I'm teaching a creative writing course this term and it got me thinking about some of the stories I wrote for my undergrad workshops. I dug this one up and figured I'd post it. (Disclaimers implied)
Vomit: AKA Puke, Hurl, Spew, Yack & Barf
To make oneself vomit without aid of a finger is quite a chore. I began cramming my tongue down my throat until I started gagging. Kenny, the fat kid who sat next to me and always cut egg salad farts was my target. For lunch I had brought a pound and a half of egg salad and forced all of it down. I was determined to get back at this sloth of a beast by hurling a pound and a half of egg salad all over him. I figured I had to smell this kids stench everyday of the damn week it was only right that he had to wear mine for half a day.
The fourth time I swallowed my tongue my gag turned straight to puke. I casually turned to the right and let loose all over this kids face. The initial spew was quite a spray and it took him a few seconds to realize what was happening. He quickly stood up from his chair and I followed, letting loose another quarter pound off egg salad all over his enormous body. He tried to get away, like a wounded animal he darted, well Kenny couldn’t dart, he was to fat, but he tried to dart left then right, but everywhere he went, I was on him like piss on the toilet seat. I wretched for the third time, feeling myself get dizzy. It was hard to catch air while hurling and to add to it I had to chase this fat kid around. The puke attack on Kenny had been going for close to a minute now, half the kids in class were laughing, while the other half tried not to puke themselves. My teacher, Ms. Fuller was stunned and shouting “George George for heavens sake what is wrong with you, will you please get to the restroom and stop following Kenny, the poor kid is drowning in your vomit.”
My war was almost won, just one more battle to wrap it up and I felt it coming. Kenny had managed to fight through three rows of desks and was making what he assumed to be a safe retreat near Ms. Fuller. He was wrong. I had decided that if to win my war a few innocent bystanders had to go down in the process, well then that was the way it had to be. Kenny was a yard away from Ms. Fuller pleading with her to make me stop. Ms. Fuller began to run as she noticed there was no stopping me. Like a Japanese comocosi I was going to complete my mission. My mouth was already leaking with barf as I had been puking for five seconds, but holding it in until I had a grade A shot at Kenny. He was cornered, wedged in between the wall and the blackboard and I unleashed without mercy. Like the honorable soldier I was, I went right for the jugular, literally. The egg salad hit Kenny right in the throat, dripping down the inside of his shirt. I had one more wretch coming and took aim for a second face shot. Got him! A direct hit and Kenny was done.
The classroom looked like a war zone. From the middle of the class up to the blackboard were trails and random puddles of yellow and white spew. Kenny had sunk to the ground in a waterfall of tears muttering something about how I puked in his mouth; it was probably the only thing ever to enter Kenny’s mouth that he didn’t like.
Ms Fuller was standing in the doorway; her wrinkled jaw was hanging as low as her sagging tits. Her eyes were fixated towards the middle of the classroom where the war had begun. She just stood there, not blinking in disbelief. I think she had survivor syndrome or something. One thing’s for sure; I don’t think that lady ever got over what I did in her classroom that day.
That was the only time in my life when I deliberately hurled on a person. I wish I could say it was the only time I’ve puked on someone, but it’s not. The first time I picked up a bottle of booze I was 13. Me and my pal Dave decided it was time to take up drinking. We’d been smoking camels for the past six months and felt it a good time to try and capture another crippling vice. Dave had smuggled a bottle of vodka from his dad’s cabinet. It was real quality stuff, Dark Eyes vodka. The label had a picture of a wolf on it that seemed to be staggering and its right eye was glazed over and blood shot. Neither Dave nor myself could figure out why the wolf was on the label, we discussed it for a minute or two and then decided it was time to get down to drinking.
Being 13 we had no clue what you do with vodka. We didn’t know if you mix it with something, or take it straight.
“I’m pretty sure my dad drinks half the bottle plain. Then he mixes it with beer, or something else.”
“You don’t have any beer to mix this with do ya?”
He didn’t so it was decided that we’d drink half the bottle plain and then find something to mix the other half with. Neither one of us were prepared to taste the horror we did. Dave took the first pull off the thing and made a face that looked like someone who was constipated.
“Uggh, damn this stuff is rough.”
“Give me that bottle you pussy,” I grabbed the bottle and took a tug twice as long as his. My throat was fizzing, my stomach red-hot. I could even feel the enamel on my teeth disenagrate.
Dave just laughed at me and took the bottle back. We each lit up a smoke in hopes it would ease our pain and sure enough it did.
“Hell now I see why people smoke while they drink,” I said.
“Yeah, or maybe drink while they smoke,” Dave said as he laughed a little to hard at his stupid joke.
The two of us sat in the woods behind my house for an hour, smoking cigarette after cigarette and choking down our new vice. By the time we got half way through the bottle, it was looking half full, not half empty. I was pretty sure my folks were still out at the movies so we left our Dark Eyes in the woods and walked back to my house. We found a bottle of prune juice in the basement that I knew my mom would never miss and went back into the woods. We dumped half the bottle of prune juice out, allowing enough room for the rest of the drunk wolf vodka to be poured in.
“I don’t know, ya think we’ll be able to finish this stuff?”
“Hell yes we’ll finish it Dave. There’s no good reason two 13 year olds shouldn’t be able to finish a bottle of vodka between ‘em. Plus if we don’t we’ll totally be pussies. Remember when we split that pack of cigarettes for the first time, it took us four hours to smoke ‘em all, but we did it.”
“Yeah but then I puked on the way back to my house.”
“Well yeah, but now we can smoke like champs. There’s 16 year olds who can’t smoke as many cigarettes as we can in a day.”
We sat in those woods as the mosquitoes came out and devoured us. I couldn’t believe they were still able to bite, the amount of alcohol they were taking from us they should’ve been dead. Exactly two hours and fifty-two minutes after opening the wolf vodka Dave and I had completed our mission. A whole bottle of vodka down our pallets. Slugging down the half full bottle of vodka prune juice was as nasty, no, more nasty than drinking the stuff plain, as we called it then. Dave was smart and hurled in the woods. He started around 10 PM and finished at half past. Of course being his good friend I mocked him the whole time. Uttering gibberish slurs, calling him a pussy and asking him if he wanted some more prune juice. We stumbled back to my house, smoked a cigarette behind the garage and gave each other a hearty high five for completing our alcoholic task. Dave headed back to his place and I headed into mine.
“Hi honey, did you and Dave have a good time?”
That voice, ohh, I was not expecting to hear that voice. I hadn’t even thought about my mom being awake. I froze, telling myself to play it cool, guard every word uttered. Tell her your real tired and just gonna go to bed. Thoughts of anything and everything rushed in and out between my ears, and then. . .
“A wolf is outside and it has dark eyes.”
“What honey?”
“A wolf is. .”
I stopped and realized what I had just said. Shit, I’m screwed, what the hell were you thinking. Umm cover it just cover it play it cool.
“Agh, nothing ma, it’s just a stooopid jhoke you’d prabley not like.”
“Oh ok. Are you feeling ok George?”
“Yep, great, just a little tired. Well I’m gonna go to bath.”
“What George?”
“I’m goingz ta bah, bad. Bed, I’m goin ta bed.”
“George honey come over here for a sec.”
“Ugghh, na dat’s all right ma, I’m real sleepsy.”
“George come here. You’ve been drinking haven’t you?”
“Just some prune juice with wolf in it.”
“George you get over here right now.”
Well she asked for it. I staggered over to her and reached out to give her a hug, but instead I gave her a shirt full of vomit. She shrieked out, the same shriek she gives when she sees a mouse in the house. My dad came bolting into the kitchen wearing nothing but his poop stained briefs. This was his usual attire for a weekend night. He looked at the puke on my mom, the lake of it on the floor and then up at me. His eyes focused in, he was the real soldier. I wiped my face with my hand and tried to swallow. My throat felt as if it had swelled up, I tried to swallow a second time and more came up. The three hot dogs I had eaten before the drinking now covered the floor, pink, green and brown covered up our powder blue linoleum. The pink were the dogs, the green relish, and the brown was the vile prune juice I had choked down.
“George, what in the sacred name of Roosevelt is going on in here? I’m sitting there, trying to watch the damn ballgame and I hear your mother squeal like a damn pig. I come in here and there’s throw up all over the damn floor and yer mother.”
“I didn’t squeal like a pig Bob. I don’t make noises that sound like pigs.”
“Whatever lady, I’m not concerned with what sort of noises you make, but what I am concerned with is why in the name of Jack Dempsey is there puke all over you and this kitchen.”
My dad had this thing he always did when he was pissed. He’d always incorporate names of his favorite sport stars into his sentences. It was usually Dempsey, Mantle, Ruth, or Willie Mays. Occasionally he threw in some politicians, like Roosevelt, Lincoln, and when he was really pissed Kennedy.
“Well sweetie, it seems our little George was out drinking tonight.”
“Drinking, damn boy you can’t hold your liquor any better than this? Hell there’s a great game, tied up in the eighth inning and I come running in here cause my boy can’t handle a few drinks. Shit.”
“Bob don’t you encourage this behavior. For heavens sake he’s only fourteen.”
“Haaa, ha, huh, I not furteen, I’m only thirteen,” I said as I took out a camel and lit it. At this time I was so overwhelmed and screwed that I no longer cared.
“George what the hell are you doing? You drink, you smoke, well son it seems that your quite the established junkie.”
“In the sweet name of Willie Mays, George, what the hell do you think your doing? How do you expect to be a ballplayer while smoking, huh, you wanta answer that? Don’t ya know son, you don’t start smoking until you know you’re not going anywhere in sports, not before.”
“Bob you are just encouraging him. Not only is he smoking, but drinking too and who knows how much. Who knows what else this son of ours is into?”
“All right Joyce, you just go upstairs and get yerself cleaned up. Then come down here and clean up this mess of a kitchen, I’ll deal with Georgey here.”
Half way into this whole incident I had to whiz like never before. I was squirming around, still smoking my cigarette and in fear of the wrath to come.
“What the hell you dancing around like a ferry for boy? You gonna shit yerself, or you just gotta take a leak?”
“A leak.”
“Well damnit get outside, piss, and get your ass back in here, you understand? And put that damn cigarette out too. Shit, in the name of Vince Lombardi. And if ya got to puke some more you make it come up before you get back in here.”
With that my dad lit up a smoke and grabbed a beer from the fridge. When I came back in he had a beer waiting for me.
“Take a seat damnit.”
“Yesssirt.”
“Now look I figure your mother is gonna be up there for at least ten minutes getting all that filthy throw up you unleashed on her off. So you got eight minutes to drink that beer, and if your gonna puke, you take your damn ass outside. Understood?”
“Yepz.”
“Now you lissen and you lisen good. I do not want an incident like this to occur ever again in my household. Now I know your young and yer gonna drink. But for the sake of Ruth don’t drink yerself into a wreck. And if you do, then barf before you get home. Shit. Now tell me, how many times have you done this? Huh?”
“Thiss the firs time.”
“Oh really. The first time, you expect me to believe that?”
“Yez sirr.”
“Well what the hell’d ya drink tonight?”
“Vodzka.”
“Vodka? What’d ya drink it with?
“Halfz bottle plain, and thes other part with prune duice.”
“Are you shitting me? Vodka and prune juice? Shit son it must’ve been yer first time drinking. What the hell you doing boy, don’t nurse that beer, drink it up, yer mother will be down soon.”
“Yez sir.”
I chocked down the beer, wanting to lit a smoke to ease it down.
“So here’s the deal. .” he said as he paseed me a cigarette. “Your gonna inhale this smoke, slug yer beer, and get to bed. If yer gonna puke yer sleeping outside. Tomorrow you’re ass ain’t doing anything. Nor the next day, the next day and so on. Your also gonna be yer mothers slave for at least a week. Cleaning the kitchen, the house, hell whatever in the name of Lincoln she tells ya to clean, you clean. And you clean it like your cleaning for Marilyn Monroe, you got it?”
“Yez sir I do’s.”
“Alright then, finish that beer, smoke up yer smoke and get to bed, or outside. But if you puke in this house again yer ass is in deeper then Ho Chi Min.”
With that I jammed out my cigarette, finished my Pabst and went into the backyard to sleep, I was taking no chances.
