If you feel like you may puke, ask yourself a series of questions. Let's start with your surroundings. It's easy! Just look around to determine where you are. Are you in public? You're off to a bad start. Are you at a fancy event? Are you trying to impress someone? Would throwing up right now bring public shame on you, your employer, and/or your loved ones? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you have entered the danger zone.
If you feel like you may puke, ask yourself a series of questions. Let's start with your surroundings. It's easy! Just look around to determine where you are. Are you in public? You're off to a bad start. Are you at a fancy event? Are you trying to impress someone? Would throwing up right now bring public shame on you, your employer, and/or your loved ones? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you have entered the danger zone.
So you're in the danger zone. If you can safely get to the bathroom, by all means, go. At the very least, try and turn away from what will be one of your darkest moments. Go into the streets! Or at least try to make it into the vestibule! Go, my darling, under a four-top dressed in a long tablecloth. Puke where no one will see you, deep in the secrecy of table legs and knees!
Go into the darkness of a moving cab. Then, if you do indeed barf, tip as much money as you can. You puked on someone's livelihood. You puked on someone's faux leather trim. No big tip is big enough. Just go on and tip — you will not remember in the morning.
Let's say you are safe. You somehow manage to thrust a wad of bills at the driver and emerge from the cab clean. You are a mess of arms and legs and nausea, and had you any celebrity photographers staking you, your crotch shot would surely make the morning news. But you are clean for the moment, save the sudden sweat gathering on the back of your neck. That sweat is a good thing. It means the puke it coming, but there's still time!
Embrace any spare moments you have prior to your inevitable porcelain embrace! First, double-check you have your keys, wallet and phone. Excellent! Ensure the door is closed behind you, because you are wasted but you're still playing it safe. Fall into the kitchen and fill up a plastic cup of water. Then throw yourself into the bathroom — you're almost out of time.
Strip down to your skivvies and discard your clothes somewhere will they will not be ruined by the stain and stench of vomit. The bathtub works well — if you've already started to gurgle up puke, you can soak your dress tomorrow. Place your cup of water next to you, and tie your hair up in a tight but. Not a dainty, styled top knot, but a tight, puke-ready top knot.
Puke in the toilet. Not the sink, not the bathtub, not the hallway, not the bed. Puke in the toilet, head down, flushing as soon as you can pull your neck back to get a fresh breath of air. I prefer keeping the toilet seat down, as I would rather lean my arms on butt than piss, but that is a personal preference every woman must make for herself. Flush for the hell of it, to clean the bowl of the acidic smell, to suck off any strands of spit and barf left clinging to your chin, and to wipe away your sins.
The water! Oh lord, that plastic cup of water is cold and cool and beautiful. Wash your mouth out and spit it like a cherub back into the toilet. Throw up a few more times, and sip some water in between to avoid dry heaving. Splash the water on your face.
Can't stand? Wrap yourself in a towel and take a nap on the floor. If you can stand, pull yourself up to the sink to wash your hands and face, and refill your trusty plastic cup. Now is not the time to drink a bottle of water, take advil, or eat leftovers. Lurch to your nearest couch or bed and try to get some sleep.
Don't call in sick the next morning with the stomach flu. It's too obvious. Use the mighty sore throat — the undetectable, unaccountable, and uncompromising threat of strep, the flu, or something far more deadly. Watch daytime TV and clean up your bathroom. Eat something. Take a bath. Swear you will never, ever drink whiskey on an empty stomach. Swear that starting tomorrow, everything's going to be okay.
