Back in high school, I decided that a fun way to pass the evening one weekend while my mother was away would be to down 26 ounces of vodka with a couple of Librium to amplify the effect. The last lucid memory I have is answering the phone and telling a friend "It doesn't seem to be kicking in."
Then, just fragments, including one strobelight snapshot mnemoslice of falling headlong down the stairs, and several bouts of weeping.
I awoke in my bedroom the following morning, sprawled naked on the hardwood floor, with the bottle cradled in my crotch. I sat up, initially amazed I wasn't hung over, until I realized I was still mildly drunk. Then I noticed the remaining inch of fluid in the bottle was blue. Examination revealed that this winsome hue was the product of an entire bottle of nail polish clanking around in the bottom. Had I drunk nail polish? That would be a episode for the record, I thought. Then I looked at myself.
Head to toe, over the canvas of my skin, were scrawled dozens of tiny question marks: in red, blue, and green; in magic marker, lipstick, nail polish, and paint. My entire body, covered. At that moment, I had a vague recollection of being so very, very inebriated that I had lost all understanding of my surroundings, and marked myself in an attempt to communicate this incomprehension, to, presumably, myself.
Then, shaking my head and chuckling, I left my room...
...to be greeted by two-foot tall question marks in multiple colours of paint, smeared clear from one of the house to the other on white wallpaper. Dozens of them.
I scrubbed like a madman to get the walls clean before my mother returned, and then squirmed out of the remaining traces with a whopping lie ("We played paintball at school yesterday - I must have tracked some in.").
Question marks...I regret that. Not the worst thing that ever happened while I drunk, but up there. |
