Dumped, Actually(69)

Mr Floaters leaves us, and a few moments later, the lid begins to close. This forces my heart rate to climb a little, as daylight disappears gradually, until it’s just a thin line, before being extinguished completely as the lid closes with a deep thunk . . . and an ominous click. I also hear a hydraulic hiss that makes me feel even more nervous.

‘Bloody hell,’ I say out loud. My voice is flat, dull and without echo.

I strain my ears to hear something . . . anything. But there’s nothing other than the gentle lapping of the water beneath me, and my own breathing.

Oh my. How strange.

‘Oh my. How strange,’ I say out loud, marvelling at how odd my voice sounds in this environment. We’re used to the acoustics of our voices being an almost living thing – bouncing off other objects and reverberating around in the air. Having all the energy and three-dimensionality of your voice sucked away is quite, quite bizarre.

I elect to keep quiet, and just try to relax and enjoy this experience, like Mr Floaters suggested.

This starts with realising I have tinnitus.

Not much. Not enough to impact my life in any real way, but in this closed-off environment I can definitely hear a small amount of whining coming from both ears. Too much indie rock when I was a youngster, possibly.

I try to ignore this and concentrate on some nice, even deep breathing, the way I learned in Lizzy’s mindfulness class.

This calms me considerably, and I do start to feel myself loosening up a little.

Five minutes later and I’m pretty much fully relaxed. The sensory deprivation has gone from alarming to quite soothing in a remarkably short space of time. There’s something about the feel of the water against your skin, the sensation of floating comfort and the lack of any external stimulus that slows your brain to a satisfying near-halt.

I can actually feel myself starting to fall asleep.

. . . and that’s when the hallucinations begin.


Look, I’m not sure if they actually are hallucinations, or just that I’ve dropped off, but trust me, none of what is about to transpire feels like a dream to me. Not at all. Something profoundly different from dreaming happens to me in this tank, and it’s going to stay with me for many years to come.


At first, the hallucinations are auditory only. My brain, obviously starved of outside stimuli, has decided to make some of its own. This begins with the sound of cheerful birdsong, for some reason.

Then I realise that I’m recalling the pleasant evening I spent in the New Forest in the tent, before BambiWanks happened.

This birdsong lasts just a few seconds before being replaced by a sweet-sounding Latin guitar.

Now I appear to be flashing back to the music played in Manucode – and I am instantly transported to a vision of Vanity’s lingerie.

Great. I do not need an erection right now. I already resemble some kind of adrift sailboat in this water, I don’t need to add a bloody mast.

Then the guitar music recedes, and different music begins to play . . . the sound of a sitar, gently picking out a few exotic chords.

Then, in accompaniment to the sitar, the rest of the hallucinations begin. The first is a smell – a kind of faint waft of warm vegetation. This is what I always imagined India would smell like.

Ah . . . of course.

This was my dream.

This was what I wanted to do with Samantha once we were married – take a trip to India, listen to some sitar music and ride an eleph—

‘Alright there? How you going?’

Right in front of my eyes, the head of an elephant has appeared. It has a huge trunk, enormous eyes, set wide on its wrinkly grey head, and gigantic flapping ears on either side.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I exclaim out loud.

The elephant recoils a little bit. ‘Not quite, buddy. Be bloody weird if Jesus was an elephant, right?’

‘I suppose so,’ I reply, in the full and absolute knowledge that I have completely lost my mind.

‘You haven’t lost your mind,’ the elephant reassures me. ‘And you don’t have to speak out loud, it bangs around in this tin can like a right bugger. Just think your words, that’ll do ya.’

Okay, I say, in the vaults of my brain.

‘Yeah, there you go. Much better!’

Who are you? I ask the elephant.

‘I’m an elephant, mate,’ the elephant replies.

Yes, I’m aware of that, but who exactly are you?

‘Ah, gotcha. I’m you, mate. I’m your mind. The underneath bit. The bit you keep suppressed, so you can go about your business up on top, so to speak.’

My mind?

‘Yep. I’m your subconscious – set free from its bonds by the deprivation of the senses, to wander in the vaults of your brain, unmolested and unfettered.’ The elephant nods at this. ‘Here, you’re quite bloody lyrical when you want to be, aren’t you? Good vocabulary, and no mistake.’

Right, okay. Thank you . . . I suppose.

‘No worries.’

So, why are you an elephant?

‘Ah, now that’s the interesting part, mate. It would appear that you’ve decided to let your subconscious manifest itself as both an object of your dreams and a reminder of the love you’ve lost.’ The elephant looks at me meaningfully. ‘Probably says a lot about your state of mind that, mate.’

Probably. So you’re my subconscious mind, manifested as the elephant I dreamed of riding with my ex-girlfriend?