Dear Dude From My Teenage Years, Whose Name Escapes Me At The Moment,
First things first, I sincerely apologize for cock blocking you, good sir. You need to know that this was not my intention.
My intention was for me and my girl, J, to come to your place, get our drinks on from your parent’s liquor cabinet and then hook up with you and your friend. You had your sights set on J, that much was evident. And who can blame you? The chick was and still is a beauty.
I was planning on getting in a good make-out sesh with your chubster pal (I’m a bit of a chubster myself, so I’m allowed to say that), who was super cute in the way that guys with potbellies are.
Except that’s not what happened at all, was it?
You see, I’ve always been a puker. From the time I was old enough (not legally, obvs) to consume alcohol, I’d overconsume and became the group’s notorious puker.
“Lindsay’s on her third drink. Someone grab the trash can!” People would yell as they watched me down my Smirnoff Ice cooler. I never allowed these admissions to get to me because how can you get upset about the truth?
It was just something built inside of me — I’d barf the big one after anything more than a few drinky-poos. Maybe I’m allergic to booze, at least the hard stuff, as now in my adult age, I seem to be able to tolerate beer a lot better than I’ve ever been able to with my first preference of vodka.
So after a few rounds of Socabiles at your parent’s exquisite hardwood table and you explaining that they were out of town for the weekend so we could stay there right until Sunday, you and J retired to the bedroom.
I looked at my prospective date, but I knew nothing would become of our proposed evening together when I immediately started seeing two of him.
Nope, this wasn’t going to do at all.
“I think I need to lay down for a little while,” I admitted, feeling my head do the notorious nod and roll that so many drunks pander to in those last moments of consciousness.
“Yeah,” was all he said (I think), and he led me over to the couch.
I passed out there for a while but was violently awoken by my intolerable gag reflex as I started dry-heaving over the side of the couch. Who knows how much time had passed by this point, but your friend was nowhere to be seen, which was probably for the best because what followed couldn’t have been a pretty sight.
Of course, I attempted to get up and make my way to a bathroom or even the kitchen sink in a pinch, but my feet got caught up on each other in my haste, and I plummeted to the floor with a great thud. That’s when the puking started.
It’s as if the impact of my fall shot the stuff out of me with such velocity there would have been no stopping it.
Projectile vomit as far as the eye could see.
Thankfully, I thought incoherently; it’s laminate flooring. Easy enough to clean up. Except Then I realized I had brought one of the floral print decorative pillows down with me, and the thing had been sullied beyond repair.
This is okay, I reckoned.
I just needed to use the pillow to clean up the mess on the floor then dispose of the pillow in one of those trash cans outside. If and when anyone discovered the thing, I’d be long gone. But first, I needed to get out of my shirt because it was soaked with half-digested A&W burgers and Vodka coolers.
The scene that you and J walked in on was not a pretty one.
A half-naked wildling. Her once pristinely curled locks, now matted with bright pink vomit. Haphazardly sopping up puke from the floor with a floral print decorative pillow, mascara streaming down her face from the exertion of dispelling that much fluid from the body in such a small space of time.
“Ith fine, ith fine,” I told you. For some reason, I had adopted a lisp. “This ith going to be fine.”
J undressed me the rest of the way, took me to the back yard and angrily cleaned me off with the garden hose. All the while shaking her head and wondering why she continued to take me anywhere.
Because, in truth, this was not the first time my best friend had to wash me off with a garden hose in some stranger’s backyard — and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
That’s when you asked us both to leave.
As I walked/stumbled home, listening to J ask me why I had to ruin everything, I wondered silently about you. I wondered how you would explain the house’s disaster to your parents when they arrived home from their mini-vacation. I wondered if that throw pillow held some deep and irreplaceable sentimental value in your family. I wondered if this would be one of those stories you told your friends about or if you’d secret the experience away like a precious disgusting nuisance you’d prefer to forget.
And to be honest, Dude From My Teenage Years, Whose Name Escapes Me At The Moment, I still wonder these things to this day.
I’m now an adult and have remotely put my life together. I mean, I’m not destroying people’s homes any longer with my projectile vomiting, so there’s that.
But I do still think of you from time to time and wonder whatever became of you and the lovely home I so dutifully destroyed with my vomitous lousy luck.
Hinterland Who's Who: "The half-naked wilding is well-known among the parties of rural Alberta. It is interesting to hang out with until it consumes too much liquor and proceeds to projectile vomit..."