11-23-00
I used to have the strange ability to not taste alcohol in any conventional sense. A coke with a splash of rum tasted the same as a rum with a splash of coke. Shots of vodka or tequila didn't burn the back of my throat.
My freshman year of college, I went to a holiday party at about 10pm. The beverage of choice was brandied eggnog. Unbeknownst to me, there were two pitchers of eggnog. A pitcher of eggnog-flavored brandy, and a pitcher of brandy-flavored eggnog.
I think that I initially had several glasses of the brandied eggnog. Of course, once I started serving myself, I wandered over to the darkside of the eggnogged brandy. Hell, I couldn't tell the difference. Once I was well and truly soused, I believe I proved that I was sober by doing shots of tequila.
Someone had the presence of mind to drive me back to my dorm. They walked me to my room, wished me good luck, and returned to the party. The clock said 11:30.
I started stripping at the door and crawled my way across the floor to bed naked as the day I was born. I heaved my carcass up on the mattress and closed my eyes, which is about when the room started to do donuts.
I heaved my carcass back off the mattress and began to crawl naked across the floor with the intent of going to the bathroom down the hall and purging my guts in a way that they have never been purged before or since. I'm not sure how I planned to negotiate the hallway naked, much less get upright to unlock the bathroom door at chest level with the keys I had clenched in my left hand.
Fortunately, none of this came into question because I made it as far as the trashcan, sans liner, and began to heave buckets of eggnog and brandy and tequila, and possibly even french toast from high school into the can, each wave making a horrible metallic splash against the bottom of the can. I then crawled back to bed and passed out.
At 7am, I awoke to the putrescent aroma of vomit and eggnog wafting at me from across the room. I found something to wear, made it into the bathroom with the can, dumped it in a toilet, threw up some more, and then rinse the can out in the sink. I then knocked on Jenny O.'s door and borrowed some Lysol, which almost exorcised the smell from the can, but not quite.
For years, I lived in fear of the grocery store around the holidays because innocent white-haired grannies would offer me dixie cups filled with eggnog, and I would find myself backing away in abject horror, chanting, "No, no no no no no!" and running the other direction. Usually this was in the company of my mother, which had to amuse her to a great degree.
I have since gotten over the queasy feeling that eggnog delivers, and actually like it. However, my ass doesn't like it for the 240 calories/4 ounce serving, and my stomach and gastrointestinal tract hate it for it's lactose-laden ways.
Ah, the joys of illness.
And I have since outgrown my alcohol immunity, as you can only imagine. Liquor burns, and too much of it makes me unhappy in ways that are normally reserved for french toast.
