If a cow ever got the chance...

(This entry is kind of disgusting. Don't say I didn't warn you.)

I'm going to stop drinking so much. Not only is it expensive, but it's barely even fun anymore. On a good day, I'm pleasantly drunk for about five minutes before getting horribly, horribly sick. On a bad day, I get horribly sick five minutes before the nice buzz would have kicked in (seriously). On a day like yesterday, I can start drinking around 4 p.m., stop by 7, watch Simpsons, take a nap (next to passed-out boyfriend), wake up at 10 p.m., realize the bread dough we set on the counter to rise at 5 has become a monster of unchecked growth, punch it down, sleep, wake up at 11 to shape it into 24 individual little rolls, wake up at 12 to relight the oven's pilot light (a needlessly complex procedure involving caked-on food and swearing), bake the little rolls, fuck around on the computer, and go back to sleep at 1 a.m.--completely sober, drinking one or two glasses of water at EACH of these stages--and still be throwing up and incapacitated at 6 a.m.

I honestly believe that I broke my liver one night four years ago. I was going to this small party that I didn't really want to be at (but for complex social reasons it was pretty much required), and everyone had been requested to bring a bottle of alcohol so that we could all mix drinks. I figured I would have one or two drinks and then leave, so in the interests of economy I bought the cheapest rum I could find. (This is the only time in my life I have ever been an asshole about sharing my liquor, and as you will see, I was amply repaid in bad karma later that night.) No idea what the brand was, but it would have been about nine dollars a liter. That's cheap rum.

So I get to the party, and of course the only bottles there are gin (which I loathe), creme de menthe (which doesn't mix with anything), and Campari (someone's fake contribution--they obviously wanted to have a full bottle to take home at the end of the night). So I started drinking my cheap rum. You know how this goes: by the time they decided to put me in a taxi, I had broken the heel off my shoe demonstrating to the rest of the party how I could do the splits. Which should tell you something. I don't know or want to know how much alcohol I actually consumed.

Back at home, I proceeded to call my ex-boyfriend (who was on another continent); he had dumped me two weeks ago for some perky chick he met in marching band... Of course, I had been cheating on him with C pretty much the entire time, but nevertheless I felt the need to tell him what a slut he was and how he'd betrayed and wronged me (I eventually found out that the perky chick had been listening on the other line, and she was distressed that her sweet new boyfriend could have been dating such a foulmouthed alcoholic...)

The requisite humiliating drunken phone call over with, I went to sleep for about two hours and woke up because I had to puke--which I continued to do for the next fourteen hours straight. About every five minutes. I was curled up on the bathroom floor because what was the point of going back to bed, and drinking water so I would have something in my stomach, even temporarily. Around 4 the next afternoon I was able to eat a saltine cracker, which was an enormous relief. That's the sickest I've ever been, and I did it to myself, which is a whole other kind of sick.

Anyway, that's how I broke my liver. For like a year after that I wasn't able to drink alcohol. I'd have one drink and need to skip all my classes next day. Now things are "better," if you want to call it that, but my tolerance is still nothing compared to what it was. Which is just one of the many reasons I will never be William Faulkner.

I still find this story kind of amusing, which probably signals my immaturity. It's reassuring to know that I'm probably physiologically incapable of becoming an alcoholic. And I like to think I learned my lesson, because nothing on that scale has ever happened again.

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