The Blackout Drinker

         I wake in the morning with a racing, sporadic heart beat.  I lie there for a brief moment, making sure I am awake and not still in my dreams.  I take a second to think back on the night.  I cannot recall anything past leaving the karaoke bar.  Oh shit not again.  I tear the covers away from my body and reveal my bare bosom.  I immediately cover myself back up humiliated by my nudity, humiliated by the possibilities of how I got to be this way.  I am lying on the floor of my best friends room and prop my head up to see if she is in her bed.  I hear her moving around downstairs.  I scream out her name the way a child would call for their parents after a bad dream, “Ashleeeey!”  I lie there for five long seconds as she makes her way up the stairs, she peaks her head through the open door and asks with a smile how I’m feeling.  “Like shit,” I say.  “Why don’t I have my clothes on?”  “You had to take them off because you were soaking wet.  You jumped in the pool last night fully clothed.”  She then told me she had to take our other friend, Karen, to the airport before she missed her flight.  The door shut, they made their footsteps down the stairs, and the front gate slammed.  I was left there alone.  Alone, naked, with a racing, sporadic heart beat.  What fucking pool? 
         Ashley wouldn’t be back for about an hour so I had plenty of time to imagine the millions of different ways I could have humiliated myself.  Little did I know my imagination could not compare with the reality of the night.
         After lying there for a good 10 minutes naked, I willed myself from under the covers.  My clothes were piled on the floor in a heap of wet shame.  I held them against my bare body and made my way down the stairs to my dry luggage.  I threw on a pair of “Grannie panties,” some flannel pajama pants, and an oversized t-shirt.  With a shaking hand I poured myself a glass of cranberry juice in hopes it would cover the foul taste of cigarettes and alcohol.  The cranberry juice dried out my cotton mouth even more and did little to revamp my taste buds.  I grabbed a bottle of water and headed towards the downstairs bedroom.  In the bedroom there was a twin size blow up mattress on the floor.  I knew I would not be able to fall back asleep, but my heads consistent pounding was telling me to shut my eyes or take an aspirin.  Ashley doesn’t believe in taking over the counter medication and I didn't pack any, so keeping my eyes shut it was.
         I let my mind wander over the parts of the night I could remember, then onto previous blackout nights.  I thought about the first time I ever blacked out.  How I swore after that night I would never let myself drink like that again.  Taking 10 shots of Baileys just because you cannot carry them all back to the table, is just not smart drinking.  I swore the same after my second blackout…and third.  Oh, fuck it, who am I kidding.  After at least two dozen blackout nights you’d think I’d get it through my head that alcohol and I just don’t mix. 
         The morning you wake up after a blackout is the worst of your life, well that is, until the next morning you wake up after a blackout.  You call the last friends you remember drinking with that night and ask them to help you piece together the rest of the evening.  It usually goes something like this, Friend 1 says, “Oh yeah, you were pretty crazy last night, funny, but crazy.  What? You don’t remember?  Are you kidding me?  Oh, ok, so do you remember dancing with Friend 2?  No, well, you were dancing with Friend 2 and making out with him on the dance floor, then you ran off for a while, told him you had to go to the bathroom or something.  Well, he found you again about a half hour later and you were sitting at the bar with some random guys arm around you.  Not a very cute guy either if you ask me, but whatever, you’ve got weird taste.  Anyways, everyone was getting ready to leave and you didn’t want to go.  You kept shouting, “I just wanna dance!” So Friend 2 stayed behind with you at the bar to make sure you got home ok, and the rest I guess you’d have to ask him.  Que Friend 2, “You were the hugest pain in the ass to get out of the club.  Seriously, we were there until they kicked us out.  Anyways, we rode back in a cab and you puked all over the place.  The cab driver charged me 50 bucks, even though I was the one who had to clean it up.  He was such an asshole.  Do you remember telling him he looked like a terrorists? No?  Well you told him he looked like a terrorist and he almost made us get out and walk.  We were only like 2 miles from your place though so not a big deal.  Did we sleep together? What? No, I mean I don’t really remember.  You know what I was pretty drunk myself.  The night is kind of a blur.  Anyways, what are you doing later tonight?  Want to go out to dinner somewhere?”  My follow on response to avoid myself from looking like a drunken slut is usually yes.  So not only do I have a horrible hangover the night after a blackout, but I’m stuck going to dinner with some geeky ass guy that probably took advantage of the fact I was off my rocker.
         I heard Ashley walking around the house and realized I had fallen asleep somehow.  It was time to get up and try to piece together my night.