Barf Queen on a Date

"I took 5 of them," she slurred.

Oh boy. When I got home from work on Friday, I opened my front door to find E in the midst of a Vicodin-induced stupor. She had surgery recently, and was in some pain.

"Well, I don't have any plans tonight. You wanna stay in and have a Roomie Bonding Night? We can watch movies and eat popcorn. I could pop a Vicodin and join you!" I said, excitedly.

E nodded enthusiastically. "Yeahyeahyeah."

15 minutes later, we were in our jammies, watching Dirty Love, eating jelly beans and I had downed a Vicodin. A few minutes later, I decided it wasn't working, so I took another one.

[Note: This directly violates Rule #1 of VB's Vicodin Enjoyment: Never take more than one Vicodin. I would soon rue this rule violation.]

So I'm just starting to enjoy myself when there's a knock on the door. It's Cute Neighbor. And I'm buzzed on painkillers. Uh-Oh. Act natural.

He had some friends (a married couple) coming into town for the night and wanted to know if I would care to join them for dinner and pool.

"Sure, I'd love to!" I replied, trying to sound sober, secretly wondering how in the hell I'm going to pull this off.

He said ok, and told me to be ready by 8. Cool. That gave me an hour and a half to get ready. In other words, I would be totally juiced by the time the date started. I shut the door.

"Shitshitshitshitshit!!!" I whispered.

"What? Wassss that CN?" asked E, stumbling over to the front door.

"Dude, I have a date with CN and I'm fucked up. I can't do this," I said, walking past her, to my room.

Have you ever tried to get ready when you're drunk? Because that's what it was like. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that this was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Hot rollers? Seemed to require a PhD. Coordinating shoes with my outfit? Required an extremely serious debate between myself and E, lasting about 15 minutes. Zipping up and tying my top, without getting the dreaded white deodorant marks all over the front? Took every ounce of concentration and focus I had in my body. I dropped everything twice. I almost poked my eye out with the eyeliner. And I thought the SATs were hard. I think I asked E about 6 times if my outfit looked ok. Which was stupid, because she was more wacked out than I was.

Oh boy. This was going to be an interesting night.

"E!" I shouted. "I don't know if this is a good idea.....it's still kicking in!"

"No, you should totally go. You have to," she slurred, leaning against the door frame of my room.

"Well, the good thing is, I'm not nervous at all. I feel gooooooooood," I replied.

"See? So you shhhhhould go...." E mumbled before collapsing on the couch. I think she passed out at this point. I don't really know. I was more concerned with remembering how to walk in a straight line.

After double and triple-checking myself in the mirror, I headed over to CN's house across the street. "Don't tell him you're on Vicodin. Don't tell him you're on Vicodin," I mentally repeated to myself.

[Note: When we went tailgating together last weekend, I mentioned how much I loved Vicodin, but emphasized that I do not do it all the time by any wild stretch of the imagination. So I did not want to give the impression that I am addicted to pain killers or something. Because less than a week later, here I am, weaving all over the street, teetering in high heels. Yeesh.]

We drove downtown to meet up with the couple. I think I acted pretty normally. I think....I hope...

By the time we walked to the restaurant, sat down and opened our menus, I was blitzed. I could feel my eyes crossing and my mind wandering.

I ordered a ginger ale in the hopes that it would settle my stomach. No such luck. Before I took a sip of it, I excused myself from the table. Luckily, our table was not too far from the bathroom.

By some miracle, the bathroom was empty. I hurriedly locked the stall door behind me and proceeded to barf. "Shit! I am never taking Vicodin again! I am a total idiot! I can't believe I did this!!! Stupid, stupid, stupid!" I thought as I doubled over, hurling.

Double checking myself, my hair and my clothes in the mirror, I swished my mouth out and popped some gum. I have no idea how long this took, because at this point, I was in Lala Land.

Luckily, no one seemed to notice when I got back to the table. We ordered our food, and I drank my ginger ale and began to feel a little better. Whew, I am in the clear. I attempted to join in on the conversation, and managed to hold my own. I have no earthly clue what we talked about. I don't remember a word of it. I do remember CN flirting with me, and smiling at him, and thinking he was definitely out of TFZ. But that's about it. Most of my thoughts were focused on not falling out of my chair. As if reminding myself to keep my eyelids from shutting halfway wasn't hard enough, the stress and paranoia of being discovered was making me sweat profusely. Oh man. This was not fun. Not fun at all.

Then, the food was served. CN and his buddy had ordered sushi. Which wasn't the best thing for me to see/smell at that point. Feeling woozy, I took a deep breath and focused on eating my own meal. I swallowed the first bite when..........uh oh. Guess what. The ginger ale didn't work. Back to the bathroom I go.

This time, I didn't say anything, but got up and made a beeline to the ladies' room. I almost had to run. Which would have been funny to see, because at this point, my stomach was controlling the rest of my body. I had lost control over my brain, not to mention my appendages. I almost fell on the way. As I barged into the bathroom, throwing the door wide open and staggering around to see if anyone else was in there, I was overjoyed to find that I again had the bathroom all to myself. Yesssss! But I didn't have a lot of time to enjoy this moment: Must. Barf. Now. Unluckily, I didn't make it all the way to the toilet, and managed to barf all over the stall. At least this time, it was just ginger ale and one piece of pasta, so it wasn't very messy. I cleaned it up as best I could and felt a LOT better. I washed up and swished again.

"I am the biggest effing idiot on Earth and possibly throughout all of history. I can't believe I am doing this," I thought. "Oh, gawd, what if I keep barfing every 15 minutes???" I looked in the mirror: no harm done to clothes, makeup or hair. "SCORE! This is the best barf luck I've ever had!" I thought, as I popped another piece of gum.

I rejoined the group, but knew better than to drink or eat anything. Feeling the buzz start to wear off, I began to relax. That is, until I realized: they were on to me. "Um, are you ok? Does your food taste ok? You're not eating," the wife asked me.

I told everyone that I hadn't felt well since lunch, when I had ordered a salad from a local restaurant. I apologized for not feeling so well or eating. "But I'm starting to feel a little better. I just can't eat or drink anything right now," I explained. I received much sympathy. Whew. Big sigh of relief.

After dinner, we crossed the street to go play pool. Who do we run into? Why, MJ and her new guy, VW! I ran up to her.

"Oh thank God you're here! Help me! I'm on a date with CN and I'm fucked up on Vicodin and I can't stop barfing! Do I look ok? Can you tell I'm fucked up? Do I smell like barf? Omg, I barfed at the restaurant -- twice!" I shouted frantically.

"Please tell me you didn't barf at the table," she said, hesitantly.

"Oh, thank goodness, no. I even got the bathroom all to myself!" I replied with glee.

She laughed and reassured me I looked fine and that I appeared normal. Never in my life have I been so happy to run into someone I knew.

The rest of the evening went really, really well. MJ and VW joined our group, and we all had fun playing pool. Towards the end of the night, we all grabbed a table outside and talked. That's when CN and VW began to hit it off -- they were inseparable! "Dude, your date hijacked my date!" I told MJ.

"I know! They are like BFFs!" she answered. We laughed and began to tease the guys about it.

Soon after, CN's friends went back to their hotel and MJ and VW left. This left me and CN alone to talk. And boy, did we talk. We went for at least an hour, solid. Talked for a while at the bar, all the way back to the car (with much teasing from CN about how I am Barf Queen) and all the way home. Then, we sat in his driveway and talked some more. We exchanged phone numbers and myspace URLs. There was mucho chemistry and CN is most definitely out of TFZ. Yay!

And no, nothing happened, Noseypants.

We made plans to hang out the next day and watch a movie. But by the time I was done with everything I had to do on Saturday, it was almost time for the USC game to start, so we watched the first half of that instead.

Nothing happened on Saturday, either. But it was his fault -- he sat on the easy chair, while I sat on the couch all by myself. So much for couch snuggling.

He was probably afraid I would barf on him...