornly, then hurrying into the bathroom for toilet roll, jiggling back halfway down the stairs, dabbing out the brown spots and running up and down a further three times for more loo roll, then wringing out a flannel over it while cursing under my breath and hoping my flatmates don’t come out of their rooms, then finally realising I’m 3 minutes past the hour and late for the next lesson, sprinting into my room, jumping into my seat, and realising I’ve left my fucking coffee sitting on the bathroom sink). But it doesn’t seem to be enough: I need to move more, every day.
So I do! I go to the gym four times a week. I’m toying with the idea of getting into running again, but ugh. London parks – full of people. I enjoyed running in Bristol and Strasbourg because I found routes that were empty. London – nowhere is empty, ever. You can head out at 4am, break into a closed-for-the-night park, head for your favourite pondering bench, and there’s a 60/40 chance you’ll find someone sitting on it, vaping (or getting noshed off.)
ANYWAY.
Open mic nights! I’ve been to four in the last couple of months, and have read my writing at two of them. I did it solo and sober – and for this I feel very proud. The first night was in Balham. This particular poetry night is very down-to-earth, gritty and unpolished, full of endearingly mad ragamuffins; there’s a lot of Cockney poetry and pieces about addiction and anti-landlord angst. It shocked me at first; it’s certainly a far-cry from the Berlin nights I used to go to, which, as much as I loved them, were inarguably much more middle-class and comparatively… dare I say it… tame?
The Balham poets were tremendous. A freshly-sober heroin addict poet in a Barbie t-shirt who read a poem about her favourite football team in a made-up language only she understood. A father-daughter goth poet duo in long black trench coats who read a piece about how the government are all lizards. A seemingly-unremarkable poet who took off his long coat to reveal a transparent fishnet vest and spiked choker, then put on a Village People police hat and read a piece about how he loves getting whacked with a paddle. A sombre Jamaican poet in a beanie who opened his arms wide like Jesus and sang an old song about the sea. A poet named Light-Bringer, clad in a green gown and glittering like a wizard, who sat on a stool and read a poem about love. An elderly hippy protest poet, reading a raunchy sex poem from her past. A sweet grandfatherly poet, rapping – rapping – along to a stereo he brought with his own pre-loaded backing music, anti-consumerist lyrics, anti-AI, pro-individual, pro-creativity. An tracksuit-and Doc Martins old man poet with a stage presence so gritty and theatrical he could read the back of a crisp packet and take the roof off. A young poet from the north, imagining what it’s like to be a moth.
I’ve only been to this particular night twice; I read my own piece the second time I went. I was nervous as shit, obviously, just as I have been at every public speaking event ever. I wrote an article about teaching – about the amazing, sweet, funny and profound things my students have said during our conversations. I sat alone in the crowd for the first 30 mins, and after several speakers, when my name was called from the hat, I took to the stage to applause and felt the strongest pangs of fear I can remember feeling: of being observed, minutely, of being scrutinised, of the pressure of ‘Entertain us – you promised you would – this is all on you – can you do it, or are you full of shit? – Are you, as you so often tell yourself, a good writer? – Or are you just deluded?’
And the blue spotlight shone in my eyes and cloaked the crowd in darkness – I could see nothing, only blue glare and the microphone in front of me, and thirty silent steady silhouettes watching me like parallel-universe demons gazing through a portal from some twisted other-realm.
And I read. Shakily at first, of course – started too fast, apologised, read slower, bolder. I reached the point where I thought I might get my first laugh and it fell kind of flat, but to me eternal gratitude the host at the back, filming it on her phone, laughed loudly and clicked her fingers. This spurred me on, and at the next line I got the laugh I’d hoped for, and another, and finally the giant soft ‘awwww’ I’d been counting on. And then even better – a couple of ‘wooow’s and one long ‘ohhh?’. More laughs, and then respectful silence when I swooped down into the serious bit – then back home with a couple of laughs and one last, lasting ‘awww’.
I forget to say goodbye when I finished – forgot to stand for my applause and say thank you. I just finished reading and walked off back to my seat almost immediately – but it was okay, the applause swept over me and I heard someone say ‘that was brilliant’, and someone reached out to pat me on the shoulder, and when I sat down the person next to me congratulated me.
At the interval several people came to talk to me – five or six I think – about teaching, and how they respect the profession, or how they were teachers too (or used to be). An old man said he loved how concise my writing was, an old woman gave me a biscuit to say well done. A young student behind me tapped my shoulder to turn me around and we got chatting, and people smiled at me, and Jesus Christ I was so scared beforehand that I thought I was going to vomit, or else forget to breathe and have a panic attack, or else have some obscene mental-snap live on the mic and say something that would land me in jail or chased out of the room with knives – but no. It was warm, and kind, and safe. Terrifying – yes. But safe. Friendly, accepting, safe.
The second night was a little wobblier – east London, a bookshop, more intellectual and therefore a little more pretentious – higher threshold for entry – and the pressure got to me and I fumbled my words and got crickets for a couple of lines that had gotten laughs in Balham. But I still got my ‘awwww’s, I still got my laughs in the end (no ‘wow!’ this time, however). And again, at the interval it was all handshakes and ‘well done!’ and ‘so much respect for teachers’. Never got that in my old career – nobody ever came over to shake my hand and tell me how deeply they respect anyone who works in marketing.
It’s a scary community to try bust into, but I can feel that it’s good for me. I wrote two poems this week that I want to read next time. And I’m proud of myself: sober feels good. There are still things to improve, still things to fix, as always – but sober feels good.