Can You Pray Your Hangover Away?

I had the kind of hangover that pinches your guts and scratches your throat.

I’d been to one of MONA FOMA’s after parties the night before, drinking with the ferocity of a college student. My poison of choice: some smoky mezcal cocktail that a friend pointed out to me the next day actually kind of tasted like poison. Something to do with the way the mezcal hit the plastic flute gave off a noxious palette. Lucky for me, I happen to be blessed with a stomach of steel or, more likely, a palette educated on goon.

So I awoke, eyes glued together with last night's mascara, presuming I looked glamorously messy in an Effy Stonem-way, finding myself with something infinitely less rebloggable: bloated cheeks and mottled skin. 

Conveniently, I was about a block away from James Webb’s installation at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Prayer. I was curious: can you pray your hangover away? It had been a moment (12? years) since I had been integrated into any sort of regular religious activity, so I was unfamiliar with the perks of spirituality you could access in adulthood. I figured the whole “friends in high places” thing could not be more applicable than it would be in this situation. 

Strolling down to the gallery, I was coated in a new city optimism. The day was bright and clean. The sun winked at me. The waves in the harbour jostled each other, in on the joke. The hangover was present but not obnoxious. A courteous guest. 

But in the gallery, shoes kicked off, kneeling on the carpet, I had a flashback: walking into the kitchen at 7-years-old, clutching the bible, my parents chortling: what’s that? The bible! Red flushed indignation. I spit some spiteful, pious line about them being comfortable in hell. A slammed door. The mortal puncture in the already deflated balloon of my spirituality. 

This was more upsetting than that. The installation was a spongy red carpet, studded with speakers, playing pre-recorded prayers from across the globe. Socks on, I shuffled around, the hopeful chants melding into a cacophony of voices the further I moved into the installation. I knelt next to another speaker, hoping my proximity to faith would absolve me of my sins, like sitting next to the smartest kid in the class during a test you haven’t studied for.

But there’s no mercy for cheating. I was caught in the act. I felt flushed, my collar growing tighter around my neck. A headache had already taken over – a true hangover rolling in like a late afternoon storm. Another speaker wailed at me, I put my ear to the carpet, body in child's pose. The sounds layered, distorted, melded, a high pitched squeal like a microphone at a wedding. Bile rising in my throat. 

I left the gallery in a flurry: laces spaghettied, hair asunder. I realised my mistake. I thought I had God on my mind, and that she was to be my redemption, but in my hungover state I was befuddled, the letters of words running amuck in my head. 

I had meant dog, not God. Hair of the dog. 

And so I went in search of salvation. Bloody Marys are still good.