Part 3
The next day is a day I’ll be referring to as “Death Day” for as long as I live. Because that’s what it is, a fuckin’ day where I wish I was dead. I’m lying in bed, sleeping like any other morning, a nineteen-year-old ex-college student who’s blissfully unaware of the horrors that await him, when suddenly a deadly something begins to nudge my consciousness, demanding that I wake up. I don’t want to and I resist, attempting to dive deeper into my sleep, but eventually that something wins out. After pushing through lots of cobwebs, my brain finally begins to come back online. As soon as consciousness hits, I realize that I’m about to be sick—really, really sick. Somehow, on legs that have turned to rubber, I stumble out of the bed and into the bathroom where I slam myself down on my knees and vomit repeatedly into the toilet. And I’m not talking your garden variety barfing either. No, we’re talking world-class vomiting, the kind that you know, for certain, means you’ve thrown up everything in your stomach as well as your stomach itself. Even when it’s all gone, I am still dry puking, heaving and retching and being more miserable than I’ve ever been in my entire life. All right, given the bashing, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but not by much. Dimly, I realize that Brian is with me. Brave man. I guess he’s seen worse although at that moment, I doubt it. He holds back my hair every time I bend over the bowl, and keeps his warm hand on my shoulder like he wants me to know he understands what I’m going through. I don’t think I ever loved him more. Finally, after hours and hours of this torture—okay, it’s about ten minutes—I struggle to my feet and stagger to the sink. Turning on the cold water, I rinse my mouth repeatedly, then brush my teeth and use mouthwash although when I do, it feels like I’m gonna barf once more. After doing that, I stand there in a daze, not sure what to do, where to go, anything. My head is pounding like someone’s using it for a gong, but at least I won’t have puke breath. Brian grabs a washcloth, wets it with warm water, and begins to wash my face. Did I mention how much I love him? Right then, I think marrying him might be a very good option, if only I could talk him into it. He’s too wonderful, too perfect to be part of the general populace, i.e., Babylon’s backroom. I almost wish I was a girl so I could have his babies—that’s how intense my gratitude is. Of course, I don’t understand right then that I’m still a little drunk and maybe that has something to do with the swooning reaction. Maybe. “Thanks,” I say as his unbuttons my shirt and wipes my chest with gentle strokes. I touch my stomach, which he hasn’t gotten to yet. “I’m sticky.” “Yep.” Oh, God. Right then, I have this memory of mixing drinks … last night? It’s the next day, right? Last night I was all hot on getting a job as a bartender at this trendy restaurant. Not a sleazy joint like Woody’s, but a classy place where the big-spenders would tip well and I wouldn’t get hit on like every ten seconds. Somehow the idea seemed brilliant, especially after I mixed and consumed a Tom Collins and a Cosmo. Shit! I was mixing drinks? “Why do I smell like a brewery?” I ask Brian cautiously, afraid what the answer might be. But Brian is earning all his good guy points for the rest of the year because he doesn’t answer. Instead, he helps me go back to bed. He says I can shower when I’m steady on my feet, but right now he wants me to take some aspirin and eat breakfast. The thought of food is almost enough to make me hurl again, but I agree to coffee, which leads to toast a little later on, and then the pain reliever. Yeah, my head is a motherfucker, and, as I lay there listening to the sounds of Brian moving around in the kitchen, I have a very bad feeling about all of this. Sure, I’ve been hammered before. More than once. I’ve come home with Brian supporting me all the way. But, see, I remember those times, vividly. Most of them ended in sex, good sex. This time I’m not remembering anything after I mixed those stupid drinks and tasted them to make sure they were okay. I must’ve lost my mind. That’s the only answer. It was pre-Death Day, right? Crazy Day, maybe, when all my pent up frustration at being out of school and without a real job just exploded. It didn’t even occur to me, in that state, that Brad Whittier, the guy we met who wanted me to work at his restaurant, couldn’t hire me as a bartender at age nineteen. What was he thinking? Fuck, was he coming on to me the whole time, and I was just dumb enough to buy it? What was I thinking? About two hours later, I’ve had a long, hot shower, more toast, more aspirin and coffee. I’m beginning to think I might live. Brian comes to sit with me on the couch where I’m now recuperating. I can tell he’s ready to answer questions, but I don’t even want to ask. I made a fool of myself, I’m pretty sure of that. Did I take off all my clothes and run around the loft naked? Or outside? God, I hope it wasn’t outside. And why did I smell like I was bathing in the alcohol instead of drinking it? Finally, trying to gather up the shreds of my courage, I ask him to tell me. So, being Brian, he does and in doing so, he pulls no punches. Soon, I'm moaning, my legs pulled up against my chest, my face mashed against them, wishing I was dead. Death Day, remember? Not only did I make a total ass of myself, I did it in front of my mother! And that’s before Brian gets to the killing blow, the one that’ll make me want to start drinking again. It’s so bad, even Brian hesitates to tell me, but eventually I square my shoulders and command him to do so. I mean, how bad can it be? I’ve already mixed a dozen drinks and drank many of them, ordered enough Italian food to feed twenty, and danced all over the loft in front of my mother. It can’t get much worse than that, can it? Please tell me it can’t! Of course, it can. When Brian tells me about standing on the table and warbling the wiener song, well, I laugh. When he tells me Michael recorded me doing it, I howl in agony and hide my face again. “No, no! Why didn’t you stop him? Oh, God, my life has come to an end! Fuck! I’m dead, I’m dead meat, dead man walking, dead to the world.” I’m getting so carried away with the dead thing I’ve lost track of my point. “It’s not that bad,” Brian says next to me, and when I peek through my fingers, I see that he’s smiling—a little. “You’re enjoying this!” I say with all the outrage I can muster. He shrugs. “Yeah, a little.” His smile gets wider as he looks dreamily off into space. “It was a sight to behold, Sunshine. You on the dining room table narrowly avoiding the antipasto platter as you flapped your arms and enthusiastically extolled the virtues of wieners.” He gives me his best leer. “Not that I didn’t already know, but—” “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I yelp because I can imagine it all too well. “And you didn’t tackle Michael, grab the cell phone from him, smash it on the floor? What kind of boyfriend are you?” “The non-defined, non-conventional kind.” I press my face against my knees and think about leaving town for a year or two. I could go to L.A. and become a world-famous surfer … except for the fact that I turn an alarming shade of red if I’m in the sun longer than ten minutes. Okay, I’ll go to San Francisco and be a street performer. Maybe I should perfect the act I’m already doing and perform it on the streets for everyone to see. I mean, why am I limiting my audience to people who are related to me or fuck me? Oh, God! “How could you let Michael do that?” I say to Brian in my most pitiful voice. “Michael doesn’t belong to me, so I have no control over him.” Brian sounds a little less amused. I look up and see that a modest amount of steel has crept into his gaze. “You think I deserve what I get?” “I think you knew damn well that you shouldn’t be doing all that drinking and at some moment in the evening you made the choice to ignore that.” I cringe, getting markedly smaller. I don’t say a word. “Plus, while you were cavorting around the loft, making messes everywhere you went, who do you think was left to clean up after you passed out?” I shrink into myself even more. “That’s right, yours truly. So let’s not talk about poor, martyred Justin anymore, okay?” Brian straightens out, still pinning me to the spot with his death-stare (see? death again!). “And here’s another memo for you, honey. Tonight’s the family dinner.” “Oh, no. No, no, no!” I’m whimpering now, pulled into a tight ball, wishing I could go back to the barfing portion of this experience because it was much less painful. “I can’t. Brian, I can’t. They’ll tease me mercilessly. They’ll torture and mock me. They’ll … I’ll never, ever, in a million years live this down! You know Michael will show the video to every fucking one of them! You know he’ll download it onto his computer and e-mail it to everyone in Pennsylvania.” Brian’s hand falls onto my head, not unpleasantly. “Courage, Grasshopper,” he intones. “He who walks into the ring of fire comes out with burned feet.” That makes me laugh and before I know it, I’ve uncurled from my position so that I can kiss Brian. He’s been really good about everything. No yelling, no murder or mayhem. He didn’t even try to spank me (damn). Just a little slap on the wrist, if that. Soon he’s convinced me that the best way to get over the hangover is to sweat it out. And, of course, he has the perfect way to do that, which doesn’t involve saunas or wrapping yourself in plastic. Before I know it, we’re fucking and guess what? His “cure” works. I don’t feel 100% like my old self, but I sure as hell feel a lot better after we’ve re-christened a few surfaces I “damaged” with my “witless” behavior. “What am I going to do about the family dinner?” I ask him a few hours later as we lay together on the couch, the scene of our third encounter. I’m halfway on top of Brian, looking down into his eyes, and, yeah, I’m still worried about the embarrassing scene to come. “I have to find some way to get that video from Michael. He’ll never let me live it down.” Brian rakes a hand through my hair, his eyes sleepy and soft. “Not gonna be easy, Snoopy Boy,” he says. He’s having fun with the names, at my expense of course, but I’m not about to complain. Actually, although he doesn’t know it, they sound kind of like endearments. But I won’t tell him that. “You think he’s got it on his computer?” “He’s not that computer savvy and Ben’s out of town so—” I lean closer. “All I have to do is erase it from the phone, right? If I can do that, he won’t be able to use it like a weapon over my head for the next five years.” Deadpan, Brian stares. “You underestimate Michael.” “Why? “It’ll be ten years at least.” I lay my head down on his chest. “Shit. There has to be a way to get that video. There has to be…”