The Unbearable Lightness of Peeing: Chapter II -- Big Slur

Anybody who calls themselves a serious drinker has a hangover cure. I've been told of homespun remedies ranging from greasy diner potatoes to the highly theoretical "hair of the dog." And being a student of Philosophy, I am inclined to the latter.

I woke up with the Sun trying its damndest to evaporate the last drop of moisture in my mouth through the curtainless window. "Where am I? Why do I feel this way? How did I get here?" This was not me waxing existential, I was certifiably bewildered by my state in the world. It took me a few moments to collect myself and the memory of the previous night. My internal dialogue ran, "I am in San Luis Obispo, this is Willie's girlfriend's house, I am horribly hung-over, my mouth tastes like burnt cheese and celery, I yelled at Willie's RA and probably got him kicked out of his dorm; final summation: this is the best weekend ever!"

We had to keep our momentum up and head back out on the highway to get to Big Sur by nightfall. The drive went fast and the four of us pitched our tent with a few hours of day light to burn. We proceeded to drink everything we had: one bottle of vodka, two bottles of rum, around twenty-four tall cans of hard cider, some beer, and what remained of our dignity. All was well for a while. We were eating beans out of cans and talking nonsense, convivially laughing at our existences and reveling in the malleability of a drunken hour. This was as high as we could climb on Libation Mountain and our oxygen tanks were empty (i.e. this was the beginning of the end.)

It was well into that January night when I threw an empty glass rum bottle into the fire and then cleverly waited a few moments before attempting to retrieve it. My mitten was burned through, leaving little pieces of blue fabric in my newly acquired booze bottle shaped second degree burns. It wasn't long before I was crawling on my hands and knees into the woods to vomit. This is how you party.

It was upon returning from one of many trips to go vomit that I decided I needed to go to sleep. I laid down in the tent and shivered for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few minutes. The night was unbelievably freezing and I became terrified when I ceased to shake from the cold. Panic set in. I was absolutely certain that I was dying. "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, Rage against the dying of the light!" Tyler volunteered to drive up to the lodge with me to see if we could rent a cabin. I can only imagine how we looked to the young lady at the reception desk: covered in dirt and vomit and smelling like a Sasquatch's foot fungus. It was less than a surprise when, like for baby Jesus, there was not a room available.

Tyler and I drove back to the tent to collect Elliot and Willie. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew that if I stayed there, I was going to die. Elliot and Willie were in ethanol comas and near impossible to wake up. I finally managed to get them to respond, "Go without us," after repeatedly smacking them in the face. Recalling this later, I would realize that they would have said anything to get me to stop hitting them. I remember getting in my car with a feeling of relief. And then I blacked out.

I came to on the freeway. Tyler was in the passenger seat with the window down, stoically glaring into the sable night: somehow he was still drinking.

"Would you, like, be mad if I threw this out the window?" he asked while throwing a bottle of cider out of the window. He then reached under the seat and produced a bottle of vodka and said to no one in particular, "HA! Wouldn't it be weird if that hit a deer?" Clearly things had gotten out of hand.

Miraculously I held the wheel steady and was cognizant enough to have put on my hazard lights while careening down the road at seventy miles an hour. Shit.

It looked like a scene from the Shining. It was utterly dark and the only light came from my headlights, which made it appear as if I was looking through a bifocal key hole. I was trying so hard to focus that I actually believed I was sober. This is what makes drunk drivers so dangerous, they always think things are going really well. We pulled into Monterey around 4 a.m. alive and found a $40 motel to rest our bleary eyes in.

I woke up sweating profusely next to the blaring wall heater and promptly puked in the waste paper basket. Tyler's bed stand housed several empty cider bottles and an empty bottle of vodka. It was 9 a.m.

It took several months before I remembered driving to Monterey. When I woke up that morning I hadn't the faintest idea of where I was or how I got there, and two of my friends were missing. So Tyler and I decided to do the only reasonable thing: to go get some eggs and potatoes.

We leisurely sipped our coffee and orange juice in the restaurant next to our motel and poked our forks at the slaughtered spuds and runny embryos. Families around us were giving us looks of repulsion while whispering things into their inquisitive children's ears.

"Do I look fucking crazy?" asked Tyler, looking fucking crazy. He had a mass of brown curly hair tangled with dirt and vomit on his head and a beard that only someone who made moonshine would sport.

"We both look terrible," I replied.

"I think I'm just going to take this," he said as he stuffed a butter knife into his pocket. It was time to leave.

The drive back to Big Sur was quiet and serene. The Pacific dropped in and out of sight along the tree lined highway and the radio was playing mellow blues. It was as we were pulling up to the camp site and I saw Elliot walking towards the car brandishing a large stone and yelling, that I realized their night probably wasn't so comfortable.

"WHAT THE HELL MAN?!" screamed Elliot, when we got out of the car. "Where the fuck have you guys been? Where'd you go?"

I wasn't anticipating having to articulate the events of the night so quickly, so I stumbled for a moment. "Well, we woke up in a motel in Monterey," I finally replied.

"You assholes slept in a motel!"

"Uh, yea, it wasn't that cool."

"Wasn't that cool?! It's like thirty degrees out here, I just took a cold shower in that stone restroom to try to get warm! And you, Assholes, were snuggled in warm beds! Fuck you!"

Tyler laughed.

Willie was sitting on the picnic table shaking his head and looking at us as if we had just kicked his baby sister in the head. Needless to say, this was the conclusion of our "best weekend ever!"

It is extremely fortunate that a person only turns twenty-one once. I would no doubt lose my life, my license, and most of my friends if I had to do that again.