Sometimes he wondered about his drinking, whether it was funny or embarrassing. While his roommate told him "...and then you tried to put Claire and Molly in a chokehold at the same time" his soul cringed, but with a stupid, satisfied grin on his face.
"Yeah, they yelled at you for awhile, so you left."
"I don't even remember Claire"
"You were probably on your third barleywine by the time she showed up." That would have been after a scotch ale and an oatmeal stout, two twenty-ounce glasses lacking foam or good decisions.
"So how many people did I put into chokeholds?"
"Everyone? I don't know. A lot."
He had woken up this morning to the acidic smell of tomato sauce and hops, regurgitated in his sleep in a fanned-out pattern from his mouth to the bedspread, his phone slid out to text-mode on the floor beside the bed.
Of course he had texted people too late at night; texts with no grammar or spelling or, in some cases, with any semblance of language at all. He looked at his alarm clock, and for a full fifteen seconds panicked over being an hour late for work at the airport, before realizing this was a Tuesday, and he didn't need to be sober for another six.
He stripped the bedspread, which was clean relative to his post-birthday morning, and downright spotless compared to the morning after Barack Obama became President-Elect, and balled it up (tomato in the center) into his clothes hamper. The pillow would need replacing, but this too he tossed in with the spread.
He couldn't be bothered with making a new bed, and he couldn't stomach sleeping on something that smelled so sharp. His attention turned to his phone, upside down and foreboding.
Why did he always text his second cousin Ben whenever he'd had too much to drink? It was as if he wanted the engineering grad student (with a scholarship, provided he work for the navy at something like 60k a year after graduation) to know exactly how much better he was than Matt. One of the texts simply said "footboallz"
Scanning through messages he found that he had sent one to his parent's land line, a couple to girls he hadn't seen in months (one message utterly unintelligible, the other expressing to the girl how much he didn't need her anymore) and dozens to Molly. He shouldn't have done that.
He knew better than to think that as the day wore on he would get a clear picture of what had transpired. He had glimpses. Chokeholds. Talking to (but what about?) a gay couple. Wiping a little tomato sauce on Molly's jeans. Several instances of stealing her hat and mashing it onto his head. Apologizing to a guy that had directed what was to be Matt's final play for being such a whiny, unprepared bitch.
As he lay on the couch, unable to nurse his hangover with any efficacy, he realized that he would be in a self-imposed seclusion for at least a week before he went out again.
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