Woke up feeling melancholy about the upcoming 50th. I don’t think anyone will remember, which would make sense since that is how I’ve played it over the years. I do not advertise it on Facebook, because I find the happy birthday parade to be tedious as hell. The only times I ever posted to someone’s profile on their birthday was to say “WHO CARES?” That was usually good for a laugh.
I gave Facebook a fake date of birth when I registered. I give the same fake date to most sites, except for those that really matter. It’s a throwback to the early days of the Internet when something as simple as a name and date of birth could be used for identity theft. I don’t think it is that simple these days but old habits die hard and I still usually use a phony date whenever asked. I’m not trying to fool anybody, it just seems prudent to be wary of registration information given to sites run by who-knows-who.
The fake date I use is reasonably close to the real one, although it would make me a Sagittarius instead of an Aquarius. I never thought of it until now but I bet something as trivial as that has been a deal-breaker for online dating prospects who treat a star sign like a race.
I doubt anyone but my sister will remember. J. might remember, even all these years on, because my date of birth was among the weirder bits of kismet we shared. We talked about it all the time. When we met she was still dating a guy named Mark Thomas whose birth date was exactly the same as mine, to the year. He was also black. I never dated a black woman but from college through my late 20s every woman I was with had only ever dated black men. J. said that made sense, since she thought I had a “soulful” character. She might have been saying that to get into my pants but it was a memorable comment for me. My date of birth, not to the year, was also significant to her for some reason but I cannot remember why. It might have been her sister’s or mother’s birthday, or something like that.
A few weeks ago a friend messaged to ask if it was my birthday. This was on the fake date. I said no, explained the matter, then asked what bot or website alerted him to this. He said he didn’t remember, that it just showed up on his Mac desktop. It seemed strange he would have no idea where that notification came from but hey, I planted that little bit of roguery and I thus anticipate its consequences.
I vomited a little last night. I was not feeling ill in the slightest but my appetite and digestion have been weird lately. That’s a consequence of drinking. On booze I have less desire to eat and some days I only think to do it when the bottom falls out and I must forage to stay alive. Without booze it is the opposite. Last time I stopped the booze for 3 weeks I gained 8 pounds. I think last night’s little attempt at barfing came from the Fish & Chips being nasty and me simply eating it too damn fast. I kept some most it down, so yay for that.
When I think I need to barf but am having trouble getting there all I have to do is think of my mother. Yes, I said that. One time when I was a kid I had to hurl but I could not make it happen. Prostrate on my knees on the bathroom floor my mother remarked “If staring into a toilet doesn’t make you throw up then I don’t know what will.” It was funny but it was also true, and with those magic words the lava flowed from my beet-red face. I think of that moment any time I think I have to throw up but either cannot do it or I don’t want to.
I think the last I vomited in any volume was after getting food poisoning at a bar near here. I was spouting like a force of nature for 3 days. At a certain point I just got into the groove of it, worried not about what was happening but that the internal muscles thrown into reverse so much would be sore as hell for days to come. They were.
I’ve tried to research this but never found an answer. Someone told me that if an infant does not do it before a certain age then you should induce vomiting. The reason was that if they reach a certain age without throwing up then they might never be able to do it, and they could even die trying. The digestive muscles, it was said, would get locked in so they would only work in one direction going down. So if the person ate something bad their body would not be able to reject it, and they could even die as a result. I have tried to search on this matter but I never found an answer, although I don’t mind saying that doing a search on anything to do with vomit is enough to make my innards squirm.
I had a storied history of being the barf king in grade school. On the school bus, in classrooms, in hallways and on the playground, no location was safe from my facial evacuation. The most memorable incidents were on the school bus. Other kids would talk about it all day. Indentations on the floor of the school bus were like little canals, through which the vomit flowed. It was as if the intended purpose of these little canals was to irrigate the barf and spread it evenly throughout the bus. I must have done this on the bus 5 or 6 times, though based on my reputation you’d think I did it every day.
I would feel a little jealous when anyone else barfed. In a classroom once I happened to be looking right at a kid name Chris. I think we were doing the pledge of allegiance, so he was standing there, looking normal, when a flow of yellow muck suddenly but slowly emerged from his mouth, landing splat on the floor. He instinctively grabbed his chest and leaned over a bit to prevent the barf from hitting his shirt on its way down. I remember that incident for how I immediately thought something like “Aw, man. It wasn’t me this time.”
I would say it was an attention-seeking thing on my part except that I do not think I’ve ever been an attention whore. For me the thrill in barfing was the randomness of how people reacted. Some were sympathetic, others revolted, others simply fascinated. It was like comedy in a way, being so unexpected and surreal.
Once when I barfed on the school bus a girl I had a crush on waved one hand in a panicked attempt to open the window, and she grabbed her nose with her thumb and index finger to block the smell. I saw that and thought I might have blown any chances I could have had with her.
Years later, in college, another incident involving barf and failed romance occurred when a woman who lived down the hall got sick. I sat with her in the toilet stall, holding her shoulder and handing her toilet paper to wipe away the splatter from her face and the surrounding porcelain. I had more than just a crush on this person, but even this show of gritty support did not win me any chances with her.
This story could get my degree revoked, but in college I was legend for the Jimi Hendrix incident. I drank too much one night and passed out. I woke up to find I had vomited off to the side of the bed, a gusher of bile forming a vomit cake about 2 feet wide and an inch deep. I had no memory of performing this act but I moved quickly to clean it up, finding that underneath it all was a library book. It was the Brahms Clarinet Sonata in E-Flat, to be precise, and it was completely buried in barf. Fortunately the book was covered with the sturdy cardboard used on most of the library’s musical scores, making it blessedly easy for me to wipe off the spew and make it look like nothing happened. It stunk like hell, though, but not after I sprayed it a few times either with my cologne or someone else’s perfume. You could still smell a hint of barfiness by holding the book close enough to your face, but that subtle aroma faded over time. None of the barf got onto the book itself. That’s because the cardboard cover was an inch or two wider than the book itself, leaving plenty of space between the right edge of the book and the edge of its protective cover.
I returned the book to the library with no comment. Really, the book was fine, in no worse condition than when I checked it out. The cardboard was a little more curled than it had been before soaking in bile for several hours but no librarian would have noticed that.
If nothing else it demonstrates how successfully the library’s means of wrapping the books in thick cardboard protected them from the elements. Without that protection I suppose I would have had to pay a price for the thing.
The story got around. I wonder if it still lingers among denizens of the hallways and stacks at that library, or anywhere else.
