I wiped barf from my chin with the washcloth Chris had handed me. “I’m sorry!” I said to my new husband, from my seat on the floor in the doorway to our bathroom. I had chocolate martini vomit on my shirt, my chin, and the floor.
He laughed and replied, “This is nothing! I was in a fraternity. And I did tell you to go ahead.” He took the used rag from me, wiped the floor, and got up to throw it in the laundry room.
That’s right. It was his fault, and not just because he made the chocolate martinis. He had told me to go ahead and puke. He wasn’t specific enough. He should have directed me to crawl the three feet to the toilet before letting go.
This was our first New Year’s Eve together and it had started out differently. We had been married for two and a half months by this point. We were planning a quiet evening at home with another couple, and this ended up lasting until about eleven when I stumbled out of the room and into our bedroom, where Chris found me sitting on the floor.
He came back from the laundry room and kneeled next to me. “I guess we should have eaten more than salad, huh.” He chuckled. He was pretty drunk, too, but not on the floor drunk like I was. We had just started the South Beach Diet that evening and had eaten some sort of low-carb salad for dinner, and that’s it. No crackers or hors d’oeuvres or any traditional New Year’s Eve snacks. Just lettuce, chicken breast, and chocolate martinis. I had two and a half martinis (our glasses were huge) before my body informed me that they were coming back up.
Earlier that evening we had been sitting in our small, Cape Coral living room with a couple we knew, chatting, drinking, and watching some New Year’s Eve show. This couple was smart and brought beer to drink, which they stuck to after trying a chocolate martini. To me, beer is like bread soda. I’ve never really liked it, and honestly, it doesn’t work fast enough. I’ve been a big vodka fan since my early 20s, actually since age 20. At that time in South Florida, male servers never carded young women at bars, so I ordered vodka cranberries to my heart’s content. Female servers always asked for ID. I don’t have big boobs or anything; that’s just the way it was then.
Chris went back out to the living room, leaving me to brush my teeth and change clothes. He told our guests they were welcome to stay but, “Lisa’s sick and going to bed.” Well, this will come as a surprise, but they opted to leave. I don’t blame them. Chris was probably slurring by this time, himself. He did not vomit, but he told me he was finishing half-finished drinks in the kitchen while he was cleaning up. That’s not good. I did that on New Year’s Eve when I was 16, but that is another story.
Once I got into bed, the room started spinning. I tried to put one foot on the floor to stabilize the room (because that works), but at oompa loompa height it’s tough to lie on a bed and put your foot on the floor. I eventually passed out, and I guess my husband did the same.
The next morning, I was so happy that our eight-year-old son was with my ex-husband. We were a wreck. We laid on the couch all day drinking water and Gatorade and reading. It took the whole day to recover.
That was sixteen years ago. This year was much different. Since we are planning to do dry January, we did not restock our liquor supply. We opened a bottle of red wine to go with our pizza last night, but I wasn’t feeling it after taking two sips and stuck to blackberry Bubly. Chris had two glasses and stopped. This morning neither of us needed Tums or Gatorade. We’ll probably have some reading time this afternoon, but we won’t HAVE TO have reading time.
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