Bring on the Yeasty Beasties!

or: Confessions of an Inadequate Drinker of More Than Adequate Beer, and the Unfortunate Consequences,
or: How I Made a Right Tart of Myself on Sunday Night

UPDATE: (at bottom of post)

This is pretty personal and pretty detailed, which is why i didn't post it right away, but i've decided that it was an emotionally significant event and i could really use your thoughts. Sadly, in order to fully convey my horror at what transpired Sunday evening, I have to give you some pretty grapic details. Sorry. (Warning: disgusting details and whinging inferiority complex imminent!)

I have never been so embarassed in my entire life.

Sunday the Pirate's cricket game was cancelled because of the rain, which gave us the whole day to do whatever the fuck we pleased. Rainy sundays are great. Rainy sundays when i'm on the rag are considerably less great. So much for the usual Olympic marathon bedroom gymnastics. Bah. So we had to find other ways to amuse ourselves indoors.

So we did pleasant Domestic Things. We went to the outdoors store and got ourselves some necessary bicycle bits and parts, went to the grocery store for milk and toilet paper (that most necessary accessory for modern life), and stopped by the pet store to procure me a new fish (photos to follow shortly, after i get my camera batteries charged). That killed half the day.

So I rang up some pals to see if anyone wanted to go bowling. i managed to get flatmate B, former flatmate Welsh Cake, and her boyf the Yorkshire Pudding on board. (Me, i'm the American Pie, and Pirate is known in these parts as my Lancashire Hotpot. Getting the Hotpot and the Pud together is always great fun; they can spend hours insulting each other's heritage -- it's brilliant!)

We had So. Much. Fun. The bowling alley is shite, and the laminate floors (as opposed to polished wood) mean i get absolutely no slide, so my scores were shite too, but that wasn't the point. The Welsh Cake is the worst bowler I've ever seen -- bless her cotton socks -- so when she finally got a strike we all jumped up and danced like Muppets. Not muppets in the generic sense, i mean Muppets, those wonderful creations of Jim Henson's with their very distictive dancing style (head thrown back, arms straight out in front, hips and hands girating back and forth). Even the Pirate got in. Actually, he started it. and i LOVE that he is the sort of man who will go out in public with his girlfriend and her friends and has no compuntions whatsoever about looking like a complete tit and dancing in a bowling alley. god i love that man. he's more man than any man i've ever met, and he's still a complete kid inside, too.

We had so much fun we didn't want the fun to end, so after our 2 games we piled into the car and went to The Mall in Clifton Village, my favorite pub in Bristol. It's got a great vibe, great ambience, great music, comfy furniture, and the best selection of Belgian beers on draught of any pub I've seen (in a country other than Belgium).

I started going there for the Hoegaarden, but one day when they were out i discoverd the Leffe. Oh sweet mother of god that's good beer. And very strong. They normally only serve it in half pints, but the (Belgian lesbian) barmaid who served me (and tried to chat me up) was perfectly happy to pull me a pint. Whee! At 6.5% that went down too fast and too smooth. So i moved on to a pint of Fruli -- a strawberry wheat beer that actually contains strawberries, and not just strawberry cough syrup. That's good beer, too.

Then for some reason i decided I wanted a half pint of the Schneider Weisse, another lovely brew. Except aforementioned lesbian Belgian barmaid pulled me a whole pint. Did i only drink half? Did i fuck.

Normally 3 pints, even three strong pints, wouldn't be enough to make me more than slightly tipsy, so i didn't worry too much. I'm Polish, remember? But i had forgotten about dual facts that a, i havn't drunk much in the past several months, so i don't have much of a tolerance, and b, all i'd eaten since lunch time was a 6" sandwich at Subway, and that was several hours past already (pre-bowling). So i had NO food in my stomach to sop up the deliscious yeasty beasties.

When we got back to my place and bid the Cake, the Pud, and B goodnight and closed the door, then did i begin to realize how far gone i truely was. i told the Pirate i wanted to clear my head, and went downstairs to walk around the block. It was raining, but i jogged 4 laps around the block anyway, hoping to speed up my metablolism and process the alcohol a bit faster. (I never get drunk when I'm dancing no matter how much i drink, so i figured this should work.) It didn't. I was drunk and wet. I went back upstairs where the Pirate had laid out the air mattress and sleeping bag for me (it was my turn on the floor -- he's had it the past 3 weekends), along with my teddy bear and feather pillow and filled 2 pint glasses with water, which he ordered me to drink.

(Warning to male readers: details of menstrual condidtion imminent!) Now, because Aunt Flow was visiting we hadn't had any nookie all weekend, and because last weekend we were so fucking sick and and exhausted, it had been a while. I was randy. really, really randy. But the good news was that i hadn't had a drop of blood since the previous night. I had considered jumping the Pirate in the morning, but decided to give it another day just to be sure. By sunday evening when i was still clean i decided the coast was clear and announced such. Someone was very happy indeed. Two someones, really. (Attention male readers: you can open your eyes now.)

This is where my memory starts to get a bit fuzzy, but i remember most everything. I hope.

We started kissing, but every time I closed my eyes i got really dizzy and nauseous. We tried to lie down on the bed but being horizontal was a Bad Idea and my equilibrium told me so. So we stood up and i tried to go down on the P, but after a few seconds the nausea became too great and i had to bolt for the bathroom, where i threw up three times.

The Pirate asked if i was OK, and i said that honestly yes, i felt much better having emptied my system, and i did. So we carried on, standing up. It was all going terribly well, and we had a lovely time. After everyone was satisfied, tired, and happy, i got off and...

(warning: gross bit coming up)... there was blood everywhere. I was mortified. I have never made such a mess in my life. I'm not opposed to shagging while ragging in principle, and have done it before -- taking appropriate measures, such as a thick black towel on the bed -- but the Pirate is not a fan. This is ok with me, and i respect his feelings on this matter. But even i have never seen such a mess. It was disgusting, and it was everywhere.

Pirate went into the bathroom to clean up, while i sat on the bed amidst a pool of sticky embarassment. When he came out i went to get cleaned up, was overcome with nausea again (i was still rather drunk) and proceeded to throw up again. and again.

I honestly don't know which embarassed me more, the blood or the puking. Either one would have been enough make me want to move to another country and never show my face again, but both in one night is almost more than i can bear. Pirate was incredibly understanding, and wiped away my tears and told me everything was fine and he didn't care and just wanted to make sure i was OK.

The following morning (managed to dodge the hangover; i think the yakking helped there), i was still crying from embarassment, and again Pirate told me to stop being silly that everything was fine, and gently wiped the tears from my face, told me that of course he forgives me when i asked him, and kissed me.

But (in a stupid, backwards, totally illogical way) this just makes everything worse!

He's so goddamn perfect! if he would do something assenine, just once, he would be easier to believe. Even if he said something like "yup, you really fucked up, and there is nothing sexy about a bleeding, barfing drunk woman, but you are still a wonderful person and i still love you," i could take that. But he doesn't even acknowledge that i did anything wrong, which makes me wonder "What is he really thinking??? What is he not telling me???" No one can possibly be that understanding.

Can they?

That's the other possibilty: he really is that sympathetic and understanding, which makes me feel all the more inadequate. He's just too good for me. He's the most wonderful man alive, treats me like a queen, and how do i repay him? By bleeding and barfing all over him. Fucking great girlfriend i am.

So HOW CAN I STOP FEELING GUILTY????

UPDATE: All afternoon while i've been sitting here writing this and feeling like a giant disgusting shit, do you know what the Pirate was doing? This was our text conversation:

P: Having a productive day?... [stuff about his day]
me: Hullo! I'm fine. I got my bike back from the shop. Whee!
P: Good stuff. I'm off out to pick you a carrier bag of wild garlic. How long does it go in the oven for?

That's right. While I've been sitting here feeling like a monster, he was out wandering the wild woods of Wiltshire to pick me loads of wild garlic for my cooking.

I can't get over how sweet that is. That's right up there with the omelette for thoughtful gestures. He's not going to use it -- he hates cooking! He's doing it entirely for me! It also sends the message of how much he appreciates my cooking, and wants to do something to contribute.

He's too good for me. I don't deserve him. I bleed and barf all over him and what does he do? He spends an evening gathering me a bag of wild cooking herbs. I don't think I can ever be good enough for him, but i desperately want to spend the rest of my life trying.