We’ve all been there before.
You wake up at seven am, much too early considering, erratically paranoid upon opening your bloodshot eyes, swelteringly hot in a sleeping bag. You’re face up, open-mouthed, back aching, and you have a huge banging in your head as though your brain has doubled in size.
You can almost feel it, leaking out of your ear holes.
Fuck.
The room eludes you. You look to your right –
“Sarah?! Is that you?!”
The body next to you groggily rolls over. “What?”
She is still wearing last night’s make-up, as well as a highly confused expression. As she catches sight of you, she says – “I think I’m going to be sick.”
(Amber) Holy shit in a bag. HOW THE FUCK DID WE GET HERE?!
(Sarah, hobbling) Help me to the toilet…
(Amber) Holy.Fuck.I’m.Feeling.Rough. How did we get to bed?!
You roll over and find that your body is on fire. Your sweat smells like cigarettes but you don’t smoke. The room itself smells like a fast food restaurant. Like a small fish gasping for air, you desperately try to free yourself from the constraints of the sleeping bag (meant for Arctic conditions, a mistake you always make)and you find yourself listening to an incomprehensible wailing, a moan, like an alarm. You open your mouth to tell someone to turn it the fuck off, but find that as your mouth opens, the moaning stops.
Oh. It had been you the whole time.
You are completely aware you had an emotional breakdown last night, but you don’t know how you know. Hmmm…. To know or not to know? Perhaps investigations into last night should be best left alone.
(Amber) Are we all still here?
(Best-friend-on-the-floor) What on earth is going on?!
(Amber) Phew. We’re all still here.
(Sarah) I’m going to be sick.
(Amber) Guys. I’m confused. And worried. And I don’t know how I got my bra off by myself.
(Sarah) You weren’t wearing a bra.
(Amber) I wasn’t wearing a bra?!
(Sarah) You were wearing a strapless dress.
(Amber, relieved.) No. You’re right. Phew.
(A long pause)
(Amber) Fuck! Where’s my strapless dress?!
(Sarah) What happened to us last night?!
(Sudden movement from Best-friend-on-the-floor) FUCK.
(Amber) What?
There is a long pause in which everyone imagines a worse case scenario, like breaking glasses and smashing windows.
(Best friend on the floor) I had sex last night.
(Sarah) What?
(Best friend on the floor)Twice.
(Amber) What?!
(Best friend on the floor) I don’t know how I know. But… I know.
(Amber) WHAT?!
(Sarah) You’re delirious. Go back to sleep.
(Best-friend-on-the-floor) I’m also on my period.
(Amber) WHAT. THE. FUCK?!
(Best-friend-on-the-floor puts her head in her hands and says ‘oh no no no no no.’)
(Amber, whispering to Sarah) I’m pretty sure it really happened. She’s in a bad way.
Sarah has already disappeared, she’s vomiting chilli con carne up in the toilet of which she has no recollection of eating.
(Amber) What was his name?
(Best friend on the floor) Began with an ‘R.’
(Amber) Well, that sure narrows it down.
(Best-friend-on-the-floor) Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…….
Feeling it is time to leave this awkward predicament, you stumble to the kitchen head swimming, like a warthog to the water hole, bouncing slightly off door frames as you go. There is a pair of legs sticking out from under the kitchen table. Apparently, a blonde haired boy passed out last night whilst trying to reclaim a lost cup cake. Interesting.*
And so begins the morning after, along with the painful recollection of remembering. Somehow, after many desperate texts and awkward conversations, you manage to confirm a vague series of events that seem rather alien and a little melodramatic, so much so you wonder if everyone is lying to you, and laughing at your gullibility behind your back.
I distinctly remember saying – “Hello Cosmo. Goodbye inhibitions.”
- Toasting friends’ new found plans to leave office jobs and travel
- Toasting the idea of travelling
- Toasting getting on the ferry and travelling to France with no money
- Toasting lack of money
- Toasting France
- Toasting being unemployed
- Toasting being happily unemployed
- Toasting the fact that although you are unhappy being unemployed, at least you aren’t in an office job
- Once again re-toasting friends’ hasty decisions to leave office job
- Stopping friend mid-way attempted phone call – “I’m going to call work now! And tell them I am a mother-fucking movie star and they’ll be paying my rent”
- Toasting the attempted phone call
- Crumping on the dancefloor before the Cosmo has taken effect
- Crumping on dance floor after Cosmo has taken effect
- Crumping on the dance floor with dress around hips and fanny out to which Sarah replies ‘oops.’ And contiues.
- Drinking shots of vodka from the ice sculpture of a shoe that today you think you genuinely dreamed up. (The mud on your knees tells you otherwise.)
- Asking for another Cosmo and realising it is straight Vodka but drinking it anyway
- Realising that you have never liked vodka, straight or not, and wondering why you drank it
- Best-friend-on-the-floor initiating sex in lodge
- Best-friend-on-the-floor being walked in on having sex in the lodge by party-holder’s mother
- Best-friend-on-the-floor covering face with hair and pretending to be a statue as if (like a dinosaur) party-holder’s mother would not recognise her if she wasn’t moving
- Best-friend-on-the-floor shovelling mouthfuls of thai green curry whilst discussing animatedly to a small group of individuals what just happened
- Best-friend-on-the-floor going for a nap
- Locking yourself in the bathroom and enjoying the time you get to have a sit down
- Best-friend-on-the-floor being followed by sex-pest once more and allowing it to happen again
- Best-friend-on-the-floor taking a casual nap whilst sex has already been initiated
- Best-friend-on-the-floor ringing her boyfriend to which he doesn’t care
- Emotional breakdown occurs communally. But in separate rooms.
- Locking yourself in bathroom 2nd time running to which you fall over, grab the toilet brush, bang your elbow and yell ‘fuck’ whilst those outside say clearly ‘ARE. YOU. OK. IN. THERE?’ You mumble, ‘I’m having issues.’ To which no-one replies.
- Meanwhile, Sarah alone on dance floor with her eyes shut. Swaying. Like a willow tree.
- Hormones are flying and ex-lovers are discussing ‘the past’. And combining it drunkenly with discussions of ‘the future.’
- Toasting ‘the past’.
- Toasting ‘the future.’
- Finding a used sanity towel face up on the bedroom floor. The party has officially reached a whole new level.
- Locking yourself in bathroom 3rd time running, mumbling over outside patronising potential helpers, ‘I know what you do, I’m not stupid, it’s just a bloody door I know I should be opening it with the key provided the trouble is the key is so fucking big.’ To which they reply ‘big? What the fuck?’ and you slur back a reply that comes out as though you are French, so they say ‘what?’ You shove the key under the gap as if that explains it. They shove it back. You realise you’re in this alone.
- At some point, you hit a man. No evidence of why, as of yet, but pending.
The following day you find yourself on a drive home with a plastic bag handy for vomiting, a head the size of the vast vat of chilli con carne you ate last night out of the ladle that was then used to serve everyone all night.
You feel pretty rough but can’t comment due to best-friend-on-the-floor feeling rougher, and more to the point, contemplating STI checks. She found out the boys name began with a ‘C’ not an ‘R.’ She wasn’t even close.
*And it just so happened the blonde haired boy reaching for the cupcake was the one whose name began with ‘C’. We found out during breakfast in which he passed ‘best-friend-on-the-floor’ a fried egg and she stared back at him, her mouth open, the yellow of the egg dripping onto the kitchen work surface.
Lesson learned –
Oh. As if.
There isn’t one. You just have to lie-low for a while, re-assess your life plan and jump at the chance of dinner with another human being in a respectable environment, so you can return to a sense of normality.
Oh. And avoid Cosmopolitans if you want to celebrate rather than deteriorate.
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