Lisa and I are staring at this sales guy who likes to start his sentences with the word ‘now!’

When we walked in, he said, ‘Now!’

Grinning.

And we all looked at each other for a while.

He said, ‘Now! Here for a new bed, are we? Hey! Missus put the foot down, did she?’

And he winked at Lisa and Lisa took my hand.

He laughed and said, ‘Classic bed shopping.’

Now we’re following him around and looking at beds.

He’s showing us a three-thousand-dollar bed.

I can’t stop looking at his neck vein because it seems as if it’s pulsing.

He pats the bed and says, ‘Now, hey! This one goes alright.’

I realise that his neck vein is pulsing because he’s chewing gum really quickly.

He says, ‘Yeh, she’s a bewdy, mate. She’s a cracker. She’s soft azzzzz, but firm for a bit of pushin’. Hey! Am I right! Nah, I’m a dickhead. But, hey. Seriously. ’Ave a bounce, you two. Check ’er out.’

He slaps me on the shoulder and I can smell his deodorant.

It smells like Rexona.

He smells like a locker room.

I look at the sales guy and say, ‘We might just look around for a bit.’

And the sales guy says, ‘Time out, no worries.’

We sit on the bed and watch him walk away.

He returns to his office, picks up a can of Mother, and skulls the whole thing.

Lisa says, ‘Did you see his neck?’

I say, ‘You mean the vein?’

Lisa says, ‘It wouldn’t stop pulsing.’

I say, ‘I think Neck Pulse needs to slow down on the Mothers.’

Lisa laughs and says, ‘Neck Pulse.’

It feels good.

I look at the bed’s price tag.

I say, ‘These prices are insane.’

And Lisa says, ‘I want to be rich one day, though. I want to be so rich I can walk into Snooze and be like, “Give me your best mattress.”’

I say, ‘I want to be so rich that I can buy all the mattresses and stack them on top of each other with us in the middle.’

Lisa says, ‘Me too. That would be like … Snooze rich. It would be, like, a thing. Like, how rich are you? Snooze rich.’

We get off the bed and walk around Snooze.

We hold hands.

I smile.

I think: together we are champions.

We start talking in hypotheticals.

I say, ‘What if Grinspoon was my favourite band and every second we were together we had to be listening to Grinspoon through split headphones?’

Lisa says, ‘Even if we were watching a movie?’

And I say, ‘Yep.’

Lisa says, ‘Or having sex.’

And I say, ‘All the time.’

Lisa says, ‘I could learn to go deaf.’

And I laugh.

It feels good.

Lisa says, ‘What if Neck Pulse was my dad and I lived at home, and each time you wanted to see me you had to help Neck Pulse with miscellaneous chores, like pulling rusted nails out from the bottom of the house, or cleaning his gutters with a toothbrush?’

I put on a really Australian accent.

I say, ‘No worries, kant. Farking make friends wif ’ol Necko n’ smash cubes a VB mate, ayeeeeee.’

Lisa laughs.

It feels good.

This four-year-old kid attached to a leash smiles and walks towards us.

His mum yanks the leash and the kid says, ‘Fuck.’

His mum yanks the leash again and he tries to take it off but he can’t.

And I think: keep fighting, you champion.

Keep fighting.

And, one day, you’ll become more than you are.

Lisa says, ‘You’re not buying a bed from here.’

And I say, ‘No.’

Lisa says, ‘So, let’s play SNOOZE.’

And I look around.

And I feel nervous because now I have to commit.

I think: do the thing you said you’d do.

Stop being such a pussy.

Do it.

I say, ‘How do we start?’

And Lisa says, ‘On the count of three, we both yell “SNOOZE” and then go.’

I say, ‘Okay.’

Lisa says, ‘One.’

I say, ‘Two.’

And we both yell, ‘SNOOZE!’

And we begin running, sprinting around the immaculate fake bedrooms.

And inside one bedroom, Lisa says, ‘Quick! How many points for jumping on this mattress?’

And I say, ‘Five.’

And then Lisa is jumping.

Cushions fall off the bed and she goes so high.

I kick one of the cushions and say, ‘Five points.’

The cushion hits a fake desk and bounces back to the ground.

I laugh.

It feels good.

Lisa says, ‘Yeah, boy.’

And I think: yeah, boy.

And for the smallest moment I realise I’m not thinking.

Just doing.

And I keep laughing.

I say, ‘Quick. How many points to dive into this pristine pillow display?’

And Lisa says, ‘Five!’

And then I am diving, pushing my face quickly through the pristine pillow display.

And with my face between pristine pillows, I think: we are unstoppable.

The ultimate versions of ourselves.

More ultimate for combining.

Combining and conquering.

Yeah.

Pushing new ground.

Forging ahead.

And no one has ever seen anything like it.

I get on the bed and begin jumping with Lisa.

We hold hands and my mouth is open and some drool goes on my t-shirt because I’m still laughing.

And I look around, expecting to see many guards descending on us.

Expecting to see Neck Pulse horizontal and flying towards us, pre-spear tackle.

But, like The Hulk, we are too powerful.

They are cowards.

And I spot Neck Pulse talking to a couple on the far side of the store and he is on his second can of Mother and I think: try to stop us.

You motherfucker.

And I make V signs with both hands and begin flipping off different bedroom apparel.

I jump and I flip off the lamp and the chair and the poster that looks like it might be from IKEA.

And in the air, again, I look at the ceiling and the light fixtures and the ‘10% SALE’ sign and I flip these off too.

I flip off the child’s leash and the mother who leashed the child and the company who gave the idea to the mother to leash the child.

And I keep jumping.

Pushing higher.

Higher.

Higher.

I explode through the roof.

And, like Superman, I jet through the roof, leaving the outline of a human who once existed somewhere.

And above the Snooze warehouse, air is whipping around me.

Whipping my arms and legs and hair.

And it feels wonderful.

And, somewhere, someone is playing Ian Dury & The Blockheads loudly.

And I’m just a twenty-five-year-old floating above a Snooze warehouse, listening to Ian Dury sing about requesting to be hit with rhythm sticks, with the sun lens flaring through the camera at every angle.

Trying to give fucks to the things that matter.

Understanding how privileged I am to float.

Imagining life as a game show where every net positive inter-action between me and another person results in a Nickelodeon slime bucket being tipped on my head.

And, yeah, I like the idea of being seventy-five and drowning in an ocean-sized pool of Nickelodeon slime with my friends around me and people retweeting someone’s observation, ‘There was, like, so much slime.’

A death like this seems really positive.

Sticky and universal.

And Lisa yells, ‘We need to flash each other!’

And, mid-air, she pulls up her shirt.

And, mid-air, I pull down my pants.

And we are two people flashing each other mid-bounce on a bed in Snooze, and it feels like the culmination of everything we’ve worked so hard for.