The Mayo Goatee

I’m all settled for the night. An icy-cold Wim Hof shower. Pyjamas on. Teeth brushed. Bra flung into another postcode. I’m finally ready to mould myself to the sofa and not move another inch for the foreseeable future…. when my phone rings. It’s my husband. “Hello?” I answer, already disappearing into the cushions. “Get your glad rags on,” he announces, positively fizzing with enthusiasm. “We’re going out!” “What?!” I gasp. “I’ve literally just put my pyjamas on.” “The night’s young, Mandy. There are two Aperol Spritz with our names on.” Hmm. Tempting. It’s my favourite tipple. It slips down like liquid sunshine on evenings like this — warm enough that the air still hugs your skin long after the sun has clocked off. But… Pyjamas. Lovely, forgiving, elasticated pyjamas. A night in. That glorious prospect of not having to make eye contact with another living soul. “My hair’s soaking sodding wet,” I protest. “And my hairdryer broke years ago.” Which isn’t a lie. It sparked dramatically one morning, gave one final heroic wheeze, coughed what I can only assume was its soul into the atmosphere, and died on the bathroom floor. I never replaced it. Mostly because I couldn’t be arsed. I simply embraced the “nature will sort it out” approach. “Oh, come on,” he laughs. “Let’s party.” Dammit. It’s just… It’s nice hearing the light back in Mat’s voice. This redundancy business has knocked the stuffing out of him. He’s been carrying himself around like a rain cloud for months. He needs this. And truthfully… I need to hear that laugh again, too. Then another thought arrives. Not the inevitable hangover. Not trying to squeeze myself into something vaguely presentable. Not the horror of pretending to enjoy crowded bars. No… My dream recall. Alcohol absolutely murders it. I can’t remember a bloody thing after drinking. Dreams don’t disappear completely. They linger just out of reach, taunting me. I wake knowing I’ve dreamt all night, but the details evaporate the second I try to catch them. I can’t ruin my one hundred and ninety-five day streak. Can I? I’m the Dream Queen. Or at least I like to think I am. It’s my one weird little talent. Some people play the piano. Some run marathons. Some speak fluent Mandarin. I wake up remembering homicidal gnomes, never-ending wees, shagging work colleagues in unsavoury places, and my husband’s surprisingly successful OnlyFans career. I have a reputation to uphold. “Pleeeease,” he says. “I need this.” I sigh. “Okay,” I say reluctantly. “I’ll sit outside first. Let my hair dry naturally.” It’s hot enough to bake a lasagne on the patio. “Good lass,” he grins before hanging up. After a couple of pre-drinkies in the garden — my hair slowly drying in the final golden rays of sunshine — we head into town. Straight to the cocktail bar. Our favourite haunt. They make the finest Aperol Spritz this side of Italy. One… Two… Three… Each one gliding down far too efficiently. By this point I’m feeling gloriously optimistic. That liquid confidence that makes you feel stupidly invincible. Four. Oh, shit. I can actually feel my dream recall packing its little suitcase and sneaking out through a tiny hatch in my amygdala. Everything after that becomes less of a timeline and more of an impressionist painting. You know those nights where every individual moment feels perfectly coherent… but the order they happened in has been rearranged by something with no respect for chronology whatsoever. That’s where we’re at. Because neither of us has ever mastered the art of calling it a sensible night… …we stop at our local on the way home. The Plough. I instantly regret it. The place is absolutely crawling with youth. Everyone looks about twelve. They’re almost certainly adults… but once you’re knocking forty, anyone under thirty starts looking as though they’ve wandered out of year nine. I end up sitting next to two girls on a bench outside. I attempt conversation. Something about football. Maybe. I couldn’t tell you whether I was talking about the Premier League… or just confidently making noises with football-shaped words. Truthfully… I fucking hate football. The conversation fizzles almost immediately. There’s an awkward silence. One of those painful little silences where your brain starts frantically rifling through imaginary conversational flashcards. Then they shuffle six inches further away… …and begin an entirely new conversation. Without me. Not even subtly. It’s such a tiny thing. Ridiculous, really. But it still stings. That horrible little voice in your head immediately pipes up. See? Too weird. Too awkward. Should’ve stayed at home with your pyjamas. I have all the social grace of someone trying to hug a cactus. Right. That’s enough humanity for one evening. Time to go home. Naturally, no drunken night is complete without something greasy. Mat disappears into the kebab shop. I couldn’t be paid to eat a kebab. Cheesy chips for me. Extra mayonnaise. Always extra mayonnaise. I don’t know what chemical reaction occurs between alcohol and cheesy chips… …but I’m convinced they become the greatest culinary achievement in human history. The cheese stretches for approximately three miles. The chips somehow remain both crispy and floppy at the same time. And the mayonnaise… Good lord… the mayonnaise. Sex in a sauce. While Mat demolishes his kebab… I’m face-deep in molten cheese and mayonnaise. “Mandy,” he laughs. “You’ve got a mayo goatee.” I have. I’m absolutely dripping in the stuff. My chin looks as though I’ve shaved with salad cream. Do I care? Not even slightly. It’s magnificent. I’m beyond dignity at this point. If anything, I’m considering asking for another pot. After some wonderfully clumsy drunken sex — because let’s be honest, there was probably an ulterior motive behind this entire evening — Aha. There it is. Mystery solved. —I eventually drift into sleep. Dreams arrive. Dreams disappear. Fragments float past. Half-remembered conversations. Places that never existed. Faces that dissolve before I can focus. Alcohol really has made a mess of my recall. Typical. After protecting my streak like some sacred ritual… …this. I know there were dozens of dreams in there somewhere. I can feel the ghosts of them hovering just out of reach. Every time I think I’ve caught one… I can almost feel it, then it dissolves like smoke. But one survives. Crystal clear. Probably because my subconscious looked at everything that happened that evening… and decided this was the important bit. My thumb… …explodes. Actually explodes. BANG! Thumb juice everywhere. Like a party popper made entirely from thumb. When I look down, all that’s left are four flaps of skin, peeled backwards like an empty banana. No bone. No flesh. Just… Thumb curtains. I hold my hand out in disbelief. “How the bloody hell am I supposed to use this?” I’m not even screaming. Just… mildly inconvenienced. Like I’ve discovered the washing machine’s flooded the kitchen. Mat barely glances up. He doesn’t seem remotely alarmed that my thumb has effectively resigned from existence. “Put a bit of mayo on it,” he says casually. I stare at him. “Mayo?” “Yeah.” “My thumb has exploded…” “Mmm.” “…and your medical advice is… mayonnaise?” He nods with complete confidence. “Trust me.” Not a flicker of doubt. Then — without the slightest hesitation — he reaches over… Scoops a blob of mayonnaise… Not from a bottle. Not from a jar. From my mayo goatee. Which, even in my dream, has somehow survived the night intact. Dream logic has standards, apparently. He gently dabs it onto what’s left of my thumb. For a moment… Nothing. Then… A tiny twitch. The skin shivers. Like watching a time-lapse of a plant growing… Bone appears. Muscle wraps around it. Skin stretches itself neatly into place. Even the thumbnail politely grows back. A perfect thumb. Good as new. I wiggle it. Bend it. Give it an experimental thumbs-up. It works beautifully. “See?” says Mat, as though he’s just tightened a loose screw rather than reversed catastrophic thumb loss. I wake up laughing. People spend fortunes analysing dreams. Searching for hidden meanings. Repressed fears. Messages from the subconscious. Personally, I think every conversation, every embarrassing moment, every cellophane box of cheesy chips and every blob of mayonnaise simply gets swept into one great untidy pile while we sleep. Then our brains rummage through it in the dark, emerge clutching three completely unrelated things and proudly declare; “There. That’ll do.” One comment about a mayo goatee, a cellophane box of cheesy chips and four Aperol Spritz later… my sleeping brain invents condiment-based reconstructive surgery. I spent one hundred and ninety-five days protecting my dream recall. And this was the dream worth remembering. Honestly… I wouldn’t have it any other way.