Drowning in the Shallows. Dan Kaufman

– and they swallowed it whole. I swear half the girls’ eyes glittered at me.

      It’s as if they never watched Dead Poets Society, or any other movie in which teachers acted so over the top it was ludicrous.

      Having said all that, I didn’t anticipate how that would affect their behaviour. Instead of slack indifference this group yelled out, laughed, shared opinions … quite frankly, part of me preferred them when they were docile.

      Still, it was an improvement overall.

      As the students pack up, I catch the redhead’s eye.

      “I hope you enjoyed it,” I say.

      “It was alright,” she says flatly.

      That’s odd – she was animated during class. Is it possible these students aren’t sexually infatuated with me?

      No … let’s not think about that. After all, you should never let the truth get in the way of your self-confidence.

      10

      It’s past midnight but sleep is a distant dream. I’m sprawled on my sofa with a sedative glass of red, Tom Waits growling on the stereo and Jackson balancing on the inside windowsill.

      The window’s slightly open so the breeze can come in but not enough for Jackson to escape: he’s an indoor cat who’s never even walked on grass. Susan tries to make me feel guilty about this, but my vet says it’s the right thing to do: outside cats get run over, into fights with other animals and lick the toxic coolant that drips from parked cars.

      We like the romance of cats that prowl the neighbourhood and only return home when they feel like it – but romantic thoughts, as I’ve learnt, can only get us into trouble.

      Jackson almost loses his balance before lying down, poking his nose into the breeze. We can see rooftop silhouettes and trees swaying in the wind, a few lighted windows, the crescent of the moon. He’s mesmerised by the outside world and when a bird flies past his body tenses, ready to attack. He’s scared of the scraps of meat I try to feed him – he’ll only eat dried food – but he thinks he can hunt a bird.

      What it would be like to unleash him onto the world? It’s tempting, if only because it would make him so momentarily happy. I can imagine him springing out, ready to explore and conquer everything, but it’s just a daydream – the outside world would kick his furry little arse.

      Yet is he really leading a full life here? Although he has fake mice to play with and takes great pleasure in clawing the tender undersides of my feet while I sleep, is he really making the most of his life? There’s so much promise out there, and yet he only observes.

      Then the question hits me: am I in the same situation?

      11

      Journos may be more hated than second-hand car salesmen, according to almost every survey ever conducted, but compared to mail boys – and unfortunately I was one at eighteen – we’re at least recognised as entry-level life forms.

      Before becoming a hack I worked for a year in the bowels of a CBD skyscraper, pushing a trolley filled with envelopes that I’d hand over to suits who I’d envy. Not only did I have the most junior job in the entire building but, as an awkward kid with no social skills and an inferiority complex, I was worse than invisible – I was one step up from a disease-ridden leper (not that I’d want to skin shame anyone).

      No-one, from seedy sales sharks in polyester ties to secretaries with photos of dogs on their desks, would talk to me except Eileen, a blue-rinse old woman who worked with me in the mornings. We’d sort mail, run envelopes through the franking machine and bitch about Joyce, our vile and vicious mouth-breathing boss.

      Joyce was as disgusting as she was mean, and I loathed being near her. The repulsion was mutual and while she confided in Eileen, who would then tell me everything with disdain, Joyce only condescended to talk to me when she had a new order or insult.

      But that’s more information than you need: my point is that of all the snide comments Eileen made about Joyce (who was promoted above her to become the firm’s stationery and mail manager) the one I remember most was when she made fun of Joyce for always imagining that she just saw her ex.

      Apparently Joyce met some drunk guy one night at a beer barn, got knocked up and never saw him again – and became so obsessed that, even years after squeezing out her poor bastard of a sex child, she kept seeing, or thought she was seeing, men who looked just like her beer-guzzling Romeo.

      “You’d think it was a great love affair and not some dirty one-night stand,” Eileen maliciously bitched one morning as we sorted mail. “It’s pathetic the way she carries on.”

      Even though I’d never dated anyone back then ­– I was an Untouchable, and so to me a one-night stand from a beer barn seemed exotic – I nevertheless smiled and agreed, simply because Joyce made my life hellish. And yet here I am, fifteen years later, seeing Tori lookalikes everywhere I go.

      Yesterday, for example, I was in Newtown when one of these doppelgangers entered my peripheral vision. Following/stalking at a distance, it took me ten minutes to realise she was a fraud.

      Other times I see doppelgangers riding the bus, standing in the supermarket aisle, crossing the road, and I immediately have to do a double take – I once almost got into a car accident when a doppel drove past me.

      It’s pathetic the way I’m carrying on.

      Today I’m at Glebe Markets, which is filled with stalls selling hippie crap like those leather-bound notebooks no-one ever writes in (what, do they think they’re Hemingway in 1920s Paris?), second-hand clothes, candles and scratched records, and I see a young woman who, from the side, has Tori’s profile. That odd ski-jump nose, which on paper ought to make her less attractive and yet only makes her cuter …

      I inch closer, like a hunter spotting his prey, while the doppelganger picks up a bead necklace at a stall. Her clothes are different and the body is a little chunkier than I remember but that nose, that hair …

      She turns towards me: it’s not Tori at all, just a paltry imitation.

      I’m pathetic.

      I need human company, someone to talk to.

      Anyone.

      I take out my mobile and call the dirty old man.

      “Start talking,” he says, his usual greeting.

      “Want to see a movie tonight?”

      There’s a long pause, then a drawn out exhalation.

      “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”