30.5.06

Bilious Blobs and Babble

It was 2am when Grant called me at the Country Inn & Suites. He was drunk. Very drunk. After two minutes of "conversation", I spent the next three minutes listening to him vomit in the sink.

Hwwwehh Hweewhh Hwaaahhw (Splash) Hwwaah ehhh (Splash, Splash, Splash) Hhhweeehaah Haawhee (Splash) Uhhh Ehhh Uhhh (Sickly belch).

This was a first for me. I've never sat on the phone and listened to anyone puke before. It was a helpless feeling. Like, had I been there, I would have wanted to get him a glass of water or pull his hair away from his face, or perform some kind of concerned task. But when you're just on the phone, just hearing it, it kind of makes you ill. Of course, you'd never hang up, because as sick as it is, it's also fascinating. The sound is severed from the smells or the sights that would usually accompany such an event. It's all just dangling soundwaves, fractured from meaning. Without the whole sensory entourage, it feels strangely incomplete, almost absurd.

After puking, he was tossing the vomit around with his hands, trying to get the chunkies down the drain. I could hear it slapping around in the sink, punctuated by the occasional "ew" or "sick" and sometimes "fuckin gross." That's when I started to feel genuinely nauseous. Before there was only the nonsense noise of gagging, followed by a few splashes, but now I was hearing the sick slosh as he reassured me with meaningful words that this was truly disgusting. And the image of Grant, the man I love, fishing his own vomit from the cluttered kitchen sink with his bare hands...well, it's fucking disgusting.

And to hear Grant proclaim anything sick or gross just amplifies it tenfold. He has, after all, tasted all of his bodily excretions at least once, with intent. He has spent an entire Christmas in piss soaked pants, he has proudly thrown similar vomit from his person, and if someone were to tell me that he had smeared shit on his chest, it probably wouldn't surprise me much. To hear those sploshy, splashy noises and to hear him deem those very noises as gross, it's just too unsettling.

And that, my friends, summarizes a twenty minute conversation. There were a few genuine words exchanged, but mostly it was puking and the clean-up.

4 comments:

Anna Nimh said...

Tonight, I was updated that he just left the vomit in the sink because he couldn't figure out a way to get it down the drain.

E T C said...

He called you so you could hear him puke?... Do I have to ask? No. I don't. He called you so you could hear him puke.

Love.

illllllllllllli said...

No, my brain was so addled with booze that it didn't know that puke was imminent. I mean, I never puke unless, of course...I get the hiccups, but that's elsewhere, so when it came on I just instinctively brought the phone (We've been at the point of toilet telephoning for months now). Then, midway through, I thought, how cool is this for her, to be on the other line while I shoot half-chewed Colton-Dogs and the mystery fish-chicken into the sink. I would love that, so the Golden Rule was in full effect, but then I tried to drink some water and puked a little more while I was drinking water so the drain clogged and my brain, destitute and deranged, was unable to dig enough vomit out of the sink to let the water out. I figured, fuck, I already vomited all over the sink, I have no need to get the water out. The water isn't the gross part of this equation, it's the vomit that I'm squishing all over my hands. Maybe I'll just leave it until morning. And then I said Goodnight to my girlfriend.

By the way, I've got a picture of the goop right before I plucked it from the sink and I'll try to get it up here asap for the surround-sound/technicolor/freak-o-scope experience.

Anna Nimh said...

I love how we bond.