N.P. Yuggoth's Worst Fucking Hangover Ever

A place far, far away

Outside of the window, there's just a soupy white fog, illuminated by the flashes of some strobe light on the plane.  I can feel that we're descending, but I have absolutely no points of reference.  Normally, when I land in a new city, I can catch the streets down below, grids mapped out in orange street lamps.  But not in this corner of the country.  The landing comes as a total surprise, as the outside is shrouded in mist.  Thank the Ancient Ones for navigation technology.

I have been flying for well over half the day.  By the time I touch down in Alex's home state, two time zones away, it's past ten at night and black as pitch.  When paired with the nasty ass weather that this region is so known for, I know that it's going to be a lot darker over the next week.  I'm used to cold, cold winter days, but with clear skies and the deep, almost indigo blue of Lake Michigan lapping at the shore.  That's what I usually prefer, with a temperature of 20, and humidity hovering around zero. 

Out here, it's anywhere between 40 or 50 degrees, and I wouldn't be surprised if the humidity is about 100. 

Cyan, white, and indigo.  Cold.  Bright. 

Now it's more like brown, black, and deep greens.  Cool and damp.  It's going to take some getting used to.  But I know that I'm going to have a fucking awesome week and a half out here.  I've got a job to do, after all: record an album.  If all goes well, when I fly back next Tuesday, I'll have a Alex's vocal tracks all down.  He's got ideas for most of them, but he doesn't exactly have lyrics.  This worries me a bit, but Alex has always been a last minute kind of guy.  This is, after all, the same guy who aced a test he didn't study for.  In fact, he watched the Robocop trilogy instead of studying on that occassion. 

The international airport to which I've flown looks a bit run down.  The gaudy carpets and interior remind me of a vintage Las Vegas casino.  I pick up my luggage from the conveyor belt, and check to see that my Tascam 4 track is whole.  It is, but that's just the outside of it.  We may be over half way through the first decade of the new millennium, but I'm stuck in the mid-90's as far as technology is concerned, a fact of which I'm slightly aware.  If this damn thing breaks, there will be no album, because I'm sure no one will remember how to fix such a thing. 

Alex greets me with what could pass as either a hug or a tackle.  "How the fuck are you?" he asks. "Flight wasn't too bad, was it?"

"Nah," I answer.  "I saw Fred at the airport as I was leaving, actually."

"What the hell was he doing there?" Alex asks.  "Hasn't that motherfucker graduated yet?"

"Coming back from New York, and no, he said he's still got another year."

Alex shakes his head. Fred had always been a goofy one--not the hardest partier, but if there was a party, he would usually be there.  I had lost touch with the guy, so it seems odd that I'd run into him by chance just as I was leaving to go visit my old college partner in crime. 

We get out to the parking lot to find Alex's ride--his parent's station wagon of all things.  I can't say anything about taste, as I myself had a duo of wagons as my first cars.  But still, I have a hard time reconciling Alex and this innocent looking vehicle. 

"It handles fine on the roads," Alex answers my stares of confusion.  "Take a look in the backseat."

I turn around and pick up a paper bag, and instantly two glass bottles clink together.  I can tell by the weight that they're at least a liter each.  Pulling out both, I admire the Jack Daniels, and reel in horror at the cheap red label of the Popov vodka.

Oh shit.  The night is going to get real serious soon. 

I go to twist the cap off of the Jack, but Alex puts his hand out.  "Don't want to be breaking any open container laws tonight.  It's just about an hour and a half back to my city."

I shrug and put the bag back.  Alex throws on Pantera's Vulgar Display of Power, and we are treated to "Mouth For War," a song I will now forever associate with landing in strange places and blasting off into inebriation.  We'll get into his city at about midnight, 2AM my time, but that's rather inconsequential, as I am used to late nights.

The drive is really unspectacular, being that it's night.  None of the rolling hills or Douglas firs are visible.  The only thing of note is a neon cross high up on some hill in the distance. 

"We've got religious nuts around here, dude," Alex says, piloting the car onward.  We pass some town that makes some chemical called kachang or some shit, and it smells nasty.  Another town bears the same name as a city in my home state, just spelled differently. 

We roll into Alex's place, and I'm already feeling a bit tired.  His "home" is just as I would expect it: a devastated one bedroom apartment, covered with books, papers, CD's, and spare change.  Any place I step, I can feel a penny or nickle pressing into my heel.  The only thing that surprises me is that I can only see two porn DVDs.  Though Alex has become slightly more law abiding, he's still far from organized. 

"Let's get going," Alex says, and pours out a shot of Jack.  We throw on Cannibal Corpse's The Bleeding, a classic death metal album, and very fitting to this den of depravity.  We talk about chicks, music, writing, and then various things we don't like.  I remember that I have brought with me a gift: Metallica's masterpiece 2003 album, Saint Anger.

"Hey, let's put this on," I offer.

"Fuck that!" Alex says and chucks it into a corner.  But in said corner, I notice that there is a heavy paperweight in the shape of a bull.  When I point this fact out to Alex, he places the CD under the bull's ass, then sprinkles mouldy coffee ground from his trash onto it. 

Very modern art. 

At some point, we decide that it would be a good idea to go down to the river, which is raging tonight.  Back in college, the river was always our favourite place to drink, and so it is here. 

"You don't want to fall in that thing," Alex warns me as I inch towards the shore.  The water is coursing by in angry torrents, kicking up white spray.  "That thing is nothing like the river back in college.  It's fast, and that water's about 33 degrees."

"Why so cold?"

"That's coming right off of the melting glaciers in the mountain.  Fall in that and the cold will do you in before you can drown."

We drink down by the river, taking pulls right off the bottle.  By the time we get back to Alex's apartment, the Jack is finished, and it's somewhere around 4AM.  At this point our judgment is shaky, so drinking the Popov vodka seems like a good idea.  We start with shots, but somehow end up just drinking straight from bottle too. 

Everything from that moment is hazy.  I kind of remember falling into Alex's table, and seeing that the clock is reading 7:03.  Outside, the sky is a sickening gray colour.  Then merciful blackness.

"Aaaargh!  Goddamn it!" I can hear Alex groaning from some adjoining room.  I answer in kind at the same moment from my place on the living room floor. 

Normally, hangovers ache.  Not this one.  It fucking hurts.  And not just my head, but my legs and torso as well.  Alex's apartment is sickeningly warm, so I go and take a shower to try to wash the nastiness off and out of my body.  Alex is still cursing when I get out. 

"I feel like shit, dude," I say to him. 

"Me too," he answers through gritted teeth. 

"How much did we drink?" I ask, but the empty Jack Daniels bottle confirms that it was a lot. 

"You got any aspirin?" Alex asks. 

"It's your apartment," I say.  "I didn't bring any.  Say, my whole body feels like it's been through hell."

"Yeah, you were trying to bend time."

"Huh?"

Alex points to his table, part of which is cleaner than it should be, as a large swath of junk has been cast aside.  "You were trying to increase the gravity in the room so that you could bend time."

"What the fuck does this have to do with your table?"

"Well, apparently you brought the Earth and my table closer to yourself."

"Really?" I ask.

"I think your drunk ass just fell into it, but you said that you were trying to bend time."

"I guess it didn't work, did it?"

"It didn't stop you from trying again and again," Alex laughs.  "What time is it, by the way?"

I look at my phone, and find out its almost 5PM local time.  "Holy shit, we just slept through the whole damn day."

"I'm not surprised," Alex says. 

I go about trying to find a clean glass in Alex apartment, which basically turns into a small scale archeological expidition.  I eventually have to resort to cleaning a glass from the night before.  But this endeavour leads me to discover something sinister. 

"Oh dear god," I say, holding up the vodka bottle between my index finger and thumb.  There's a sliver of vile liquid left in the bottom.  "Did we really drink all of this vodka?"

Even Alex is surprised by this, but not horrified.  The sinister, cheap red of the label, like some proletarian banner appealing to the beaten down working classes, brings back waves of revulsion.  For some people, this is as good as it gets, I think, examing this nasty stuffy.  The acid in my stomach rolls along in synch as I slosh the vodka around. 

"Have we eaten anything?" I ask, knowing full well that we probably haven't.  Even though there's a 7/11 nearby, there's simply no way that we could have gotten there. It's no small miracle that we somehow got back to Alex's apartment, didn't get arrested, or fall in the river.  Or die.  But in my current state, the latter might be more pleasant. 

I don't know how to put the sheer unpleasantness of this hangover into words.  Never having had terminal cancer, I think that would be slightly worse than this morning/day/evening after.  My head throbs with each beat of my heart.  I want to puke, but I know that nothing is going to come out.  Standing makes me feel dizzy, and I can't focus on anything for more than a few seconds.  We're both still drunk; that's obvious.  But I'm in far worse shape, as the cold dampness of this climate, as well as the lower elevation is really messing with my equilibrium.  Humidity is something I can rarely tolerate, especially when it's warm.  And Alex's flat is toasty. 

"Do you have any food here?" I ask Alex.  "Or do we have to go down to the 7/11?"

"We'll have to go the 7/11," he laments. 

"Say, where's that legendary Hawaiian restaurant?  The one with the Samoan weightlifters that eat double portions of macaroni salad?"

"It's a ways away.  And there's no way I can drive," he says. 

I think about that for a moment.  After having quit smoking about 6 months ago, I've gotten onto a bit of an exercise kick.  Given this shit weather in Alex's state, I don't think I'll be able to get in a run for a while.  And besides, a little physical exercise might do me some good. 

We leave Alex's flat, like suspects fleeing the scene of a monstrous crime.  The place buzzes with malice, chaos, and inhuman decadence.  Somewhere in there, that abominable vodka sits, waiting patiently for one of us to finish it off.  But it will finish us off.

We make it to the Hawaiian place without saying much.  It's a haul, but not too bad, and on the way I get to see a bit of the city.  The restaurant is nearly deserted, and Alex and I both mow down on the Huli Huli Chicken.  We eat way too fast, and soon become stuffed on macaroni salad.  We saunter off back to Alex's flat, styrofoam containers in hand.

"Hey, I've got to get some cigarettes," he says, and we decide to visit the legendary 7/11.  It too is quiet. 

"Where are all the tweakers?" I ask.  Of all the locals, I'm quite curious about them, as they are few in my state and very abundant in Alex's.  "Isn't your state supposed to be crawling with them?"

"It's winter.  They all go south to California when it gets cold," he says, looking over the beer cooler. 

"Are we going to drink tonight?" It's not so much a question as a confirmation. 

"Shit yeah, you know what they say about a bit of the hair of the dog," Alex says as he hefts out a 12 pack of PBR. 

We set another personal record: the least we've ever drunk together, as well as passing out the soonest.  Before midnight, we're zonked out, with only 3 empties to Alex and 2 to my credit.  We only get to the really crazy part of Blue Velvet, where Frank shows up and makes everything go from interesting to super duper fucking weird in about 5 seconds. 

Though we've clearly wasted one day of recording, and probably taken months off of our lives, I can say that we've made up the year and a half we haven't partied together, by condensing about five hundred days of excess into one. 

Now that's time bending if I ever saw it.