I do not like to throw up. Okay, nobody likes to throw up, obviously — it’s not an activity people list among their hobbies in personal ads, and we’ll never see Alex Trebek interviewing contestants between rounds of Jeopardy! all, “Jane McLikestobarf from Peoria — my producers tell me you enjoy knitting, European cycling tours, and puking. Can you tell us a little bit about that?” and then Jane McLikestobarf nods all enthusiastically, “Well, Alex, I first started hurling as a tiny child and it’s a hobby I continue to enjoy” — but I really really really hate it. Many times I’ve had too much to drink or eaten a viciously bad fish entree, and I’ve lain in bed, fighting with my gorge, breathing deeply and thinking anti-nausea thoughts, knowing that I should just go into the bathroom and barf and get it over with already because I’ll feel better, and yet I can never bring myself to do it. I would rather spend a few hours feeling wretchedly ill than take ten minutes to speeyack and have done with it. I hate vomiting so much that, when I go to the movies and there’s a scene where it looks like a character might throw up, I put a hand over my eyes. Seriously. It’s pathological. Blood? Guts? Zombies with insect-encrusted strips of skin hanging off their faces? No problem. Guy gets cut in half and dragged along with his guts trailing after him in the dust? Piece of cake. Drunk frat boy shows us a rerun of dinner? See you in the lobby. Can’t deal with it at all. I sympathize with sufferers of bulimia, and I understand the psychological nature of the disease, but how anyone deals with the realities of purging is utterly and completely beyond me. I mean, if crazed gunmen kidnapped my family and sent me a ransom note that said, “A videotape of you barfing or your family gets it,” I’d probably have to start making funeral arrangements.

Keeping that in mind, then, allow me to take you on a guided tour of my day. My day began at midnight; at midnight, I had already had two margaritas — and not just any margaritas, mind you, but the margaritas at El Parador, margaritas that taste delicious and yet pack such a deceptive wallop that drinking three of them once inspired my father to skip down the sidewalk while singing “Follow The Yellow Brick Road,” and given that my father under normal circumstances is about as likely to don a sequined Russian ice dancer’s outfit and watch a Joan Crawford marathon on AMC as he is to indulge in any gait more whimsical than “trudging,” i.e. “not bloody,” not to mention that the man can usually polish off a Coors party ball and still give no sign of having imbibed anything stronger than birch beer, I hope you will accept my father’s brief and extremely troubling dementia as evidence that the word “strong” does not begin to describe these margaritas — and had just cracked open the third of the four and a half beers I would drink over the course of the evening. And speaking of those beers, I would like to interrupt the essay just briefly to tell a certain TWoP recapper that I certainly appreciate the generous instinct which prompted her to bring me a six-pack of delicious Post Road Pumpkin Ale when she visited New York City last weekend, but I must register a complaint, namely that said gift totally failed to come with a warning about how the yumminess of the ale might cause the more imprudent consumer to guzzle it without heed to the consequences because it’s all spicy and scrumptious and cinnamon-y and tastes like a loaf of pumpkin bread in liquid form and will cause the aforementioned imprudent consumer to engage in a spirited debate with an equally intoxicated Cross Jr. about the long-term ramifications of Reaganomics, the existence of ghosts, and why cats have such good senses of balance, later forcing the corner deli to deal with my…er, “the consumer’s” slurred requests for a provolone sandwich on a hero roll tomato mustard mayonnaise where’s the Cheetos at? Damn you, Stephanie. DAMN YOU.

Fast forward a few hours. My apartment faces the west, and yet somehow the morning sun finds a way to awaken me by reflecting off of the buildings opposite mine, streaming into my apartment, and breaking the seal on my hangover-encrusted eyelids. It is 8:23 AM. It is very very very very very bright. My head has evidently gotten run over by a commuter train…or used as a bowling ball…or kicked, repeatedly, by God, which I probably deserve. I feel rather ill. Gingerly, I make my way into the bathroom with my water glass and down four Advil, then prepare a lemon-flavored Alka-Seltzer and pray that it won’t come straight back up. Back to bed I go, whimpering and shivering, glad that I don’t have to go anywhere today.

I dream. I dream about O-Town’s Ashley Angel. No, not like that — unfortunately, because in the dream, we can’t find a parking space at Target and he’s crying hysterically and wearing one of those shirts from the late eighties that reacted to body temperature, so if you put your hand on the shirt, a handprint would show up, and it’s all very upsetting, and we circle around and around and around the parking lot and then the car starts hitching and shuddering and making an expensive-sounding clack clack clack hoo-up hoo-up hoo-up splorch hoo-up hoo-up splorch noise and Ashley’s all “Lou Pearlman’s going to deduct the car repairs from my salary what if Shelli finds out I went to Target with another girl boo hoo hoooooo” in his dork-ass shirt and I’ve just about made up my mind to slap him hard to get him focused but then I wake up and discover that the car didn’t make the clack hoo-up splorch noises after all. Hobey did. While throwing up. Twice. Oh, here’s time number three. That’s…exactly what I didn’t need to hear this morning. Or see. Or think about. Thank goodness Little Joe isn’t eating the…ew. Never mind. He’s eating Hobey’s vomit. Terrific. I’ll just swing my legs over the side of the bed and go get the paper towels from the kitchen. Now, that’s odd; I don’t remember spilling my Alka-Seltzer earlier, but now my foot’s all wet, so I must have…oh. Four times. Hobey threw up four times. Lovely. Okay, what’s the fastest way to deal with the barf on my foot without actually having to look at either the barf or my foot? Ahhh. I’ll just stick my foot in the toilet here…can’t quiiiiite reach the flusher…ah. Fffsshooom…glurg glurg glurg. Problem solved. Oh, hello, bathmat.

That issue resolved, I move on to the next one — how to cover up the vomit with the paper towels while not making actual eye contact with the vomit and while also staying downwind (and yes, Virginia, in an apartment as drafty as mine, you can have a “downwind” indoors, and for once it’s a good thing, since smells don’t get much more unappetizing than recycled Fancy Feast Trout Buffet). It’s not an easy task, but I’ve had a lot of practice, and I manage it eventually. Then I have to weigh down each paper-towel station with a shoe to prevent Little Joe from snacking on what’s underneath. Then I have to light sixteen sticks of green tea incense. Then I have to go back to bed for an hour or two to let my stomach settle back down a bit, and to mull over the fact that the universe really seems to want me to throw up today.

Noon-ish. I surface from sleep to find, before I’ve even opened my eyes, that one of the cats has taken a dump noxious enough to melt tempered steel. I light more incense and wave it frantically about, the neck of my t-shirt yanked up over my nose, then plant it in the incense burner and shut every door I possibly can between me and the lethal poo. I feel better, hangover-wise, and toxic cat crap fumes notwithstanding, I have things to do today, so I mainline caffeine and check my to-do list. Ohhh dear. “Clean fridge.” There’s really no avoiding it, either; I’ve already put it off three times, so it’s time to face the music. (Literally. The organisms living in one particularly ancient jar of Prego Three Cheese Marinara have developed the ability to play musical instruments. One of them has a first-look deal with Arista. Congratulations, spore!) I light another stick of incense, wedge into the door of the toaster oven, and fling open the refrigerator door, and I manage to escort several deeply disgusting items to their grave in the garbage can without feeling upchucky at all, including a quart of milk, only two days past the sell-by date and yet already spreadable in consistency; a blob of butter with a cat hair in it, and it is in it, in the center of it, which I don’t understand and don’t want to; The Incredible Prego Band; and a single, sad brown egg from which emits the faint but distinctive sound of clucking. A little scrubbing, a fresh box of baking soda, and I can check the fridge off of my list. And then I remember. I haven’t finished. I still must face…the crisper.

See, here’s the thing about the crisper. I can’t see into the crisper when it’s closed. See where this is going? No. Okay, well, because I can’t see into the crisper, I tend to forget that there’s stuff in the crisper at all. So the stuff in the crisper stays…in the crisper. For weeks. (I don’t eat a lot of vegetables, in case I hadn’t made that clear.)

So I stand there for a few minutes, steeling myself. The cats, thinking lunch is imminent, come in and sit by my feet. “It’s not time for you to eat, Barfy O’Barfigan and Eatsbarf von Disgustingsnack. Get out.” The cats do not get out. “Suit yourselves.” I whip open the drawer, and the vigor with which I do so splashes me with droplets of liquefied broccoli. The cats pull faces of eloquent revulsion and flee the kitchen, tails low to the ground. Carefully, the rancid broccoli juice burning holes in the skin of my face, I remove the crisper from the fridge, carry it over to the garbage can, and hold it upside down, expecting the most nauseating portion of the clean-up to end forthwith. But no. Nothing happens. A few acidic green drops fall into the trash, sizzling as they go. The rest of the vegetables in the crisper — a handful of spongily prehistoric carrots and a zucchini mossy with mold — cling resolutely to the drawer. Only after three spirited rounds does my spatula finally score the TKO. I fill the crisper with very hot soapy water and leave it there for a couple of hours.

Evening. Time to face the drawer again. I get it cleaned up and wiped down and back into the fridge, but now it seems that the sink is clogged — probably by a teeny tiny electric guitar belonging to a late member of The Incredible Prego Band. I dump a bunch of drain cleaner into the sink, wait, and run the water as instructed. The sink says, “Buuuurrrraaaaapppuuhhhh.” An air bubble makes its way up the drain, pops, and fills the kitchen with the scent of an omelet made from the remains of Jimmy Hoffa. I almost gag, but hold it together. Another air bubble surfaces; this one contains onion bits, shreds of potato skin, a peanut fragment, an object resembling a fingernail (not a fingernail cutting — an entire fingernail), and a grease-coated snarl of human hair studded with pearls of prehistoric cottage cheese. Well, that’s it. I gag. I gag several times. I don’t throw up, but I come very very close.

Obviously, a higher power decided that I should throw up today. It threw everything it had at me — a hangover, cat chunder, unionized condiments, the fact that an unknown person evidently waited until I went out for cigarettes one day and then stuffed a corpse down the drain of my kitchen sink — but I didn’t break. I don’t know what it would take, but if the fates want me on my knees in front of the toilet, they’ll have to do better than that.

February 18, 2002

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