I was at the College of New Jersey school newspaper, the Signal, in some capacity all four years. Spring semester of my senior year, I was an Associate Editor, which was the position everyone got after they had done their time with elected Signal positions. I didn't have official duties, but I was writing a fiction serial called Jack and Jill, so that became what I did there every week.
Here's the production schedule of the Signal. Most of the stories are written over the weekdays. Friday and Saturday, the Features and Opinions sections are laid out. (Some news stories haven't happened yet, as well as most sports games, so there's not a whole lot that can be done for News and Sports.) Copy editors go through everything they can on Saturday, and go over it a second time on Sunday. On Monday, News and Sports are laid out and edited (last minute stories being written on the fly), and the issue gets sent to the printer's. Everything that doesn't fit precisely in this timetable has to be done Monday night. Monday night normally goes until 3 or 4 A.M. Tuesday morning. There's legends of a week the issue was done by 9:00 P.M.
Jack and Jill was never written until late Sunday. I always laid it out; I didn't want to throw the layout burden on the art editor, who was officially responsible for it, just because I wanted to write my little story. By the time it was laid out Sunday, the copy editors had usually gone home, so I put it in their bin and came back Monday to make the changes.
Just to do something productive while Jack and Jill got looked at, I got the pizza. We had a barter deal with a local pizza place: they got a free ad every week, and we got as much pizza and soda as we could eat on Monday nights. We only ordered what we thought we could eat, so it would be around four pizzas and four bottles of soda each week. I usually volunteered to get it, since I had a car and nothing better to do.
A side effect of writing Jack and Jill is that I got my fill of pizza and soda every Monday. I swear this wasn't the reason it always took so long. (The real reason was that I could never get the installments written before Sunday. Work will fill the time allotted.)
That particular Monday, I got full after three and a half slices. I didn't want to waste food, so I ate the rest of the slice. There was also just a little bit of Coke left in the bottle, so I finished that up, too. I was stuffed, but the landfill would be one pizza crust smaller.
After pizza, we went back to work, or in my case, milling around. Sometimes I wrote little news summaries or a sports story, but that day there was nothing that needed doing.
Joe Campbell was there, our advertising manager. In an effort to boost spirits around the office, he was going to do a little icebreaker. We all knew each other, but this would show everyone a little bit more of each other. He was excited about this, so we all went along. Everyone's names went into a hat. When someone's name was pulled, they had to say something 'personal' about their life.
It was interesting to see what people considered 'personal'. One guy talked about how people thought he was a girl on the phone when he was in middle school. One girl said who the first boy she kissed was. Another girl just said her middle name. Some opted to reveal a lot, some a little.
I had no idea what I was going to say. I don't have much about me that's 'personal', and I'd feel like I was shortchanging everyone if I said something I'd feel fine talking about normally. Cripes, what secrets did I have that I wouldn't mind blurting to a roomful of reporters?
As it turned out, I didn't have to think of something. All but two names were pulled out of the hat: mine and Nick Manetto's. Joe had something special for the final two. He dramatically reached into his bookbag, and pulled out two brown glass bottles of root beer. Big quarts of the stuff. We were going to chug them.
Nick Manetto is a great guy. Nicest person in the world, great copy editor, smart as hell, everyone's friend. But he was not the sort who'd probably win a chugging contest.
I wouldn't consider myself a chugging champ either. But I'd be happy to try. Unfortunately, I didn't have room in my stomach for an extra quart of sugar water. Any other time, I'd be up for the challenge. When I get fast food to go and there's free refills, I usually do a fill/gulp/refill maneuver very similar to this. But I already had half a pizza swimming in Coke occupying my stomach.
The time was now. The two of us unscrewed our bottles and lifted them to the sky. I opened my throat and just tried to do this fast. Nick's bottle immediately went down as he coughed on some fizz. I kept mine up. I wasn't thinking about what this would do to me, I just wanted to do it. I could technically argue that I won the second Nick's went down, but this wasn't me versus Nick, it was me versus the root beer.
The last bit of foam slid down into my mouth. There might have been a drop or two left, but I wasn't going to hold the bottle up for two minutes to get it. I slammed the bottle down victorious. I felt satisfied. But I certainly didn't feel good.
My stomach, already stuffed past the fill line, now had an extra quart in it. I felt pain of a nature I never did before. My stomach was expanding to accommodate the extra fluid. There's plenty of nerves set up in the stomach so, if you try something like this, it'll hurt enough so you don't do it again.
Root beer is perhaps the most carbonated of all sodas. You learn early in life to pour it carefully, slipping down the inside of the glass, and never never with an ice cube in there. I had a quart of it in me, drunk so fast there was no time for the carbon dioxide to escape. My stomach was literally being inflated from within. Ow.
Time for a monster burp. Only I've got a problem: I can't belch on command. It's not a genetic thing, since Jeff can do it just fine. I can work my way up to some sort of stomach gurgle, which sounds like a dinosaur. Then I'm gurgling all night. Once a month a legitimate belch comes out, but I've never learned its trade secret. It never caused me physical harm before, but now that my stomach was a growing blimp, I didn't have a release valve. Thoughts of Alien popped into my head, as well as Monty Python's Meaning of Life. "But mis-sheau, eet ess unlie wa-fair theen!"
I had one option. "I have to vomit," I said quietly, and staggered out of the room. I thought walking at some angle would alleviate the pressure, but in the fifteen feet between me and the bathroom, I couldn't find one.
I haven't vomited in years. I don't get sick much, and when I do, it's not of the puking sort. Add that to me not drinking, and I've got very little cause for regurgitation. The last time I vomited was February 1996, when I ate a bag of Cheetos on an empty stomach. Since then my mouth had been a one way street.
I was looking to keep my record, but I would gladly reset it if it would stop an internal organ from exploding. I opened the stall, leaned over the toilet, and tried to dry heave. It's definitely an acquired skill. After a failed attempt or two, I was feeling like Job. If only I was a drinker, burping and puking would be like riding a bike!
Joe and Jared, another associate editor, followed me to the bathroom to see if I was OK. I'm glad I had witnesses for the sound that came out of me.
I dry heaved for the third time, and as soon as an air passage was open between my stomach and outside, the CO2 rushed out. It was about five seconds long, starting with a puking noise and transforming into a deep burp that echoed through the bathroom like thunder. It was the greatest burp I've ever had. Jared said it was the most disgusting thing he's ever heard in his life.
I was stunned for a second, then began another dry heave attempt. But the stomach pain had disappeared. I was feeling pretty good, actually. My stomach felt like it was full of concrete, and I wasn't going to be hungry until Thursday, but there was no pain. I walked back to the production room and checked the Jack and Jill status.
I've never had a burp quite like that. I figure I could do it again, if I stuffed myself and then chugged another quart of root beer. My current asking price is $10,000. Recording devices will be allowed; I want my own recording of that sound.
My February 1996 vomit record still stands.