Morning has broken

Have you ever rolled out of bed wondering how you wound up there in the first place when your last memory was of standing up from that little round table at your watering hole to go to the loo?

That was this morning, before I opened up Twitter and Instagram. I didn’t look too much the worse for wear, so I assumed that I’d been pretty okay last night — until some invisible jackhammer began to go full rip inside my skull and that telltale rash that says I had gotten some verboten gin mixed up with the vodka I was imbibing, at some point.

I’m a single girl in her mid-twenties. Partying with friends at bars is tradition for women of my age and civil status, isn’t it? It has been since women could work and pay for their own drinks.

Over twenty-one. Check. Gainfully employed. Check. Living in my own place, lest I need a crash-pad after a bender. Check. Oh, and yes, I am savvy enough not to be accepting cocktails from strangers, or bottles brought to me open. I like pouring myself the shots of Glenfiddich 18 Years or Crystal Head Vodka I enjoy so much from my own stock at the bar that’s as much my home as my apartment is. I’m a modern girl who knows what she’s about when out on the town with my friends. I even put on the nail polish that changes color when a roofie is present in the drink and test my drinks thus. So far, I’ve been lucky.

Well, until this morning’s slew of shared photos where acquaintances tagged me.

I must admit, the first drink didn’t hurt at all. Look at that shot of me Lailani upped where I was holding that Crystal Skull bottle like Hamlet staring into the eye sockets of court jester Yorick’s skull. Yeah, I know my Shakespeare. I did theater in college and I played Hamlet pretty well, for a girl.

If I recall that moment with the vodka bottle correctly, I was delivering Hamlet’s monologue quite well and my audience was smiling and looking on approvingly. Not that Hamlet would wear an LBD and red stiletto heels with my aplomb, but, hey, the delivery was flawless — Jeremy even posted a video clip of the best line on his IGTV: “Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh at that. — Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.”

Pretty funny, if you ask me, what with my plum lipstick and lash extensions. Discount the mess of glasses in front of us. I have this OC habit of pouring my tipple into a fresh glass so I can keep track of how much I’ve had. So I had four — but I did dilute the firewater with tonic water, you know. It’s all good. Plus I was witty.

Oh, my head. It hurts to laugh.

So I move on through the tags on my notifs, tapping my red iPhone silly. The thing with ubiquitous internet is this: If you miss the real-time Facebook Live feed someone casts of you showing off your best dance moves when Hosier begins playing on the sound system, you get to see the delayed telecast on demand. Oh, and YouTube. Oh dear, I think I made it to YouTube. Skip that for now. I’ll need breakfast before I watch that video of me singing My Way (not that I know the lyrics, so, yeah, brekkie before heartbreaky).

That was a facepalm moment, honestly. But I was quite enjoying myself, as the Facebook Live video shows. Yeah, and now I know how I bruised my hip — I didn’t really think the floor was that far away or that the bench would catch me as I slipped off the tabletop when I was trying for one of those pirouettes Sergei Polunin nailed in that viral YouTube video where he danced to Take Me To Church. Sometimes it’s just so unfair how a sober dude in tights can dance better than a tipsy woman in a tight little dress and heels. So what if he was sober? So what if he dances ballet for a living? Dang, son.

How strange that it all felt so much better back when the alcohol was coursing in my blood like a river of braggadocio. I think I need to go confess to the porcelain priest again. Maybe I’d better go see a doctor, too. I think I hammered more than just my liver and ribs last night.

I raise my head from the loo throne’s gap to check the time. I know it’s a Sunday and I’m wondering whether I’m late for church.

That’s when I see the crystal on my Baby G is cracked right across its cute analog face. Did I do a drunken master in the parking lot? It would take many pounds of force to do that to my tough little timepiece. Somewhere in my heart, I feel pangs for this watch Dad gave me as a high school graduation present. Then I feel the pang in my wrist that tells me a visit to the doctor is due as soon as I finish confessing and I hurl into the void once more.

I step into the shower and find other bruises. Why do I think drunken clumsiness won’t catch up with me? Damn, girl, you never learn. I lather up and rinse, condition the locks and rinse. Rinse the red from my eyes, the bloating from my cracked lips (I knew I forgot something — water before bed after drinking like a fish is a rule I should never break) and the nausea from my head.

I see a series of Instagram photos Candice shot — the kissy-face sweetheart photos of her and her bae. She looked lovely, truly. Her gorgeous, flawlessly done face and poise suited her model’s grace. The same grace and poise that made me look like the falling-down-drunk I was, actually: There I was, the backdrop of comic relief with a silly grin as I dropped from standing to supine frame by painful frame as she and Ian made duck lips at the camera and each other. The skull bottle of vodka sat grinning on the table, half full. Half full? Wait. What? I’d just opened that bottle, I promise you. I can’t have had that much. None of my friends like that stuff. They’re beer drinkers and wine connoisseurs. The snobs wouldn’t know the good hard stuff if they were drowned in it.

Okay, okay, I know better. And all these good friends of mine should, too. Oh, everything felt so grand and happy when I was liquored up. Now that I’m scrambling for water, ibuprofen and antacids, I’m making myself a promise.

I need new friends. Now, can somebody tell me WTF happened to my car and how on earth I climbed out of that wreck alive? Because if no one will, I’m going to have to believe in miracles — and start praying like I haven’t in a very long time.