the curse of peter vella

It feels only fair to warn you, the reader, that this entry is pretty gross. It's graphic for the sake of posterity, and not everyone will be able to stomach the contents (I swear, this sentence is rife with puns! Why can't I be this clever when I'm trying??) of this entry.

Finally, I have the energy to write something!

We went to Portland on Saturday. The plan was to pop into Clay City to see the divine Ms. Em, then to spend the evening attacking a box of wine with Esteban* and his wife Selsun*. Attack it we did! Jeremy and I supplied the box of Peter Vella's Chardonnay (the white grenache was gone, and it was the least horrifying alternative). Esteban also had another bottle of white, easy-to-consume wine. We watched movies, chatted, visited...and twenty minutes later, I was drunk. We primarily watched a selection of $1 films that Jeremy and I found at Wal*Mart the previous evening: specifically, Concrete Cowboys, starring Tom Selleck and Jerry Reed; and The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird, an old cartoon, allegedly based on a story by Hans Christian Anderson. Neither film make an ounce of sense. And that's not the alcohol's fault. (we toyed with watching a third, Panda and the Magic Serpent, but we just couldn't do it. We did watch Stroker Ace again, though.)

I don't think I had more than six glasses (though Jeremy tells me they more closely resembled "goblets") of wine. Nevertheless, when we finally went to bed several hours later, I wasn't horizontal for long before the Vella needed to make its violent exit. I managed to get to the bathroom before accidentally throwing up all over the door. Jeremy came into help me clean it up, since I was still in the process of being physically ill. All we could find was toilet paper, so we used huge clumps to wipe up what we could find before throwing it all into the toilet.

Did that make you stop, allowing you to intuit what happened next? Because if your guess was that the next flush caused the toilet to overflow, then you would be right! So the toilet was leaking water all over the floor, all over us, all over everything. We used more toilet paper and the only two towels we could find to soak the water up (and this time, we disposed of the mess in the garbage can). Jeremy plunged the toilet a bit, and we got the water level down. But we weren't sure if we had actually unplugged the toilet or not! Meanwhile, I was still actively sick, and being disallowed to flush. Having to stick my face in the can was reason enough to be sick after a few more hacks. After awhile, I could take no more, and flushed again. Thankfully, the blockage was gone.

That was the first hour.

Any time I attempted to stand up or lie down (vertical and horizontal were not happening), I'd start yakking again. I hadn't had that much to eat that day (which is my own fault, but not the point), so somewhere around the beginning of hour two I ran out of things to throw up. I had tried drinking water, but any time I sipped I puked it right back out. A yellow substance, tasting much like aspirin, started replacing it. That was interspersed with dry heaves, which for some reason were uncontrollably loud and desperate-sounding. Jeremy, my loving man-hunk, sat with me. His attempts at physical comforting resulted in further retching. But it was nice not to be alone.

Anyway, this went on for hours. During that time, Jeremy spent some time reading Dianetics in the hallway, and eventually went to bed. Around 5:00 a.m. we went back to the living room. I sat in a chair for awhile, hoping to fall asleep upright. That went well for about twenty minutes, at which point I attepted to lie down with Jeremy. Literally two seconds after putting my head down, I started getting sick again. I ran to the bathroom for another hour of fun. This time, I sought the company of tabloids. At 6:30 I went back to the living room, and managed to fall asleep in the chair. A little after 7:00, Esteban woke us up by pretending he wasn't waking us up. Apparently he and Selsun slept like babies. They heard none of the commotion, and were, in fact, about to comment on how "apparently no one got THAT drunk last night". If only.

We got back to Jay just after noontime on Sunday. We napped and watched television.

The amazing this is, I didn't think I was that drunk. Seriously. Only after the fact was I informed that Peter Vella Chardonnay is 11% alcohol. Not 11 proof. A huge difference. Eleven proof doesn't result in almost six hours of puking. It was good wine though. It's too bad I'm never never never drinking again. Oh well. More for everyone else!

*names changed for my own personal amusement