(BEWARE: GRAPHIC PHOTOS AHEAD. NSFW. OR EYEBALLS.)
This whole story begins and ends with a glass.
This glass.
A glass I received from a shitty little bar where I spent most of my 20s.
Before accepting that glass, but after drinking at least 6 Guinness out of another, I left that bar in a 1974 Cadillac Coupe Deville with the owner.
I can assure you that it was still light outside.
We headed straight through the center of downtown Milwaukee, and rear-ended a car on Water and Kilbourn.
Not surprisingly, the people we rear-ended were also.. Well. Shit-faced.
They opted out of acknowledging the accident, and we both went on our merry ways.
We reached our destination: A lesbian sister-bar to the one we just came from.
(again, just a shitty hole in the wall, without any real affiliation besides a hodge-podge group of miscreants getting bent together)
Here, rubbing elbows with the owners, shots of Jameson flowed like.. Shots of Jameson on St. Patrick’s Day.
I must interject here and say that I’m a sucker for a New York accent.
The woman I met at this widely popular lesbian bar..
She had one of those.
Somehow… I convinced this woman, after all of the shots, and more of the Guinness, that we were meant to be.
I convinced her to come back with us to the aforementioned bar.
There, I had more. As I often did.
But this.. This was a holiday.
It gets a bit hazy, obviously..
But my new girlfriend met us back at the shitty fiasco of a bar.
(the owner of that shitty bar absolutely drove us back there….)
I’m pretty sure I promised marriage.
I must have convinced her of our shared destiny.
She spent the evening ripping off pieces of her sleeveless plaid shirt, and tying it to my purse straps.
We spent the night making out and whispering sweet-nothings.
I ended up leaving with an old friend.
A male friend.
It may or may not have been while Brooklyn was in the bathroom.
I really couldn’t say.
I know that I woke up in my old friend’s bed with a terrible hangover.
He took me to my car, which was parked in his uncle’s driveway, and as I approached it..
All of the air had been let out of each and every tire.
A note scribbled on an index card, and tucked into my windshield wiper:
DON’T PARK IN MY FUCKING DRIVEWAY.
“Old dumb friend,” I say, “Did you tell your uncle you were parking my car in his driveway?”
“I have to go to work.” -said my old ex-friend.
He peeled off.
I stood, weeping, out on the corner of Hamilton and Humboldt, staring at a bar called Scaffidis, and begging my friend to come and save me.
She was with me within 20 minutes, to Walmart to get an air pump, and back to fill my tires.
During that time, Brooklyn had called 15 times.
Fif. Teen. Times.
When I got back in the car, I discovered my commemorative glass.
It made me laugh. And cry. And laugh again.
Fast-forward 10 years, 1 month, and 29 days later…
Or, 3713 days.
I don’t use this commemorative glass very often.
Especially now, without the beer drinking.
Somehow, it made it’s way out.
And somehow.. I haven’t done the dishes in a week or so.
This morning, to prepare for my vacation(WHICH I NEED SO FUCKING BADLY, YOU GUISE), and the arrival of my new roommate, I woke up early to do a shit-load of chores.
One of which, was to attack the sink full of glasses.
Almost all the way through, I came to this glass, and ran the sponge around it’s lip.
I watched as it sliced through the soft meat of my thenar space.
Completely separating it’s webbing.
My thought was this, “This isn’t just a cut. I need stitches.”
Because the cut was where it was, the skin just flapped over itself, and the bleeding stopped when I held my thumb and finger together.
I one-handed dialed Juan, who had left for work not 20 minutes earlier.. Numerous times.
He wasn’t answering.
I used my laptop to chat with him.
“cut myself. take me to hospital please.”
“really?”
“yes”
As if I’d joke about something like that.
I’m sure he just needed a moment to register.
I sat on the front step of our duplex, and 10 minutes later he came careening around the corner like a bat out of hell.
(his new car really does look like the bat mobile)
At the hospital, I waited in line behind a woman with a child having an allergy attack.
Re: Itchy eyes. (i could go off about our heath care system, but this post is not about that)
Behind me was a 77 year old woman who had been dizzy since 4am.
Behind her, a 22 year old boy with stomach pain. He was not handling it well.
What a well-oiled machine this was.
Information was gathered, blood pressure taken, my wound was cleaned and prepped and numbed(at which point, i dropped an F bomb), a tetanus shot was given, I was stitched up, and sent home within an hour or two.
Here are the graphic photos of my wounded hand.
This first one was after they numbed me up, and cleaned it out.
The numbing stuff also contains something that makes the bleeding stop.
I thought that was cool.
Here’s the good work Nicole did on my hand.
Strangely, there was no pain.
There still isn’t, really.
Sometimes, if I open my hand too much, it feels like the walls of the cut are separating again, but that’s not very often.
Could have been worse.
Pretty gross, but I’m alive, and I did not panic.
People kept saying to me, “Well, you were in shock.”
But no. I wasn’t. I just thought, “This is happening now. Go to the hospital, idiot, and get your hand stitched up.”
So I did.
It’s now been a few days..
And I for sure got out of two days of work. (LOVE IT.)
But I’m on the mend, and will be mended enough to go into the ocean IN LESS THAT 5 DAYS.
