Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Easy Breezy Beautiful Bloody Bathroom



This is the story of the time I almost died in my friend's girlfriend's bathtub. 

In early May of 2007, a week after my 21st birthday, a bunch of friends and I head down to Wilmington, NC to celebrate our friend, Rudy’s 27th birthday. Wilmington, NC is home to the University of North Carolina East where Rudy’s girlfriend at the time went to school. His girlfriend was very kind to let us stay at her house. I made her regret that decision. 

Wilmington North Carolina = Large college campus = abundance of college kids = plenty of places to indulge any alcoholic desire = perfect birthday party venue.

We kick off the celebration with drinks at Rudy’s girlfriend’s house where we drank for a little while before calling a cab. We began our night out at a very nice Japanese Restaurant. It was a busy weekend, so we probably had a good hour-long wait. There was a really nice bar attached to the restaurant where we waited for our table. I quickly made use of my brand new ability to summon alcohol as fast as I could consume it.

Having the alcohol tolerance of a 12 year-old Amish girl, by the time our group was called I was about a seven and a half on a scale of drunk to fucked sideways into oblivion. We sat down at our table and quickly ordered more drinks. I couldn’t read the menu at this point so I told a friend to surprise me. While waiting for our food, I noticed some kind of party going on outside in the back of the restaurant. I nudged one of my friends and suggested we participate. 

We found the door and made our way outside. The back of this restaurant looked like a Japanese temple garden. It was beautiful. 

 
A quick observation of the scene led me to believe that this was a wedding reception. Not your ordinary Jack and Jane wedding party either; these people were a bunch white-collar yuppies.

As the music played we walked around for a few minutes checking the place out. Having a Fiancé at the time there was no point in hitting on any of the girls. So I did the next best thing and started asking random men to dance with me as I bit my bottom lip and thrust my hips at them. Needless to say, my presence there was very short lived. I was quickly asked to leave. 

We finished up at the restaurant and went downtown where there were more bars and clubs than was probably necessary. The very few memories I have of that night were of random girls using my blood alcohol content as a fulcrum to leverage free drinks. I don’t know how but I was aware of their motives and they were dismissed in very short order. Other than that, I remember being carried to the taxi and then into the house where I was deposited on the couch. 

I woke up the next morning to what I imagine labor pains feel like. Once I gained consciousness I realized that I just had to pee. REALLY. BAD.

I HAVE NEVER had to pee so badly in my entire life. 

On the way to the bathroom, other than feeling like my bladder was dying I felt just fine. Despite the amount of alcohol I had consumed the night before, I managed to walk to the bathroom without putting any parts of my body through anything it wasn’t supposed to go through. 

I get in the bathroom and close the door as quickly as I can. I proceed to the toilet and commenced the euphoric release. 

Layout of the bathroom

I remember looking down maintaining positive control of the stream as is protocol when standing up to pee when the feeling of euphoria dissolved into a complete equilibrium failure and suddenly, a loss of consciousness.

The next thing I remember, I woke up with everything but my legs inside of the bathtub and blood POURING out of my face. Despite my obvious injury, my first concern is the fact that my "manhood" was still in the same position as it was during my last moments of consciousness – out and urinating. Now, only inches away from my face and staring directly at me, the blood could wait. My dignity was already wounded; it couldn’t handle the prospect of me pissing on my own face too. 

I quickly “gather” myself and climb out of the bathtub. I rush over to the mirror to assess the damage. It was NOT good. I turned on the faucet and started splashing water on my face to get the blood off as best I could. 

Looking back, this is how I view the bathroom. 

Apparently the sound of my face hitting the bathtub was enough to wake the entire house. 

Sergeant Breeze was the first responder. Breezy was an ODD character. The best way I can describe him is Steve Carell’s role as Brick Tamland in the movie Anchorman. His name poetically suited his mentality.

I hear a knock on the door.

Me: “Yeah?”

Breeze: “You alright?”

Me: “No.”

Breeze: Knock knock knock “You ok?”

Me: “NO!”

Breeze: Knock knock knock “ARE YOU OK?”

What I wanted to say was “No motherfucker! I’m bleeding profusely and I almost peed on my own face!!! I’M NOT OK!!!” But my lack of coherence rendered me incapable of a multi-syllabic response.

Thankfully my friend Mike pushed him out of the way and opened the door. I honestly think that if Breezy and I were the only people in the house, this exchange would have continued until I bled out. 

I don’t remember Mike’s exact response, but it was something to the effect of “HOLY FUCKING SHIT!” By this point I had gathered a crowd.

To this day I have no idea what compelled me to do this but once I got the blood off my face, I put a finger on each side of the inch-long gash and pulled it apart. Bad idea. Once again, the lights went out. Fortunately this time I had several people there to break my fall.

I regained consciousness once again, this time to everyone laughing at me. Rudy was holding up his middle finger asking me how many fingers he was holding up. I’ve always prided myself on the outstanding character of the people I hang out with. This moment was no exception. 

They helped me up and took me to another room to check out my battle wounds and snapped a couple pictures as any good friends would do. It was then that the effects of the gaping head wound, alcohol, and severe dehydration converged on me to form the trifecta from hell’s butthole. I needed a hospital and unfortunately the base hospital was over an hour away from where we were. 


We get in the car and made our way to base. I checked into the emergency room and customarily waited forever to be seen. In the mean time I was asked by one of my friends if I had called Ally, my fiance' at the time to let her know what was up. SHIT. I remembered that I promised to call her the night before when we got back from drinking. I didn't have the capacity to control my extremities, let alone command my phalanges to dial a ten-digit phone number and then coherently tell her I was alright. Hellen Keller would have had better luck. Then with what happened that morning, calling her had been overcome by events.

I already know she's not going to be happy so I had my friend James call to break the news to her softly. Here's how the conversation transpires:

James: "Hi, I'm James. Im Aaron's friend. You don't know me but the reason I called is to tell you that your husband is OK but he is in the emergency room right now."

Ally: "Heavily emphasized expletives with a few words mixed in"

James: As he hands the phone to me, "This is all you bro."

So I ended up having to explain why she never got a call the night before and why it took until mid-afternoon to call her that day.

I don't want to give off the impression that she's some psycho controlling bitch, because she's the complete opposite, but at this point in our relationship I had already shown the propensity to get drunk and do stupid shit so she had cause for concern. She's extremely caring and was really worried about my safety. Did she have a point? Absolutely.

Still hungover, I decide that she's not being as empathetic as I think she should be. I start to get testy.

I may or may not have crossed the line when I told her "I don't know why you're so mad; it's not like I busted YOUR face open."

With that statement I might as well have. 

No comments:

Post a Comment