A Vomit Story.

A couple days ago I was talking to my brother about some video he has of himself, drinking a gallon of milk, followed by puking it on someone's driveway shortly before said driveway's owner had a birthday party for his child. He followed this disgusting, in-deep-detail story of vomit with, "you should watch it sometime!" Let’s not forget the joyous, toothy emoticon that he sent me that ended our vomit conversation.

Suddenly, I had a brain meltdown and acid flashbacks from the acid I never did. It felt as though my mind fell into a black hole and I ended up in some part of my brain that only remembered all the vomit I’ve ever vomited in my entire life, every single horrifying moment where I thought I’d puke my brains out and die by drowning myself in the toilet bowl.

Flash back to 1992. I'm 7 years old and a student at the Lycee Francais, a private French school where they stuck the non-French speaking American kids in a room with Muzzy tapes. Muzzy was like the cookie monster, only fatter, dumber, unpopular and was always trying to fit in one way or another and no one ever took him seriously. Muzzy pretty much started every conversation in French introducing himself to another character saying, “I am the Great Muzzy!” All I know is that if I ran around introducing myself as THE GREAT ERIKA, I would have been put into a mental institution long ago.

The most humiliating day of my life was my first Vomit Day. I call it “Vomit Day” because it was the first time I had ever seen another kid puke in school. It must have been in the fall or winter, because I was wearing heavy jeans littered with tactfully, fashionably placed bleach marks and a heavy sweatshirt that I believe was red, knitted with dumb designs and I’m pretty sure my parents hated me for making me wear it. If they did not hate me, then they might as have been really high. It sort of explains why I’ve seen Puff the Magic Dragon so many times. It’s bad enough I had the teeth of a goblin, but dressing me like Kool-Aid man didn’t help my cause.

My classroom was enormous; I vaguely remember counting the steps it took me to get from my chair to the bathroom, which was a unisex bathroom, shared by two classrooms. It made for awkward situations when I’d be peeing and a child from the other classroom would open the door because the doors never locked. I’m pretty sure that it was illegal to subject children to that type of bathroom torture but I guess the French are free-spirited - even down to bathroom privacy. I now cannot pee unless doors are locked, otherwise I hold the doors shut and scream, “THIS STALL IS NOT AVAILABLE!” when I see feet walk by. Sometimes I take extra precaution and say it when I hear the door open, before someone has the time to figure out which stall I’m in.

Vomit Day was the day that I vowed to never wear my red sweatshirt again, as it was the most horrible day of my life. Like I said, my classroom as gigantic. We had an enormous, bright-blue table shaped like a “U,” and we had cubbies on one end of the classroom and arts & craft supplies on the other. I sat in the middle of the U, far from the cubbies and the furthest from the bathroom. I can’t remember if it was Thanksgiving, Christmas or just some bull-shit card making day but it was one of those days where we were making cards for our parents. I’m in the middle of writing, “DEAR MOM & DAD” when the unthinkable happens. The fattest kid in the entire class stands up and projectile vomits all over his clothes, his arts and crafts, his table buddies and everything around him, including at least 20 letters to mom and dad. It turned into a puke-fest because everyone started gagging and puking right along with him. I remember seeing the vomit slowly flowing like lava to the end of the table, dripping onto the floor, taking out pencils, crayons and anything that got caught in it’s path. Big chunks of probably croissants and cheese were everywhere, and everyone was stepping in them. It felt like I was in slow motion, seeing every single chunk and string of mouth-goo take out an entire half a room. It was like a war movie but instead of bullets there was chunks of undigested food and instead of blood there was yellow bile. The room smelled like death within 30 seconds and that’s when it hit me.

My stomach started to turn instantly. My nose was pinching itself shut, my eyes were closing and suddenly I was running towards the bathroom and I don’t think my feet have ever hit the floor at such fast speeds since. What I’ll never understand is how I ended up being the only one in the bathroom, how all the kids that were literally a foot away from the toilet never managed to make it - but I guess having to shred some humility was the power being holding it for so long, but I made it. I did, however, make it straight to the toilet and did not have enough time to close the door from the other classroom that shared the bathroom. They were older children, meaner children and after what seemed like an eternity the teacher from the other class just shut the door behind me. I’m pretty sure she pretended like nothing happened and didn’t bother to see if I was going to die; clearly I didn’t. I literally wept as I vomited my little guts out. I ended up getting snot and voms all over my damn red sweatshirt. I waited until MY teacher knocked on the door to ask if I was okay before I came out. I had enough time to try to wash off my damn red sweatshirt, but it never took away the puke smell. I spent the entire rest of the week being completely humiliated, as if I was the one that started the puke-fest.

To this day, I hate puke. I hate puke to the point where if I smell it, even if it’s mine, I scream in horror like I’m being stabbed to death. I even have an aversion to wearing the color red. I only own one dress in red and I still feel like I can smell the vomit when I wear it, which is rarely. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that if you have a puke video for me to watch, just know that I never will. If you’re ever drunk and puking, I will be unavailable to help you. If you’re sick, dying and puking - I cannot be there by your side. I am horrified by puke. But at a minimum, this story of my hatred of puke came from it.

Inspiration.

Sometimes I don't understand why I don't have a nice bed. I literally spend all my time in bed. If I'm not cooking, I'm in bed. I literally have turned into a pile of wet shit because I cannot seem to NOT HURT SOMEWHERE which prevents me from doing anything other than living in my bed. Obviously I sleep and fuck in bed. But it's more than that. It's my writing. It's my tv watching. It's my (un)comfortable table when I don't want to eat downstairs. I literally can do everything other than take a piss/shit on my bed but i guess i can do that too if i lined my bed with plastic wrap. I'm considering custom ordering a 6 foot wide roll of plastic wrap and put it on the head of my bed and pull down when needed. I suppose this could be rather disgusting, but when you're as nuts as I am, I guess sitting in your own feces on your bed could possibly be an option in life.

Anyway, I'm back to being an invalid. Not INVALID as in YOUR CREDIT CARD IS INVALID but IN-VAH-LID. As in, cripple. I donlt know what I did but I can barely walk and I'm a miserable fucking bitch. I bitch, whine, cry, whimper, screech, scream, growl, bite and anything short of having rabies. Rabies will come along sometime later this week when I'm still miserable and I'm found laying in the middle of a park at night being bitten by raccoons and squirrels. I bet that would be more pleasurable than laying in my God damn uncomfortable bed that makes me want to jab myself with blunt and rusty objects.

My point is that my bed is a piece of shit. It's been a piece of shit since I got it and I've done nothing but complain about having a shitty bed and have done nothing about it for nearly 10 years and now I'm suffering. I think beds should come with a counter and count how many times the best has been rocked back and forth during tantric sexy times and after X amount of uses it either releases biological weapons of mass destruction or it blows up. I guess that would be a tactical move for a fascist president, a career I'm strongly considering.