This story comes from my darker days -- before I became the married schoolteacher mother of two with the nice little station wagon and the collie dog in the backyard that I am today. Yes, this story is from my Drinking Days. Any good Irishman (or woman) can tell you that, once sufficiently trained, they can drink continuously until 1) they fall asleep or 2) there is nothing left to drink. Though I had my share of hurl-fest evenings, complete with shitteriffic mornings (nothing like a case of Beast Ice to clear up a case of constipation), I had always been able to retain control of the rest of my parts during the binge.
This was until I met Carlo. Carlo Rossi. Merlot, to be exact. This blood-red concoction is 40% grape juice, 40% alcohol, and 20% cement-burning acid. I found this out the very hard and stinky way.
I was out for a typical night of drinking -- case of beer or bottle of wine. Who knows what I ate that day; probably McDonalds or something else you should never eat when you're about to go drinking. When my case was empty I saw a friend holding a peculiar bottle. It was a large jug of red wine, possibly gallon-sized (I'm no good at sizes). She had just started to drink it, and had also just started to make out with some preppy-looking guy, so I snuck it out of the hand that wasn't busy groping.
The first sip was like Communion; the second like medicine. And the rest is history. How I finished that jug in the next two hours, I will never know. Friends say it flowed like Kool-Aid. I know for sure that I lost forty dollars, my friend's shirt, and my house keys that evening; and I discovered the next day that I had lost something even more priceless. After being passed out for eight hours on my bathroom floor, I awoke slowly in a haze of confusion, and with a warm friend below my stomach. I had passed out face-first and my loving friends had placed a blanket over me, but it did little to shield the fast-growing odor of twice-fermented grapes and barley emanating from my rear.
Being hungover and waking up in your own poo, pee, and hurl is no fun event. For sure. Imagine waking up in that situation but with the bathroom door open and two strangers in the living room. Also bad.
Then came the cleanup. Shower? Sure. Throw out clothes? Inevitable. Scour floor? Easy enough. Or is it? After four Orange-Glo & Clorox Bleach scourings -- two days' worth -- there was still a one-and-a-half foot diameter burgundy stain on my white cement bathroom floor. The stench would not leave, either.
No visitors would ever enter that bathroom again, and when my lease ran up two months later, I left that challenge to the new renters.
I have since quit drinking. I learned that the joke "You might be a drunk if your poo looks more than 89% like your beverage" is actually not funny; and while I might have left the stinky apartment, those memories will stick to me forever.