collaborative storytelling that is equal parts critical and creative
This was an unfortunate overstep.
I craved the feeling of perfect drunkenness-- a hard 7 or soft 8 (out of ten) on the drunk scale-- just enough liquor to shroud my anxiety and ease my whirring mind but not too much where I lost the valuable sense of control. It was very important that I did not go over the limit, that I did not creep into the territory of 9, or God forbid ten; that I had my fun while maintaining an air of comfort.
Despite being 6 foot and barely 150 pounds at age 19, my awkward, skinny frame yielded an absurd tolerance for alcohol. And like many of my regular habits, going out was something I romanticized. The process was like a rocket plot novel: find people to pregame with, take 8-10 shots, lose count around 7, ask someone if they’ve counted for me, they don’t know either, take 2 more and let it be sufficient for 10:30pm. After that, go out into the night, dance, yell, silently beg some divine being to orchestrate a scenario in which a cute boy comes up to me to talk, etc., etc. Each night held a potential to feel like I was fun and interesting, so I felt inclined to chase that.
More often than not, I would err on the side of caution. I was careful. Reckless, but self-monitoring enough that my “out of control” meant getting a light case of the spins. If my drunkenness started to feel scary, I’d force my finger past my weary uvula and get the alcohol out of my system, and then I would sleep until it felt alright to open my eyes again.
One night, in late September of sophomore year, I drank one or two more shots than usual. An unknowable amount of time went by before I realized my body had gone through the entire night without my active mind. In a rush, I swam up to the surface of consciousness in my bed, weakened and feeling like I’d lost the ability to engage with more than one of my five senses at a time. I vaguely recognized my ceiling and felt my bed pressed up against my back, the first observations my brain had been able to make and solidify in what felt like forever.
Good, I thought. I had gotten home. For a few seconds, I knew where I was, but that was about it.
I remember thinking how it was weird that my entire personhood was locked within a tiny sphere inside of my brain, aware of what was happening but unable to escape and reach the rest of my body. I was welcome to murkily witness my human experience but almost entirely restricted from asking my body to respond more than a tremble, groan or a shaky roll to one side.
I swam around, not drowning, but still unable to break the surface. I knew I was on my bed; I could feel the memory foam mattress pad. I sank into it, flat on my back, and it was too soft. My eyes were open but not seeing. Being safe at home in bed did not comfort me like it usually did. Something was wrong. And the mattress pad was too fucking soft.
When I need to pee, I like to do so at my own leisure, on my own time. I am not someone who asks if the driver can pull over at a rest stop on a long drive. When I drink my entire soda before the previews end, I will endure the persisting urgent ache while I watch the rest of the movie. If I haven’t begun to pee at a urinal and someone comes up next to me, it takes considerable effort to actually go. It becomes a mental exercise, the physicality of urinating becoming more and more lost on me as my brain takes over and I leave my bodily rationality.
On the too-soft mattress pad, I became incredibly aware that I needed to go. My personhood, my aware self, was locked within the sphere. Its whirring thoughts were pitiful and worth hardly anything. They were not going to do much against my bladder, which had just about burst into flames at this point. None of this was going to plan.
At the mercy of my body, or rather, the state I had put my body into, I rocked back and forth, groaning. My head ballooned, squiggles dancing around in my vision, still not showing anything resembling my ceiling. Like I had turned the TV to a channel on the wrong input, the static loud and terrifying. I lay there like a newborn, writhing in confusion and rolling within myself as I felt the hug of the cloying, too-soft mattress pad.
Being a rule-follower was very important to me. So when my body made the decision without full consultation from my brain, without common sense or pragmatism, without the typical walls to keep me from doing something quote unquote off-script, I winced.
I sank, further still. It began to feel warm under me, on top of me, and quickly on my sides. It spilled onto my stomach and dribbled over the edges of my belly button. Urine collected in the basin of bed I had burrowed with my body. Perhaps 30 or 40 seconds went by before I broke the surface of consciousness, horrified by what I was sure couldn’t be happening but could confirm by physical sensation most certainly was.
I was not good, not when I lay there early in the morning, soiled, alone. Other people were sleeping. Other people were trickling down Fountain Avenue back to their houses or dorms. Other people were having sex, typing on their phone to proposition sex, or falling asleep thinking about the sex that they could’ve been having. Other people were watching a sitcom with their housemates, fairy lights glowing softly above their TV monitor as they dozed off. Some people hadn’t gone out at all. They had studied a bit, phoned their friend who was studying at another college, and called it a night at 12:15am.
Instead of being any of those other things, I had pissed all over myself, too weak to stop it from happening.
Buried underneath the shame, guilt, and disgust, however, was a sliver of something else. Something new. A hot, exciting feeling, a feeling whose face was grinning, baring its teeth, triumphant to be out of its cage. As my mattress pad absorbed the distilled New Amsterdam citrus vodka that had left me, I felt something like pride. I was impressed. I was scummy, out of control, feckless and the antithesis of independent. I was being bad, quite awfully bad, and nobody would ever know if I wanted it to be a secret; it could be mine, and it was mine, and I allowed myself to be swept into the rolling tide of my inebriation, letting my body act accordingly.
A comforting entropy.
Sometime in that late-night-or-early-morning of late September 2016, I made a mess. It was an animalistic, bodily, urgent, new and sweet mess. It was satisfying. It was something to clean up, to deal with, to handle, to be disgusted by. But I was too tired and too drunk and too satisfied with my rare decision to let go and succumb to not controlling my every move.
I was all my own and finally raw.