You know what it’s like when you start reading a story, cold. What is this about? Who are we dealing with here? Where are we? What is the point? Of course you do — you’re going through it right now.
That’s exactly how I felt when I woke up jet-lagged in Melbourne.
You might protest that my experience was not as jarring as yours’. Murky and fetid as my brain might have been, I knew who I was: a brilliant globe-trotting professor, presumably just arrived at another stop on his seemingly never-ending travel junket.
It’s true, that was a piece of backstory that didn’t need to be clumsily wedged into my internal narrative. In fact, I was well aware that the day before I had been unable to sleep on two preposterously long flights, and in between I had mistakenly presumed that I would be at the Singapore airport long enough to take advantage of the roof-top swimming pool in Terminal 1, but ultimately — I will spare you the details — ended up being the only person in history who has arrived at the gate for a long-haul flight, out of breath, wearing only swimming shorts, and sopping wet.
So I would argue that, disoriented as you may be if you’ve arrived here via a typical day of random internet pin-balling, at least you are on the outside looking in, while I was on the inside being ejected out of bed by a terrifying beeping box less than a metre from my head. What the hell was that sleek plastic case with flashing lights?
It was a telephone. A hotel-room bedside table is about the only place you ever see one anymore. I never imagined that they were anything more than ornamental.
“Gidday mate! It’s Johno! Are you ready to meet for coffee?”
Yes, he said “gidday” without the slightest comic inflection, as if it was an entirely normal thing to say — because of course here it was an entirely normal thing to say, and I was side-swiped by a wallop of cultural vertigo. I suddenly felt the vast distances of those two flights right in my gut.
Coffee sounded good, though.
I lived in Britain, where people idolise Australia. It’s like a mystical dreamland, except even better, because sometimes people do actually go there, and when they come back they gush about it like religious converts. They love how sunny it is. They love how healthy everyone is. They love the energy of Sydney and the culture of Melbourne. In short: they love how it is the exact opposite of Britain.
The one contrast with their dank rainy homeland that they honk on about more than any other, is the coffee. You can be cynical that the kind of people who have grown up with warm feelings towards a Costa cappuccino will be easy to impress, but eventually the volume and intensity of praise get to you. When enough people have told you that the residents of Melbourne are the most sophisticated and discerning coffee drinkers on Earth, and the artisanal cafes of the Melbourne Central Business District are their heaven, eventually you assume it must be true.
If anything could handle my jet-lag, it would be this hallowed elixir.
I met my Melbourne host and we walked to his favourite coffee shop. I couldn’t tell you where we started, or ended, or what he talked about on the way.
The coffee shop was austere. It was minimalist. The approach to the bar to observe the preparation of your espresso, and to reverently receive the blessed cup, was like a sacred ritual. The priests at the looming Gaggia and the devotees lined at the counter were all deadly serious.
In other words: I should have understood the warning signs.
I should have run for my life.
Instead I naively gulped back the most foul bitter muck that has ever touched the sides of my throat. I gasped with the shock of how unimaginably nasty it was. My eyes boggled.
I stared around the cafe in a desperate bid to understand what had just happened.
I quickly realised two things. (1) The other customers were having exactly the same experience, and (2) they liked it. They considered it a rite of passage. It was a test of their aesthetic purity. The evil bitter taste that stayed in their mouths for hours was a testament to their devotion to the True Coffee. Their immediate whisper, “Oooh, that’s good,” in violent contradiction to all of the distress signals firing into their brains, was a miraculous expression of their faith.
The vile coffee hadn’t done anything to help my own brain, which was still busted fuses and sparking loose connections. I sat at a counter and failed to make sense of Johno’s ramblings about what a fantastic place he worked in. All I had managed to do by the end of the conversation was dredge up the memory that the guy who had invited me here was named John, and that this might be the same person, with their name infantilised by inscrutable Aussie norms from John to Johno. By the time I had completed this complex deduction, forty minutes had passed.
I hoped that after our little cafe outing I could go back to bed, but I knew that was unlikely.
Johno said, “We’d better get going. I told Prof Watkins you’d meet her at 10am.”
I guessed as much. “So off to the university, then?”
“Nah, she wants to meet for coffee. Her favourite place is almost as good as this one.”
To my horror every one of Johno’s esteemed colleagues insisted on meeting me over a coffee. I spent the day touring one beloved CBD cafe after another, and in each one given no choice but to chuck down yet another demi-tasse of liquid pain.
Just when I thought I couldn’t take yet another bold re-imagining of the barista’s art, it was time for dinner, which was thankfully not at another cafe. It was a Thai restaurant. I ordered the hottest dish available in the hope of burning some of the leftover coffee sludge out of my innards.
Afterwards I returned utterly exhausted to my hotel room.
It was only 9pm, but I immediately flopped onto the bed and fell thankfully into a deep sleep.
When I awoke I felt refreshed and invigorated and ready to meet the day. I sprung from the bed and looked at the bedside clock.
It was 11.30pm.
Shit! Jet-lag!
I quickly got back into bed and tried to pretend that nothing had happened. If I acted like I was asleep, and didn’t look at the clock again under any circumstances, maybe I could get away with it.
The important thing was to stay calm. Don’t let the mind start buzzing. Just lie there, entirely content with the prospect of lying on a bed completely awake for the next eight hours, daydreaming about going to a beach or into the countryside to visit a winery, or maybe just finally going into the university, and not another fucking coffee shop.
No, don’t get worked up. Keep calm. Think of waves at the beach. Think of riding the tram. Oooh, a tram...
I have no idea how long I was lying there awake, but then I was overjoyed to discover that I must have fallen asleep, because now I had woken up to pee.
It was all that damn coffee!
No — stay calm. Stay sleepy. Do Not Open Your Eyes.
I knew where the bathroom was, so I kept my eyes closed — I’m still asleep! — and quietly edged my way towards it.
That’s right, easy does it. Around the bed. Across the room, towards the dresser, and then along the wall to—
Thunk!
Shit, I was thinking of my bedroom at home. I had no idea where the bathroom was in this hotel room.
I opened my eyes briefly, mapped out my route, and then closed them again.
It all went well, and I was convinced that I was still almost asleep, and it would all be Ok, but then on the way back I stubbed my toe on the edge of the bed.
I hopped around the room yelling “fuck!”, and now the charade was over. I was wide awake.
Fine. I was awake a little early. No problem. I would just catch up on some work.
I checked the clock. 1.30am.
I sat at the desk with my laptop, and wondered what time the coffee shops opened.
Apology: The author apologises to all Melbourne residents for his character’s lack of appreciation for their fair city. It was probably the jet-lag. It certainly does not reflect any particular animosity from the author, who is rude about coffee everywhere.
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