Sunday 10/13/02            Pocari Sweat Works on Hangovers

 

The heat in the apartment woke me and I’d been having a pleasant enough dream and sleep, but when woke I felt the dizziness and nausea and remembered what happened.  I was more disgusted than embarrassed.  I was wearing someone’s black hair elastic, my hair was tangled and matted and it and my clothes reeked.  I tried to drink more water but it made me feel worse.  I went to the bathroom, shampoo bottles were on the floor as if I’d knocked them over.  Wads of tissue on the floor everywhere.  It was almost 12 noon and I SMS’ed Lorraine that I couldn’t go to brunch, and at 12:30 as I was lying down again heard the beep of another message, but slept.  I woke at 3, BiauJie called to confirm about dinner and said to meet them downstairs at 6:15.  I had three hours to get totally better, could I do it?  Still miserable, I showered, put the smelly clothes in a heap on the floor, and with wet hair dragged myself out, slumping to the mini mart around the corner to get 2 bottles of Pocari Sweat, which is their version of Gatorade here.  On the bottle were the words “Ion Supply Drink”, which was exactly what I needed to see.  It’s less pleasant tasting than Gatorade but seemed to help.  At first I gulped too fast and my stomach cramped, maybe because it was cold, so I laid on my side and sipped it slowly through the straw imagining it was a dripping IV.  An IV, how I wished for a wonderful, magical IV...

 

How I missed Dave!  A night like this we might have lounged in his apartment, watched Conan, ate ice cream, read a NY Times Magazine article online as I sat on his lap.  He would scroll down and ask “Are you ready?” before clicking to the next page.  We would hear about some party and would think about going and people would call and I’d bug him to go but we’d get tired and not go, then vow to get up early and get a good start to a productive Sunday, and of course we’d both sleep in, then I’d wake him up swatting him with a pillow and smothering his head with it, then we’d make breakfast, with whatever we had at the time of eggs, bacon, pancakes, waffles, toast, ham, keilbasa, orange juice and tater tots.  We’d eat while watching Sunday crap on TV then maybe a basketball game would be on in the afternoon.  It was an incredibly boring weekend existence that I used to complain about to him all the time.  But now I would’ve given anything to have had a night like that instead of this misery. 

 

I vowed I wasn’t going clubbing for a month.

 

            I slept all day, but at 5 I knew I still wasn’t well enough to go to dinner, and though I really wanted to give the kids the cookies I bought at Costco, I called mafia JieFu and cancelled, saying I wasn’t feeling well.  When I finally got up at 7 I felt better, and hungry, and actually really in the mood for Ramen.  Stella called to see if I was OK, I told her about my one month vow and she said, “A MONTH!  Chris and I were talking and decided we won’t go clubbing until next WEEK!”  She told me Elva had been at the table behind us at the club.  She’s seen her at Room 18 three times now, she always wears a hat and glasses so people can’t recognize her.  I said, “Elva?  I just saw her at a baseball game.” 

 

The SMS at 12:30 had been Ginger asking if I was still up for brunch, HA!  Good thing I hadn’t read it at the time.  I called her back, she’d gone to Dan Ryan’s with her dad.  Dave says that’s a good place.  They write on the menu, “Warning, we serve American portions.”  She said she’d had a headache all day, probably a hangover thing.  I said, “So I woke up wearing this hair elastic.”

“Yeah, that’s mine.  Um…you can keep it!”

“Hey!  I mean, I’ll WASH it!”

“No that’s OK really, keep it!”  Laughing.

 

            I washed last night’s clothes.  I REALLY must’ve reeked.  I felt so bad!  I’ll buy her a pack of new hair elastics.