Adventures In Belligerent, Drunken ER Visits: Severe Facial Trauma Edition

Rob Fox12 years ago

Oh shit! Ha!

My friend had just taken a hard fall, face first, to the ground in the parking lot of a bar we were leaving. He was drunk. I was drunk. I laughed. It was funny, as drunk people falling down usually are. Even if they fell off a cliff, you’d probably at least let out a chuckle before horror set in. Well, if you were drunk you would. Don’t act like you’re better than me.

My friend lingered on the ground for a moment before letting out a groan. The fall was just that, a fall. He hadn’t tripped over anything, and despite the rain, he hadn’t slipped either. He just fell. It was as if his bodily functions simply froze for a second, like a computer trying to process too many things at once. In this case, as far as I could tell, all my friend’s mind was trying to process was walking and breathing. We had been drinking a lot. We spent the evening on a booze cruise with some friends, and then followed that up at a bar where multiple shots were taken and several more beers consumed.

I had seen this sort of thing happen before, specifically to myself. It was during my first senior year of college, though if you want to get technical it was more like my second junior year. I was standing next to a keg in the backyard of a house on Mizzou’s west campus, talking with some fraternity brothers and Tri Delts. That isn’t to “name drop,” by the way, just to illustrate how poorly timed this fall was. Of course the fall had to happen in front of hot girls, and not when I was alone in my room at the end of the night, drunkenly trying to shove a South Park DVD into my DVD player so that I had something to distract me from the crushing loneliness of my empty bed and inevitably fruitless masturbation attempt, not to mention on carpet.

I’m not sure what we were talking about, and I don’t remember what I was saying, but I know that I was the one speaking when the fall happened. What I do vividly recall is that one second I was standing upright, and the next second I was falling, in slow motion, face first, with no idea why it was happening. I had tipped over, rigid and otherwise motionless, like a tree. A sad, drunk tree.

To this day the vision of my face plummeting straight toward the ground is seared into memory. I remember thinking “DEAR GOD WHY IS THIS HAPPENING!?!?!?!” I had no control over my body. I couldn’t put my arms out to stop myself. I couldn’t even turn my face. It was the damndest thing.

The fact that I was mentally coherent the entire time made it worse. I was witnessing, firsthand, my own pathetic, physical demise. Again, I think my body was trying to process too many things (talking, holding a cup, breathing) at once, and simply gave up. It didn’t shut off; it just froze. I guess I had been drinking more than I thought. I blame the Jell-O shots.

With that fall, my chances of getting laid went from 8% to 0% as quickly as it took me to hit the concrete patio.

“Oh my God!” exclaimed one hot girl who was absolutely not going to be having sex with me.

“Are you okay?” asked another girl, now far less likely to forget me than if we would have banged.

My fraternity brothers, meanwhile, stood there and laughed, as they rightfully should have. The girls soon joined in. No one helped me up. I didn’t deserve it anyway.

I pulled myself up from the ground, thankfully having suffered only a few scrapes and bruises. I grabbed my cup and refilled my beer, determined to drink until I forgot how stupid I had just made myself look. That mission was obviously never accomplished. Clearly, self-loathing leaves a deeper imprint on one’s psyche than awesomeness, which would explain why I’ve forgotten a fair amount of blackout sex, but not the time a bouncer clotheslined me in the middle of Beale Street. It’s not fair! I was just as blackout, damn it!