The Last JoyRide

Part 38

Monday 7:08AM

I felt like I was falling, one of those dreams where you step off your front porch, usually six to eight inches down but in your dreams, it's like you step off the edge of Everest. It's just how I felt. Scary too, it wouldn't stop, like I was never going to hit bottom, then I did, or at the very least woke up. It was dim but bright enough to force my swollen eyes to try and focus. The blue digits of the alarm clock on the nightstand screamed 7:08 at me. Then the pain, the crushing pain, and pounding eardrums. The reality wasn't turning out to be much better than the bad dream.

I started to take inventory of the situation. I was on my side, my right side. I never slept on my right side. But there I was. My eyes were trying to adjust to the light. They were trying to focus, but it was like looking through an automatic lens and focusing on two things simultaneously. My eyes adjusted and re-adjusted again and again; it was dizzying and made me nauseous. I clamped them shut as fast as I could. Too late, though. The spinning in my stomach had begun.

Fuck it, I had to move. I opened my eyes again and kept them wide while quickly scanning for the bathroom. There was a doorway to the left at the end of my bed. It had to be. I rocketed up, feet stumbling and tripping over the bedspread I had obviously unconsciously kicked off in the night. It grabbed my unsure feet good, and down I went, hard, reflexes too slow to break my pending fall.

Stomach still in the spin cycle, I managed to get myself to my knees but was not going to chance going any further. I crawled as quickly as I could toward what I hoped was the bathroom. Though I couldn't see, I was sure I was moving in the right direction when my palms hit the cool tile floor. It was a momentary feeling of relief. I paused, but the relief was short-lived.

Suddenly I found it hard to breathe, think, move, or anything as my body gave one last wringing to my insides to expel the poison. I convulsed, ached, and burned as everything that had gone down, mostly alcohol of various and sundry make, came back up with unmitigated fury. I launched myself toward the tub and just made it.

At some point, I either passed out or fell asleep. Either way, what brought me to was the stream of cold water from the shower on my head. I opened my eyes; the light was intense, bright, and clinical. My arms were draped forward and both aching, having themselves been cut off from circulation. It was truly all I could do to lift my eyelids. That took Herculean effort. The water, miserably cold, had soaked through to my scalp and was running streams over my head and down my nose. Finally, with one well-timed burst of strength, I managed to roll myself over and slid the rest of the way back out of the tub and onto the floor, resting my head backward on the tub's edge.

I was empty, hollow, and weak. I was going to die; I was sure of it. Then came the booming chicano slur of Muchacho.

"Hey! He's awake!" He yelled as he stood in the bathroom doorway, arms folded.

I could hear the reply; rather, I could hear something in response but in no way could make out what it was.

"Ahhh," Muchachao grunted in frustration.

"Come on outta there, man, I gotta piss." He said, grabbing me by the arm and yanking me to my feet.

He ducked under and wrapped my arm around his shoulder, then secured my waist in one fluid motion; in a few woozy steps, he flung me on the bed where I woke sometime before. I lay there face down, slowly gaining composure, breathing into the fresh sheets. I could hear the water on the shower being turned off, the flushing of the commode, and words I'll never forget coming out of Steve, Wolf-man Roger's mouth.

"Labor Day, Nick, end of summer, a big party, and I'm ready to get fucked up!"

"Jesus Christ, man, what time is it?" I muttered.