Sunday Morning Coming Down

Another bad weekend. Bad with the sauce.

It's always the sauce.

I woke up on Sunday morning trembling in what I assumed was a cold sweat. Normal, I thought. Then I realized I had wet my bed. I have no mattress pad cover, no bed frame, and for the last week or so I've been sleeping on the bare, sticky, scratchy mattress. I do have a comforter. Somebody was calling it a "duvet" the other day and I almost bopped him on the head. Anyway, my mattress is on the floor of the closet I sleep in, which is just about exactly big enough to fit a mattress and a pile of dirty laundry. It's wholly depressing, almost dehumanizing, living this way, but it's that or give up my privacy altogether.

So I guess you could say I woke up on Sunday morning in a cold piss. Between the ages of four and 18, I don't think I pissed myself once. Since then, maybe a dozen times.

I rolled out of bed, and before I even began recalling the details of the night before, before I allowed my standard case of paralyzing regret and anxiety take over, I went downstairs to see my roommates. They were already up and doing roommate things: reading the paper, playing Super Nintendo, watching NFL Today. I thought maybe I could head off my impending psychological breakdown by joining them. We could share a nice hangover with one another while basking in the simple pleasures of our happy little college apartment.

But instead of a basic and welcoming "What's up?" I got this, from Milo:

"Wow...THERE he is. How ya feeling today, buddy?"

"Not so good," I admitted. "I feel like somebody poured sand down my windpipe while I was sleeping."

"Do you remember what you did last night?" he asked.

If there is one question that sends my entire system into a panic, that turns my universe on its side, that's the one. My breathing gets labored, my heart speeds up, the back of my neck starts to sweat, and I have tangible fantasies of suicide. Right here on this spot, I'll think. If I just tighten my jaw and concentrate with all my might, my head will explode and I'll be done with all this.

Because of course I don't remember what I did, but I'm damned sure it wasn't good. It never is. The answer is never, "You don't remember? Dude, you shoved a blind man out of the way of a speeding car" or "You were well-mannered and thoughtful all night" or "You made major headway on Fermat's Last Theorem."

It's more like, "You insulted my cousin" or "You got us thrown out of x bar" or "You tried to steal a bicycle" or "You pissed on a hot grill." Stupid, stupid, fratboy stuff. I should know better.

Yesterday, when the question came -- do you remember what you did -- my mind started spinning through images from the night before, trying to piece them together into a storyline.

At first, all I could really remember was potatoes. Whole raw potatoes. A huge bag of 'em. Were we in somebody's car? Oh, yeah, Carl's car. His long green 1977 Olds. What the hell was he doing driving? He could have killed us all. And what's the deal with the potatoes?

"Oh, you mean with the potatoes?" I asked, pretending like it -- whatever we did with the potatoes -- was no big deal.

Milo looked up from his game of Super Mario and said, "Yeah, well that was part of it..."

Everybody kinda laughed, the knowing laugh of the weren't-as-drunk, the laugh that tells you they remember more than you do.

"That was quite a throw with the potato," Vic said between bites of hot scrambled eggs.

Then it came back to me. We had been riding around in the Olds, four of us -- me, Vic, Clyde and Carl -- drunk as could be. At some point, someone produced an industrial size bag of raw potatoes from the back seat. Moments later, we were throwing them out the window, one after the other. At what, I didn't remember right away.

Then another image flashed through my mind. We had pulled the Olds over off of Monroe Street onto Randall Avenue. Clyde knew somebody who lived in one of the apartments over there, a girl.

Someone requested that I throw a largish spud through her window. It was a good sixty feet from where we had pulled over. It was 3 in the morning. There was certainly someone sleeping right behind that window, deep in a peaceful dream about walking in a field or flying a kite or strumming a mandolin. This person, this gentle dreamer, had never done anything to me.

Yet there I was, cocking my arm back, not even hesitating for a moment to throw a potato through her window. I let it fly, and I could tell from the second it left my hand that it was going to shatter her window. A perfect throw at a tremendously imperfect moment. In my mind, looking back, I could see the impact, hear the crash, and then we all scrambled back into the car and took off. Of course, we got away. In my experience, the bad guys almost always got away.

"Oh, God," I said, back in my apartment on Sunday morning. "Oh, no. I broke somebody's window last night."

Clyde, who had taken to sleeping over at our apartment on weekends, instead of making the trip from the bar back to the apartment across campus that he shared with his brother, rolled over on the couch to join the conversation.

"It's not a big deal," he said. "It's possible you missed the window anyway. What was worse is that you got us thrown out of Taco John's."

"Oh God," I said again. "What did I do?" I didn't even remember being at Taco John's.

"You started eating food off of strangers' plates," Clyde said. "This is after the whole thing with the potato. You were singing, you were grabbing food off of plates, you challenged the entire place to a fight. Finally, the manager came and kicked you out, and it took a good five minutes for him to convince you to leave. And after we went outside, you went up to..."

"Stop. Please stop," I said. "I don't want to know any more." A week ago, I read an article in U., the free, generic campus weekly, about college drinking. It had a quiz on there to see if your drinking habits bordered on alcoholism. One of the questions was, Have you ever blacked out from alcohol? Shit, I thought, almost every time I drink it.

"That's it," I said. "I'm never drinking again."

The entire room started laughing at once. You see, I say that about once every three months. And I mean it each time. Life would be so much simpler. I'd rarely do bad things. I wouldn't hurt people. And I'd have money -- speaking of which, I have now officially emptied my bank account and I am living off a loan from my girlfriend.* She gave me $200 on Friday, which I've managed to turn into $40 rather quickly.

Most importantly, if I stopped drinking I wouldn't have the feeling that I had on Sunday morning ever again. It's a combination of several feelings, actually: guilt, anxiety, remorse, despair, suffocation, hopelessness, emptiness, worthlessness, and general self-hatred. That doesn't even touch on the physical symptoms or the fact that I woke up in my own pee.

"Suuuuuure you're not drinking again," Milo said. "Until tomorrow, right?"

I was reminded of my roommate Joe's standard one-liner.

"I don't drink anymore," he'd say to a friend he hadn't seen in a while. "...I don't drink any less, either."

He had two or three of those jokes, and they worked on me every time. Another one was:

"I wish I had a horse's cock...instead of this big thing."

Milo's sarcasm was not appreciated. I went back upstairs to be by myself. I wanted to lay down and sleep away my guilt, but my bed was still damp with piss. I wanted to take a shower, to bring myself back into the world where decent people live, but I didn't feel like I deserved it. I hadn't earned it. I needed to stew in my own juices for a while. So I flipped my mattress over, laid back down and tried to sleep. But all I could do was dwell on all the stupid things I'd done the night before. Finally I put on some dirty clothes and decided to go for a walk.

I walked toward Randall Avenue, to the house I'd hit with the potato. It had happened about 13 hours ago. From where I stood now, it was pretty clear that the window was not broken. Whether they'd had it fixed already or whether my potato missed its target, I didn't know. But I found it comforting to know that my victim had moved on with her life one way or the other.

It was probably about 20 degrees outside, and as I turned and walked towards Dayton street each house I passed had the lights and TV on. Everybody was inside watching the NFL playoffs and staying warm. Decent people have that right, I thought. Not me. John Elway was leading the Broncos to a dramatic 4th quarter comeback victory against the Oilers, I found out later. Hell of a game, too. Once again Elway comes through, but we all know he'll never win the big one.

I walked around for another half hour, until I felt I had suffered long enough. I went home, half-watched the Redskins pound on the Falcons while I ate Kraft Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese, and then I stumbled up to my closet and slept a guilty Sunday evening sleep. I woke up around 2am and stared at the ceiling for about two hours before I finally went down for good.

When I woke up this morning, I didn't feel much better about myself. It was almost noon and nobody else was home.

I decided I wanted to write something in my journal. I sat on the couch, turned on the stereo, and used the "Random Grab" technique to pick a CD off the shelf. Vic and I developed this game when we were preparing to go out for an evening on the town. You grabbed a CD without looking, and then you had to play it no matter what it was. Of course, we'd always grab something really shitty, put it back and try again until we got something we liked. Today, I reached in and came up with Vic's Material Issue CD.

This CD came out last year, and it's pretty fucking amazing. It's got like 11 three minute pop songs about girls. Simple, stupid, and catchy. I think the band kind of got lost in the whole Pearl Jam/Nirvana thing -- they came out with the right record at the wrong time. Once the Seattle stuff calms down, maybe a hole will open up for traditional pop music like this. We'll see.

I put it in and hit "shuffle."

The first song that came on was the lone ballad on the album, "The Very First Lie." Slow, sappy, unoriginal. I liked it.

I opened my journal, stared at the first blank page and came up with nothing. So I turned back to the page with "Verna Richardson - Hospital" written on it. Very calmly, without hesitation, I paused the CD and picked up the phone. I dialed Verna's number.

"Verna Richardson," she answered.

"Hi, my name is Hans Bungle and I got your number from my friend Max Armbruster, who works there..."

"Oh, hi Hans. Max told me you might be calling. Are you looking for a job?"

I paused for maybe three quarters of a second.

"Yes," I said. "Yes, I am."

"Well, do you want to come in and talk in person?" she asked. "Maybe tomorrow? Say around 11?"

I pretended to be looking at a calendar that didn't exist.

"Sure, tomorrow at 11 sounds great," I said. "Thank you."

"No problem, see you then," she said, and we both hung up.

I thought, man, couldn't we do this interview later in the week? Tomorrow seems really soon. They must be desperate.

I started the music again and picked up the Sunday comics section off the floor.

I'd like to wake up with you early in the morning

Or stay up late just playing records on your phonograph

I'd like to get to know your mother and your father

Maybe just once pretend to be somebody's better half

And I would like to tell the very first lie.

So today I'll listen to these songs of adolescent crushes and unattainable girls. Tomorrow I have a job interview at the University of Wisconsin Food Service Department, Patient Meal Service Division. Tomorrow, maybe, I become a man.

Wish me luck, whatever that means.

* She has asked that I not write about her here, and I will attempt to oblige her.