Human Party Favor

I am sick in a way I have only been sick on two previous occasions. This is a type of sickness that occurs, mercifully, only a few times in a person's life. This sickness appears suddenly, ruins your life for a day or two, and then vanishes to wreak havoc on the stomach/lower intestines of some other poor bastard.

I know, I know, you're thinking, "Sounds like a stomach flu, or your average 24 hour virus. What's the big deal?" The big deal here is that with this particular strain of virus, one's projectile vomiting is accompanied by one's inability to, while experiencing the unpleasantness of projectile vomiting, control the muscles in and around one's hind parts. In short, each retching heave is accompanied by an explosive propulsion of diarrhea. Dignified, no?

The other primary attribute of this type of virus seems to be it's inability to infect under private circumstances. By this I mean, one will never contract a virus in this particular strain on a three day weekend at home when they have no plans and no place to be. This virus not only seeks to destroy your digestive system, but your dignity as well. The second time I was afflicted with this scourge, I had just met a lovely young woman, fallen unhealthily in love with her, and made plans to grow old with her. We were having people over to watch the Superbowl and have some drinks and some fried food and do what college kids pretending to be adults do. The evening went swimmingly, everyone had a good time, and the two of us were off to bed. At about 3AM something didn't feel right. I went to the bathroom and vomited a thick clump of near undigested food. I went back to bed dreading what might come next, and for good reason. I spent the next two days waylayed by this freakin' virus, unable to move except in mighty efforts of puking and shitting.

The special lady friend was left to fend for herself, which was bad because I was supposed to take her to a doctor in Dallas to get a shot in her spine that Monday morning following the Superbowl. Seriously. Her spine. She had to drive the hour-and-a-half all the way back to our tiny college town with a largely numb lower body to her charming and attractive boyfriend who no longer seemed so charming or attractive...then she got the unholiness. There's nothing like seeing/hearing your morning angel vomit and shit and yell for water to bring you back to reality.

So what are the circumstances now? Well, I am at work. I am in a hotel. The hotel has thin walls. My coworkers are in rooms on either side of me. I spent all night vomiting and shitting and fighting a fever as my orchestra of bodily functions kept my coworkers awake. This afternoon, one of the guys I work with brought up some tortilla chips and a liter of Sprite. I asked him if I had kept him awake and he responded with a feeble, "I thought I heard some...coughing." Bless him. How do you tell your coworker you heard him getting straight torn up late into the night? Right now I feel better. I think the virus has moved on to the next poor soul. And thank God. I have to drive two hours back home tomorrow. Can you imagine puking and pooing your way across an entire state?

An Open Question to Blogdom

To tattoo or not to tattoo, that is the question.

Now, before I get into this, I know tattoos have become ubiquitous. Like, to a ridiculous extent. I would say near fifty percent of the people with whom I went to college - and a full 90 percent of the women I have dated (Which should be another post altogether!) - were inked up in some form or fashion, and that was at a small, conservative, private Christian school in the Great State of Texas. Most of these tattoos, and apologies to my friends who may recognize some of their own skin art in here, were cuffs around the ankle, Christian symbols on the inside of the wrist, or flowers/butterflies/Thumper (Yes, Thumper of Bambi fame) on the small of the back...Oh, and Chinese characters. What's with that? To quote Inigo Montoya,"I do not think that means what you think that means." These little acts of rebellion were just that. Little. Most of the tattoos were picked off of walls during a drunken outing in Dallas or Austin, few of them were larger than a silver dollar, and all were easily concealed from polite company...or bosses.

My sister and I have, from time to time, discussed pulling the trigger on getting tattooed, but have always stopped short because we couldn't imagine committing anything to our bodies for time everlasting. And thank God. I can't imagine what my eighteen year old self would have chosen to permanently brand my body, but rest assured, my twenty seven year old self would have remembered my eighteen year old self not-so-fondly as a massive douchebag every time he looked at whatever God awful design said teenager had chosen.

So, why do I ask? Well, obviously I'm thinking about getting one (A tattoo, not a douchebag). We're going on two years now and the thought of what to get and where has not changed. I have devoted some serious thought to this, but I'm still on the fence. The salient points: This tattoo would be VERY visible in short sleeves. My father would lose the rest of his hair upon seeing his only son besmirched with vibrant ink colors and do the disapproving, dimpled smirk that my family knows all too well. My mother would let out the same forlorn sigh I remember from the time she woke me up on a Monday morning when I was still in high school to discover that I had dyed my hair an electric shade of red dubbed "pretty flamingo". My grandparents, well, they might catch on fire. Seriously.

But the tattoo would mean something. It would be in memory of a friend and it would remind me to embrace life and love and beauty...it would also hurt like hell, cost more than a few dollars, and remain into old age, illegibly shriveled on my forearm, presented brazenly to the scrutiny of my future grandchildren (should I be able to convince a woman to ever sleep with me again).

So, thoughts? Questions? Advice? Dire warnings? It's open season, let me have it!

Blog Like Ike

I am a bad blogger. It's true. A day passes, then a week, then a month. Sometimes more and it gets easier and easier to not write anything or to think there's nothing worth writing. I say "worth writing" in a relative sense. Clearly, there are billions of people out there who could care less if I write or not, but that's not the point is it? It's sort of a release, a way to make sense of things or just preserve the details of a funny story so they don't get too cloudy or overly-embellished. Well, scratch the "overly-embellished" part.

I have a ton to discuss. The holidays happened. I was home in the Great State of Texas for the first time in way too long. I attended a wedding with 632 other guests (Yes, 632!). I got to see my ex-soccer players all grown up and doing well. There were visits with the grandparents and the parents and ensuing thoughts on mortality and aging gracefully. A good friend's dog shat on my sweatshirt...while I was wearing it. Romantic misadventures were had as was reaffirmation that, after nearly a year-and-a-half, I still have no business being in a relationship. I caught a severe knock in an indoor soccer match and then had to spend part of Christmas day in a tiny emergency room in Nowhere, West Texas where, among other discomforts, a nurse pulled out a toothy plastic brush and worked over the gaping hole in my shin, scrubbing out every bit of infection while I looked on, jaw clenched. My own dog had an awful 48 hours in which she graced the ONLY RUG IN MY HOUSE with a greasy, puddingesque pile of scat and then the following day jumped through a screen door a la Cujo and then sprinted a quarter mile weaving through traffic to let me know I should not go running without her. Life happened.

So, where to start? Let's call this "Beginning to open the package of events that have happened in the last few weeks" and leave it at that for now. I feel like Ike to my blog's Tina. Baby, please. It's Pancho, baby. I did not mean to neglect you for all these days. Take me back, baby. It will not happen again...until the next time it happens. Cheers.