Michael Efford

Prepare yourself the night before by drinking a mixture of beer and red wine along with copious amounts of Vietnamese food such as beef and black bean, spring rolls, chicken with cashews and vegetables, wontons, seafood stirfry, fried icecream. Follow this by visiting a pub afterwards and drinking even more beer and wine.

Upon exiting pub, go directly home and to sleep. Do not attempt to drink any water as this may affect your vomiting ability altogether. Sleep the required number of hours. This will be soporific sleep. You will dream lucidly. You will sweat. You will shiver. The cat will drink out of the glass of water on your bedside table. Yes, the same glass of water that you didn’t drink. It might then decide to sleep on your head and half suffocate you, but in an affectionate way that doesn’t really bother you in your drunken slumber.

The morning sun glares against the flimsy curtains. Filling your room with 7-11esque neon bright light that infuriates your sleep encrusted eyeballs. You turn over, burying your head in the pillow and feel your stomach groan and wobble. The hot sweat starts so you unburden yourself of your socks and long-johns. Drifting back to sleep the saliva drools onto your pillow, forming a wet patch that eventually soaks your ear and forces you to turn over the pillow, only to find that the other side is also drool/sweat soaked and makes your hair stick together, this is the start and cause of bed hair. Now you know.

Your bladder bulges and reminds your brain that you’ve been drinking all night and forgotten to pee. It forces you giddily out of bed and you stumble down the hall to the bathroom to relieve yourself. Hazy memories of the night before coagulate in your brain. You recall that there’s a yellow bucket out on the front lawn. Gingerly you open the front door and tip-toe out into the crisp morning dew. Bucket retrieved and you’re back in bed quickly defrosting your toes. The waiting begins.

You lie close to the edge of the bed. You hang your head over the edge and stare endlessly into the bucket. Drifting off to sleep as some preliminary drool siphons into the bucket. Waves of nausea wash over and you know that you’re close. Spitting into the bucket seems to help. Positioning your body, you prepare for the evacuation. A nervous dry reach and then finally — finally it comes.

HUUUUUURRRRRRGHHHHH.

Bright purple and gushing, slopping into the bucket. The acrid stench fills your nostrils and invokes the second coming. Splattering into the first comes the second wave. It’s thicker and stronger this time. Finally, relief. Wait. No — a third expulsion and your stomach is empty. Your brain instinctively wants to make sure and a few spitty dry reaches follow. Your quickly sobering brain soon realises there’s not much left and leaves you to wallow in your filth.

It’s over. You’ve done it. You’ll be ok now. You peer into the bucket and identify some undigested broccoli. Damn that tasted good the first time. Now, swimming in the purpley frothing juice of beer and wine you think better than to taste it a second time.

Or do you?