Black Eye Mystery

Everyone likes a good night of drinking. Unless you're Mormon. Or a recovering alchie. Or straight edge.

I used to enjoy it a lot more than I do now. I haven't gone out and gotten bombed in a while. Maybe its because I have a girlfriend who I live with, that certainly cuts into drunkie time. But deep down, I don't really give a shit about it anymore. I'd rather sit at home writing or working on shit to better my career. I know, I'm a lame old man.

How times change....

This time ten years ago, I would go out with a vengeance. I would drink a bottle of Skyy vodka, steal some shit, pick a fight, hook up with two chicks and then throw up.

Yep, throw up. A lot.

I had a run during my freshman year where I threw up like once a week. I don't know why, it might have been that I drank enough liquor to put a bear in a coma. That might have had something to do with it.

I think I hadn't really built up my drinking defenses yet. Now, I can drink a shit load and hold all my cookies.

I have this one friend Jay who never built this up. If he has like two beers, he'll throw up for months. No joke, months. He'll be bed ridden for longer than most people with mono.

But even Jay's remarkable month long hang over doesn't compare to the worst night of drinking of my life. Not that I remember any of it. At all.

The following story is told with pieces and bits from my hazy computer like brain, friend’s accounts and a few photos.

Like Mr. Ecko said on Lost, "We shall start at the beginning."

I was in a fraternity. There I admit it. It's not something that I'm that proud of, because most people think of frats as places where gay white boys hang out and play grab ass before they give GHB to their dates. And while that was partly true, there were a few Mexicans and a black guy in my frat. So we weren't entirely like the stereotype.

Don't hold this frat thing against me, it wasn't like a frat. It was a place where like-minded drunks got together and partied. We had one of the old throwback frats like Animal House. Our members were all weird, abnormal and nerdy, but in a cool way.

We had a big blowout party for some reason (did we need a reason?). My big brother in the fraternity, Matt Pfaffly, was going to stop by my dorm and get drunk before we went to get really drunk. Matt was the greatest big brother one could have in a frat; old enough to buy booze, had tons of money and was more of a troublemaker than I was.

I was getting ready when I heard something outside. "Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!"

Only it was October.

It was Matt, being what he called "Alcoholic Santa". My dorm was dry and in order to bring up his large stash of bottles, he needed to 'hide them'. He hid them in a pillowcase, where the bottles CLANKED and RATTLED and he yelled out "Alcohol here! Alcoholic Santa!" Not exactly covert but that was Pfaffly's way. If someone would have said something, he would have slapped them across the face and then later bought him or her out of a pending lawsuit.

I remember us drinking in my dorm room. The rest of the night, a complete blank.

I woke up side down. It was dark. It smelled like death. Where the hell was I?

I righted myself up and realized that my head was sitting in a bucket of my own vomit. Not just a normal size bucket either. A five gallon one. And it was half way full.

It was still dark. Wait, I can't open my eyes. I went into the bathroom and splashed water on my eyes and preyed a ton of eye boogers off of them. It was more than eye boogers, it was like the mucus that Aliens cocoon their prey in.

I finally got them open enough to notice, I had TWO BLACK EYES. Not one, but two. And not just black but bloody almost. The black circles encompasses more than just my eye sockets, they were down my cheeks and up my forehead.

I went into Sean Coyle's room and woke him up. He didn't look like he had a fun morning with his hang over but at least he didn't have two black eyes.

He said that I was wasted but that he wasn't sure what had happened. His mother (a nurse) was coming over for breakfast, she could take a look at them.

She figured that when I threw up and slept upside down in a bucket, the alcohol thinned blood must have run to my head and busted every blood vessel in my eyes and sockets.

Man, that sucks. I only knew the half of it however.

I went to the house to figure out what I blacked out from the night before. It was a little bit like Memento, I had to ask these dumb questions to people who looked at me like I was joking.

"You seriously don't remember pulling down your pants?" one guy said.

Another said, "You threw up on this chair here, and this potted plant... and this TV."

"You don't remember grabbing all those girl's asses? I had to stop a couple of sexual harassment lawsuits for you buddy boy."

When I found Matt, he had the best story of the night...

"I left you for a minute and I came back and you were talking to your ex."

My ex, the female body builder. This chick was not like the super body builder chicks you see late night on ESPN 8, she was pretty but super strong. SUPER STRONG...

"You told her that you loved her and you were wrong for breaking up with her. You told her you wanted to get married. I was about to smack the shit out of you to get your head right when all the sudden you turned around, grabbed the first girl you saw, and threw your disgusting throw up covered tongue down her throat."

I did what?

"Your ex grabbed you, punched you so hard in the face I thought of that scene in Braveheart where he bashed that dude's face in with that ball and chain. She floored you. It took two guys to hold her back."

Wow. Man I wish I was there to see it.

I never did figure out if the black eyes were from the throwing up, hanging up side down with low amount of blood in my alcohol stream or if the shear force of her one punch. I guess it's probably both.

Come to think of it, maybe this is why I'm not drinking as much anymore. Nahhhh, I'm just old and lame.