Instead of sleeping on the plane, I stare out the window. Sometimes I focus on my reflection, and other times I stare out at the ocean and think how all the little waves look frozen, or like glitched-out graphics from Civilization II or Troy.

As I focus and un-focus, it feels as if I’m tabbing between two windows.

I stare at myself in the window and think: five years, pal.

Yeah.

Or less.

I pull my hair back and the announcer from those Rugs a Million commercials screams, ‘Going, going, gone!’

He slaps me on the back and says, ‘Just another bald cunt, hey?’

While winking.

And I think: sick.

But maybe it’s good.

Going bald.

My true destiny.

I imagine being at a party or a future networking event with either my wife or a team of single thirty-somethings who I have met through a ‘how to network’ Gumtree advertisement.

And I watch as someone walks up to me and says, ‘Well, what do you do?’ and I say ‘I’m bald,’ smiling weakly while both of us shake hands and then continue to smile weakly.

And I think: nice.

An obtainable dream.

In front of me this guy with wrap-around sunglasses orders his third Bundaberg rum and Coke.

His sunglasses sort of make him look like a speed dealer.

He says, ‘Just another Bundy, mate.’

And the airhostess smiles and hands him another ‘Bundy’.

It seems beautiful.

What if his only dream in life was to have another Bundy?

I guess he’d be living the dream.

And I want to live the dream.

But I’m not sure what that is or what it would involve, for me.

And I close my eyes, picturing my brother and I when we were way younger and watching lots of Jim Carrey films, and my brother’s pulling the window blind beside him up and down and going, ‘THERE’S SOMETHING ON THE WING … SOME — THING,’ and it makes me smile and I miss my brother; and the guy in front of me sips his Bundy and goes, ‘Ahhhhhh.’