Day 6886 | Day 6938

Ok, so this is going to be one of those stories.

It started out (as all these stories tend to) with a question: "Fuck man, what're we going to do for Halloween?" The logical answer (which I'm sure many of you already arrived at) was irish car bombs. Now, for anyone who doesn't know, irish car bombs are highly alcoholic and have a taste that varies from coffee to chocolate milk and anything else in between and, most importantly, are damn good drinks.

So we worked our way rather quickly through our bottles of Jameson, Baileys, and Guinness. By our collective estimations (based on the number of empties left over) we each had five car bombs in about 45 minutes, give or take a quarter of an hour. This, in itself, was a bad plan.

At this point one member of our little cadre suggested (in a horrible imitation of an Irish accent) that we "go get some at the frats." Coincidentally, this was also the point at which all Reason kicked me in the shins and ran away belting show tunes from the 1940s. My better judgement having left me, I arrived at the fraternities not 20 minutes later and was bustled past the strobe lights and 300 watt sub woofers, up a flight of stairs and into the room of 'this-really-cool-guy-you'll-like-him'. The room was trashed and had the stale smell of cigarettes, dirty clothing, and Axe body spray. The room's occupant cleared a mixed pile of clothes, papers, and books off the futon and handed me a beer from the fridge. I liked him instantly.

Pause for a moment. I am not the most social person. In fact, when I meet you I will talk your ear off for fear of giving you the chance to speak and make fun of me. I now find myself in a fraternity on Halloween night with freely flowing alcohol and people with many fewer inhibitions to lose than myself. To my right on the couch were two people, whom I'd never met before, making out (I don't think they'd ever met either). To my left three guys were molesting each other's nipples between swigs of beer. As is my way, I left quietly.

This is how I found myself alone in my dorm room, kneeling in front of the toilet and vomiting what had been my only meal in 48 hours. My legs were bent awkwardly underneath me and when I attempted to stand they betrayed my already addled sense of balance. This resulted in my arm plunging into the vomit-filled toilet. So I did what any reasonable drunk would do: crawled into the shower.

And I sat and let the water run, rinsing the rancid chunks of chicken and macaroni off my skin and clothes. And I sat and stared at the water shooting out of the shower head, shifting my head to perfectly recreate the shot from Psycho. And I sat.

I lost track of the time; hypnotized by the motion of the bubbles racing each other down the drain in spirals and the mingling smells of puke and steam and soap. I sat and I thought about everything in the last year that I regretted, everyone I had met and whom I had drifted away from, the things that I did wrong and the things I did right. I thought about my first relationship and the friends I'd known for more than half my life that I'd cast off. I thought about being the first male in my family too lazy to put in the work to become an Eagle Scout and about my crippling fear of social interaction. I thought about life and death and mere survival. And I had a moment of Nirvana.

Then I shut off the water and went on with my life.