I woke up on my couch Friday morning fully clothed with my shoes as a pillow. Sitting up, I looked at the time on my cellphone display (6:50am) and realized that I felt great. No stomach ache, lots of energy, no vice-grips on my temples, and everything in my pockets. My first thought was that I must have had a boring St. Patrick's Day, but it didn't take long for me to remember that that would have been impossible, as this year St. Patrick's Day coincided with the first day of the NCAA tournament.
Standing in the shower, I went through the evenings events in my head:
lots of Guinness and vodka at the sports bar for all the games
lots of Guinness at the bar in Berkeley after the games
more Guinness and tequila at the bar down the street
Jack in the Box on the ride home
Oh crap. I'm not feeling great. I'm still drunk. Unless I keep going, there's no way I'm not going to be hungover. But it's Friday and I absolutely have to go to work for at least 3 or 4 hours. shit, shit shit.
During the work week, this is the worst possible circumstance in which to find yourself. You don't know when or how it's going to hit you, only that it will. That means there's really nothing you can do about it until zero hour.
Waiting for the hangover reminds me of that slap game you'd play with your brother or sister on roadtrips when you were younger. The game where you'd put your hands out, palms down, and position them directly above your sibling's hands which they held palms up. You'd hold them there as still as possible and the point was for the person on the bottom to slap the tops of your hands before you could pull them away.
When you were younger, you'd get all jumpy, constantly pulling them away with even the slightest flinch from your partner, who would be grinning bigger and bigger the more you pulled away because you were falling right into their trap. Then you'd start to get that nervous feeling in your stomach knowing that something was coming and, even though you were ostensibly prepared for it, it would always make you jump when it finally arrived. Then you would finally settle down and your partner would be still and you'd try to judge it and time when they were going to shot their hands over the top and slap you. Unless you were reading their eyes or their wrists though, that was always when they had you dead to rites. WHAM! FULL DOUBLE HAND SLAP!
That's exactly how I felt on Friday. I drank a ton of water. I ate a fried-egg bagel sandwich. I drank more water. I didn't take any aspirin though, because I didn't want to tempt fate. I got air every hour or so. I drank more water, had an orange. Walked around talking to people.
After a few hours I really started to think I had licked the onset of hangover. I couldn't feel anything creeping up on me. I had a cup of coffee and it didn't make me have to shit like a Scandanavian on a Mexican vacation. I was tired though, and my eyes were kinda hurting. I figured it was just minimal sleep and too much time staring at the computer screen. Flaunting the fundamentals of the Hangover Slapgame, I decided to close my eyes and lay my head down on the desk.
Not 5 minutes later the phone rings and, as I answer it, my opponent in the hangover slapgame decides to flaunt the rules himself and, instead of slapping my hands, he punches me right in the face as hard as he can. It was 12:57pm Pacific Standard Time and I was knocked the fuck out with a single punch.
Nausea, pounding headache, cottonmouth, the shakes, muscle aches. I got it all and I got it all at once.
I had to get the hell out of my office. I didn't know where I was going or what I was going to do, but I couldn't sit under the flourescent office lights and stare at a computer screen for much longer. Once outside, standing in a steady drizzle with no coat on (again), I decided to go to Tony Roma's. I would have some soup, a pulled pork sandwich, and beer. I got hit in the fucking jaw in the hangover slapgame and took a standing 8 count. I needed to return with a solid combination of shots to the body.
I sat at the bar next to some dude gnawing at a rack of shortribs like Chris Katan's monkey character on SNL. I ordered my food and a Fat Tire from the server. I took it from the counter and brought it up to my lips. Only one problem...motorskills.
My hand shook so bad on the way up to my mouth that I spilled a good inch and a half from the top of the pint glass right down the front of my white dress shirt. The SNL monkey dude stared at me in what I think was pity. The server, who of course was very cute, just looked at me and started laughing. I wanted to reach across the bar and bitchslap her until she reached up to her neck, unzipped the sweater she was wearing, and exposed an identical stain.
"Long night?" she asked sympathetically.
"Jesus, I feel like I got hit by a train. I hope St. Patty's Day and the first day of the tournament never fall on the same day ever again in the history of my life," I said with about as much energy and emotion as a concentration camp prisoner in line for the shower.
"Yeah, I know what you mean. We all went out after work last night too. I swore I would only have a couple cocktails since I had to work this morning, but you know how that is. It never happens that way." My server, Krista, sounded like she was reading my mind.
"You're not kidding. I was actually stupid enough to think I had escaped the hangover when I woke up this morning and felt great," I explained.
"You were still drunk, weren't you?" This girl was obviously a grizzled drinking veteran.
"Yeah, now I just want to jump in front of a BART train." This made her laugh and made some sort of iced coffee drink she was sucking through a straw come shooting out of her nose. I think that was the last straw for the rib-knawer to my right because he tossed down a $20, folded his paper hastily, and walked out without a word.
"When I'm done throwing down 3 or 4 of those Fat Tire's I'm probably just gonna go back to my office, close the door, curl up under my desk and try to sleep until 2 or 3 when the rest of the good first round games start...like I do everytime I come into work hungover" It sounded like a perfect plan to both of us.
She was a little envious, of course, because she had to be on her feet for the rest of her shift, but her envy paled in comparison to the terror that overtook my body when I looked over toward the TV and saw, one seat over from where the SNL rib-knawer was sitting, two paralegals from my department with whom I shared mutual ill will.
They heard everything and had a look on their faces like Kevin Bacon in A Few Good Men when he gets PFC Downey to admit that he wasn't in his room at 16:20 when Lt. Kendrick gave Dawson the order to give Private Santiago a Code Red. It was the look you get from a long-awaited yet ridiculously easy victory against an unprepared, unsuspecting opponent. It's a Mike Tyson body shot that breaks a rib, lacerates a kidney, and drops you to a knee. It doesn't kill you or end the fight, but you know you're in deep trouble.
My meeting with the paralegal manager is tomorrow at 4:30. I can't wait.
Posted by nils at 8:40 PM