The Linen Closet

Another episode of Simon's Embarrassing Moments.

Like every family, my family has Christmas traditions. Some good, some bad. One of my family's traditions occurred at dawn every Christmas morning when my dad went out to the front garden to haul my brother's drunken carcass inside.

You see we're from a small town. One of those places people are from but very few people are going to. Expats returned to town to spend Christmas with the olds but Christmas Eve was for the mates. The pubs overflowed with happy reunions of catch ups with old school chums and team-mates of yesteryear.

From The Fitz to The Celtic these reunions often became impromptu, epic, pub crawls.

My brother was particularly into this and year after year returned home in the early hours of Christmas Day absolutely shitfaced. He'd only ever make it as far as the front garden and sleep there. It was dad's job to get him inside to clean up enough to be somewhat presentable for mum's traditional champagne breakfast.

The champagne breakfast worked for him in the sense of "hair of the dog" and I admit that I dined out on the tut-tutting he'd receive for his disgraceful behaviour during them. As the black sheep of the family it was great to be the good boy at breakfast for a change.

Then the linen closet changed everything.

I'm going to pause at this point in the story to describe the linen closet so you can appreciate the enormity of what is about to happen to me. Closet isn't an adequate term, it's more like a small room. It has a high ceiling and all the walls have shelving, ten or perhaps twelve shelves high. To get to the top there's a small wooden step ladder.

It's Christmas Eve and my brother and I leave our wives at mum and dad's place and head out to get amongst it. We separated and rejoined a few times as he caught up with his mates and I caught up with mine. In the end I think we arrived home separately but I'm not sure.

Because I have no memory of it. I got so wankered the last thing I can recall is humping a couch.

At least, I hope it was a couch.

The next thing I remember is Christmas Day. I was roused from slumber by my wife uttering the very worst sentence a man with a splitting hangover can hear:

"Do you remember what you did last night?"

Truthfully I didn't, but I knew it wasn't good.

Wifey told me the story. Now keep in mind she was already displeased at getting left at home while my brother and I went out cavorting. I'd arrived paralytic and she'd put me to bed, only to be woken by my stumbling to the bathroom to relieve myself.

Only it wasn't the bathroom.

She'd tried to interrupt me but I wasn't having it. "Eeeer oooarh rrrrrrr!" I'd exclaimed when she tried. Apparently my smile of drunken satisfaction particularly incensed her when she put me back to bed, resigned to dealing with the devastation in the morning.

Which was now, and on me.

Mum and wifey stood over me, made me wash all of the linen. They gave me the whole bit with the scowls, the folded arms, the tapping feet. I protested plaintively there was no way I could urinate high enough to splash all of the linen but they wouldn't having a bar of it.

For I had sinned greatly. Suffering was to be a part of the punishment.

It took all day. Load after load after load. Washing linen, hanging linen, folding linen. The only breaks allowed me were for meals, during which they berated me relentlessly, examining in excruciating detail my every defect of character. It was humiliating.

But the absolute worst of it was my fucking brother. Smiling across the breakfast table with the triumph of the Cheshire Cat.

-SRA. Auckland, 30/vii 2024.