It was the interface...I started to learn what was going on with me. As I learned about myself, what was in my heart started to tell me things that my head couldn't handle. My marriage was rapidly falling apart, and I felt I was probably going to get divorced. I had to confront this thing that had happened wth the Model-UN bunch, but that probably wouldn't do any good, and I would probably leave the organization, and my second family along with it. I needed to decide whether my job was going to have meaning for me any more, or if I might choose to leave that as well. I began to wig out. I called friends late at night and panicked over the phone to them. One afternoon when I was cutting the grass in the back yard, the vision of me telling my parents I was getting divorced popped into my head, and I collapsed onto the ground in a sobbing heap. I'm still kind of amused by the thought of my neighbors looking out the window and seeing this guy crying over the condition of his lawn. It was coming up on the Fourth of July. My wife had left to visit her mother. I needed to get things off my mind, so I decided to rent this Bernardo Bertolucci film I had wanted to see for a long time. I didn't know what it was about, but I knew it had a great soundtrack. The Sheltering Sky might not have been the best movie to be watching right then. I was going nuts. I had to get out of town. So I went and visited my good friend Jim and his wonderful wife Tricia in Cleveland. Jim has been one of my closest friends since high school. We were roommates during our days at Michigan State and again at the University of Michigan. He was the best man at my wedding. When we're together, we sometimes have a little bit too much fun for our own good. Jim knew the state I was in, and he wanted to help get my mind off it. So on the night before the Fourth of July, he took me to the Flats. The Flats that night were kind of like Marti Gras. It was a sea of drunken humanity. The police were traveling back and forth on either end of the street. I had never been around anything like it in my life. That night, if you put a drink in my hand, it was gone within minutes. Before long, I was completely tanked. The fun continued. I don't remember a whole lot of what happened during that time, but I do remember:
After the bars had closed, Tricia and I waited on the sidewalk while Jim went in search of a cab. I knew I was going to get sick, so I found the nearest trash can, and started to hurl away. I was the first sight that the people streaming out of the bars beheld. Cheers rang out. People slapped me on the back as they walked by. For doing something so vile, I was a pretty popular guy. I felt a lot better when all that was over. We got back to Jim and Tricia's place at about 3:30 AM, and I fell asleep on the couch. That's the last part of the night I remember. The rest has been related to me by Jim and Tricia: At about 5:00 AM, I woke up, and knew I was going to get sick again, so I got out of bed, walked to the bathroom, kneeled in front of the toilet, and began to puke. However, I was still in this kind of an inebriated dream state, so I actually thought I was back at home in my own bed. I had gotten up, walked the exact path one would walk from the bed, into the bathroom, and to the toilet. Unfortunately, I wasn't in my house. I was at Jim and Tricia's, what I had really done was something quite different... |