Drunk Cooking = NO

My original intention was to write this post about me and my past shenanigans when it came to drinking, because there were a lot.  But as I paged through the misty, bourbon-infused memories, one particularly unhappy memory popped up which had nothing to do with my own drinking.

#3 - Drunk

At the time of this incident, I was college and living in an apartment with two other girls.  We hadn't been close friends prior to moving in together - it was more a matter of convenience, as I needed a place to stay when my original plans fell through.  Still, they were friendly girls and I knew them fairly well (we were all Theatre students and in a program like that, you can't help but get to know each other - I think I had seen them both naked at this point, in fact).

All along, I knew that S was a big drinker.  It was a fact which we all were pretty much aware of.  She would come to cast parties and drink everyone else's liquor.  There were so many people milling around that no one was paying attention, until folks went to pick up their bottles from the kitchen shelf at the end of the night and noticed that there was less then there should have been.  They'd compare notes - after all, almost everyone brought something for themselves, so there was no need to drink anyone else's unless it was offered.  Except for S.

At first we thought that since she was working at a restaurant & bar at the time, she may have already been halfway drunk when she arrived.  Plus, she was a tiny little thing - a little over 5 feet tall, pretty thin.  It wouldn't take much to knock her over. 

By the time we were living together I knew this wasn't just a matter of a tiny girl not knowing her limit.  Looking back, though, it was nothing bigger than an annoyance at the time for my other roommate and me.  She just came off as a stereotypical college student who drank too much.

Then came the night of my birthday party.  A bunch of friends came over after hanging out at a kareoke bar and we did super awesome exciting things like play board games.  We were animals, I tell you.  And several people brought, you guessed it, a bottle of their favorite drink.  At the end of the night those bottles were still sitting there on the kitchen counter...either as a gift or forgotten.  I fell asleep watching a movie on the couch.

An hour or so later, I woke up and smelled something burning.  We had a glass door leading out to a balcony and in its reflection I saw S slumped on the kitchen floor.  I went to the kitchen and found that she had been drinking while I was asleep and had gotten the great idea to make nachos in the oven.  At 500 degrees.  Then she threw up all over the kitchen.

Immediately I turned off the oven and yanked the stinking, smouldering pile of chips, cheese and beans out of there.  Then I turned to her, where she was now half-conscious on the floor.  I was so angry with her.  The months of not being able to keep a bottle of booze in the apartment for longer than a few days...the fact that she was always needing rides home from male coworkers who would spend the night and occasionally lose their way and end up in my room...it all came to a head that that moment.  Our other roommate wasn't home and if I had gone to bed in my room instead of falling asleep the way I did? I don't even wanna think about it.  Plus the kitchen was an absolute wreck of food and spilled liquor and vomit. 

I was furious, but she wasn't hearing me, of course.  She was just telling me how much she'd wanted nachos and how they were ruined now and did I want a drink? And my anger disappeared, to be replaced with sadness.  It was such a pitiful situation.  Here she was, a bright, bubbly girl...reduced to this slurring mess with puke on her shirt.

I wound up having to pick her up and carry her to bed.  I took the ruined cookie sheet with its "nachos" out to the balcony and cleaned the kitchen, all the while alternately cursing her and feeling sorry for her.  I just couldn't believe the situation.  Things never got that bad afterwards - I don't know if she remembered any of it or not, but I never had to deal with one of her coworkers in the middle of the night again.

It's years later and I know that I'll never forget how sad the sight of her on that kitchen floor made me.  I moved out several months later and we fell out of touch.  She's doing fine now, or so I've heard from friends.  I really hope so.