In the Name of the Crow (or, As the Crow Flew)

This post was inspired by a recent post by Ian. He says that everybody loves a good puke story. Well, I don't know about that, but it made me think about certain related events in my past. I actually had quite a time deciding which story to post, haha!

(Incidentally, the word puke, when pronounced phonetically, is a Tagalog word that's equivalent to that unequivocally obscene C word.)

So here is my, errrr....vomit story. [Names have been slightly tweaked to provide some semblance of privacy.]

The time: circa the late 1980s

The place: a bar called Rhythm 'n' Booze. Nice name for a bar, eh? Dim lights, soft R&B music in the background, about a dozen or so tables in a place that was small, but which didn't seem cramped at all.

The characters: College-age me. My dorm roommates Yvo and Gai. Our friends Dod and Agn (Dod had gone backpacking through Europe a couple of years earlier. She lost her travelers' cheques...but still had a good time. Amazing girl.) Agn's brother, Mat (Dod's future-ex-BF), and some of his friends.

Truth be told, I don't remember much of the conversation or even what we all drank. I do remember that we laughed a lot, ate a lot, and drank quite a bit. We rode to and from the bar with the guys--who'd had quite too much to drink. What a stupid thing to do, in retrospect. Not because they were assholes or anything like that, but because they were DUI. Sometimes I marvel that I'm still alive. I guess it never really entered my mind that riding with an intoxicated driver was dangerous. Ahh, how thoughtless youth can be, perceiving themselves to be invincible. As someone once said, youth is wasted on the young.

Anyway, I think I stuck with San Miguel beer at the time. But remember, I didn't start enjoying the pleasures of alcohol until I was 18, so I was still a newbie at drinking at the time of our story. So there we were, talking and laughing the night away. Then I noticed that Yvo had been away from her seat for quite some time. I think I became a bit concerned about her; after all, she and I had been bosom buddies since we were eight years old, when she was still taller than me. So I stood up and went to the ladies' room to check on her. Lo and behold, she was hunched over one of the toilet bowls, calling crow. (She was making a sound that sounded like Uwaaaaaaaaakkkk! FYI, uwak is the Tagalog word for crow). I really didn't know what to do. I hurried back to our table, whispered to my girlfriends that Yvo was talking bird language in the toilet. I think they all stood up and we made our way back to do what we could to help Yvo. Or at the very least, see her making a fool of herself. What happened next was surreal.

Yvo was done serenading the crow by then, but was still sitting on the floor by the toilet. Gai knelt beside her, and maybe because of the odor or the sight of what came from Yvo's gut (who knows?) she started throwing up herself. Ditto Dod, who had the presence of mind to run to the next cubicle before regurgitating her dinner and drinks. Agn, who I always thought was the bravest and who had the steeliest stomach of us all, saw or heard her bestest buddy Dod moaning uwaaaaaakkk!!!--and proceeded to disgorge the contents of her stomach into the sink. Into the goddamned sink. All this was too much for me. I couldn't help myself; I found myself hugging a toilet, invoking the crow until nothing could come up and out anymore. And damn, that really, really hurt--the feeling of still wanting to throw up but that there was nothing left to throw up.

So there we were, exhausted, in a bar's ladies room that reeked of the smell of gastric juices. All because one girl after another found vomiting to be contagious--kind of like how yawning seems to be contagious. I'm just glad to say that this episode didn't repeat itself. Well, not in a bar anyway. But that's another story.

God, I can't stop laughing at the memories.