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A Puddle of Puke and a Broken Key

Things were going well.

I had finally made my first music video for Youtube, 'Stuck on Her', and although the online response fell far short of my expectations, I was proud of what I created and how I created it. Recording piano music outside with the additional flavour of beautiful scenery was going to be my thing, I decided, and with that I would grow my Youtube channel from the ground up. Moreover, I had finally resigned my ambition to achieve financial independence, and was now on the hunt for a full time job. It seemed to take the pressure off.

Things were going well… Until the morning of May, the 19th.

I stammered awake. My head felt like a balloon filled with cement, crushing my pillow. The air in my room tasted stale. And strangely, I was somehow more tired than when I went to sleep. Dropping my hand to the side of the bed, I fumbled for my phone. It could have been 8am, or 2pm… My hand dipped into something wet and chunky. I pulled up my hand, but I didn’t have to look at it to know what it was. The putrid smell flooded my nostrils before I could refuse it. Puke.



I rolled over to have a look. It was indeed a sizeable splattering of vomit, with entrails slithering down the side of the bed. It was difficult not to smack my forehead; thankfully I didn’t, with a finger-full of chunder. Idiot! I kicked away the covers and launched myself out of the bed, awkwardly minding my dirty hand. I tried to rush, but there was something blocking the door. My keyboard! “What the ..?!” My Casio Px5s - the very keyboard I was to build my Youtube channel with - lay upside down on the floor, shoved against the wall. Befuddled, I momentarily moved it to the side and dealt with my spew-finger in the bathroom first. And then hurried back.

It lay there like a dead body, the keyboard. I knelt by its side and eased it back to its front; the keys sighed as if they had been hurt. One of them didn’t even return to its normal place. It just stayed there, defiantly stuck down in place, broken. I slumped with the keyboard in my arms, its broken key as lifeless as the vomit-puddle that plagued the side of my bed. It all swirled around as if in mockery: the smell, the thunder between my ears, the confusion as to what on Earth happened that night. I shouldn't have drunk last night dammit! I dropped my head. “Alcohol did this!!” 



It was rock-bottom. It was the worst I had felt all year. In one fowl swoop, I had broken my keyboard, crushed my ambition to make videos, and spoiled my dignity with a smattering of vomit by my bedside. Cleaning it up was misery. How I hated alcohol. How I wished I had never drank so much the night before. Oh, and how much money did that cost me? Money I don’t have! Stupid fool! I scooped up my sick in a gloved hand, shovelling it into a bag. It was disgusting. It left a stain the size of a large pancake on the carpet, and the smell lingered.

But never mind the vomit. It was the broken keyboard key that frustrated me the most. It happened to be the low E that was stuck in place - one of the keys I used most, for many of the songs I was hoping to record over the next few months. How was I going to film and record my songs now? I needed my low bass E! Grumbling to myself, I walked to the store and purchased a screw driver. “What’s it for buddy,” the guy behind the counter inquired. “Surgery,” I told him, and stalked out. I wasn’t joking - I was about to conduct surgery on my keyboard; take a look inside and see if I could solve the problem. On the crumby carpet of our flat, the Pit, I lay it down and began removing each individual screw, of which there was almost a hundred. Inside was a confusing jumble of electric boards, wires, plastic knobs and things I couldn’t even identify. It was no use. I couldn’t solve the problem - I was likely making it worse. There were less screws when I put it back together.

And that was the moment that I accepted the ultimate failure. I knew it was coming. I knew that my ‘Quest’ was failing from when I returned back from my first busking mission with less money. I knew it was a failure when I couldn’t stop spending money at cafes. I knew it was a failure when my first video only got 30 views. But I didn’t want to admit it, clinging to this lifestyle, clinging desperately. In hope. In frantic hope. But now, slumped by my broken keyboard, I admitted it fully and completely.

I failed.

— — —

It was time to get serious about fixing things. I was trying to get a job. In fact, I had already been to one interview already - quite an extensive one, too - but I wasn't the person they were looking for. My friend helped me get that interview, and the whole situation was shaping up to be all too fortunate. Things don't work that way... I was going to have to take matters into my own hands and solve my own problems. The job hunt was now on.

Tucked into my little corner desk, my creative nest in the Pit, I began adjusting my CV again, choosing the right words for a job in Hospitality. I pulled out the Diploma of Hospitality Management - the one I said I wouldn't need but now desperately relied on - and slipped it into my bag. It was time to print the CV's. Hefting myself out of the pit, bag slung across my shoulders, I headed out into the sunlight. Town was busy with people going about their daily business - normal people, doing normal people things. I wanted to be like them now. Screw the ‘Quest’. It was never going to work anyway.

I took myself to the Internet cafe down the road - the cramped, outdated one near the octagon - and took my seat at the same computer I sat before when I last came. That was 3 months prior, when I was printing out pictures of my piano idols to adorn my creative space; when I was filled to the brim with enthusiasm and excitement for my new Quest in life. Best I forget about all that... I opened my email and loaded my CV; printed 20 copies. It cost me 3 dollars. Finally, an expense that actually mattered. I staggered onto George street, the main stretch of Dunedin, clutching my stack of CV's. With all the cafes and eateries down this way, I'm bound to get a job! I told myself optimistically, and began on my way.

Finally, I was on the right path, and making the right moves. And yet, I couldn't stop thinking about how I was I going to fix my keyboard. 


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