The Sports Guy has his Levels of Losing. Last night, I found myself with the time, motive and opportunity to spend hours pondering if there is a similar metric to be applied to vomiting. I came up with the following, from least unpleasant to most:
1. The Old College Try
Inspired by the rapid consumption of too much beer in too little time, TOCT hardly qualifies as being unpleasant, especially when there is a powerbooting competition involving distance to be resolved. At my alma mater – never won a football game, never lost a party – TOCT wouldn’t even slow the girls down. When the dog bites you, bite right back.
2. The Roman Banquet
My brother was infamous for overeating whenever Mom served spaghetti, which until he was twelve or so inevitably led to a extended trip to the bathroom. Nevertheless, this didn’t slow him down the next time. I’m not much given to overeating myself, but there were a few times in high school when Big Chilly and I would make a giant batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and eat half of it between us. This did not always end well; personally I suspect it was more the gallons of milk that we’d drink that proved to be too much. TRB actually comes as more of a relief than anything, but it’s so appallingly gluttonous that the mere gauchery makes it worse than TOCT.
3. The Whip Master
We always knew it was going to be a brutal speed workout when we’d show up at the indoor track during the winter and see four trash barrels with plastic bags strategically placed at 50-meter intervals. I was usually the first to lose it, generally on the 6th 200, but by the time we got to 15, even old Ironguts was hunched over a barrel, doing his best to forcibly expel his liver. The day we did 17 sub-30 200s was the only time I thought I might actually cry and beg for mercy during a workout. Still, the vicious assault on your innards is only one part of the overall body agony, which ranges from burning lungs to cramping legs and spasming buttocks.
4. Fangs of the Worm
For many, it’s tequila. For me, it’s straight vodka. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to smell it and the mere thought of it is enough to make me gag. Sake, too, is on my personal list of Very Bad Things. I don’t know why hard alchohol tends to leaves a permanent mark in a way that beer does not, but regardless, anyone who has truly experienced FOTW will flee in terror before risking a repeat experience.
5. The Tummy Bug
These can be nasty, since they’ll often hit the victim at both ends. The only redeeming factors are that TTBs tend to pass quickly and except when they force one to serve their purposes, one doesn’t feel all that bad… until the next round hits.
6. A Chef Called Wormwood
I’d only experienced food poisoning once before last January. I remember thinking that the chicken tasted a bit dodgy that night, but foolishly put it down to an English chef’s inept fish sauce. On the bright side, spending the evening establishing a close and personal relationship with my hotel room toilet did get me out of a dinner that promised to be mind-numbingly dull. And it didn’t leave me too incapacitated to play Total War: Medieval, so that worked out all right even if it left me looking like a leftover zombie from the Day of the Dead cast.
7. The Snake In The Belly
This is TTB on steroids. I didn’t even feel nauseous last night, merely an uncomfortable roiling which made me wonder if there was a snake sliding around my insides. It turned out that it was a boa constrictor and an ill-tempered one at that. It literally felt like being picked up off the floor and wrung out at the waist; I’ve never found myself sweating from the mere physical exertion of it before. On the plus side, my abs look smashing this morning and I really believe it could be marketed to the bulimic elements in the fitness crowd as a two-in-one product. Just simply brutal.
But not the worst I’ve ever experienced, which was a combination 4+6. A very badly timed sequence of events left me in the customary position, which was soon exacerbated by the Taunt of All Time, to which I was subjected by my housemate. We had been assigned to live together in faculty housing for some reason or another; he was a good-looking guy and complete social zero who did fine with the girls until he opened his mouth. He also hated me with a deep and abiding passion that I have not seen since. Apparently he had managed to keep his mouth shut long enough to attract a curly-haired Tri-Delt, and he escorted her to his bedroom before popping his head in the bathroom to express his heartfelt sympathies for my dire plight.
“I just want you to know that while you’re busy doing that in here, I’ll be having sex with her in there.”
Even in the depths of my momentary Hell-on-Earth, I had to appreciate his ruthlessness in twisting the knife so savagely. In all the years that have passed, I’ve yet to encounter a more perfectly vicious cut.