1st Circle: The Ducked Bullet
No pain. No real feeling of
illness. Your sleep was deep and all those carbo-loaded
beers have gifted you with a week’s worth of misplaced
energy. During lunch you torture your less fortunate coworkers,
bragging about how you can pound booze all night, drink
warm gin out of a dirty ashtray for breakfast, and still
show up fifteen minutes early for work. You crave
a steak sub and a side of gravy fries.
2nd Circle: The Thirsty Mongoloid
No real pain, but something
is definitely amiss. You look okay but you have the mental
capacity of a staple gun. You are definitely dehydrated
and after drinking two Gatorades you still feel that way. You
feel kinda dumb and you notice the temporary lowering of
your IQ has made you more sociable and less concerned with
workaday worries. You crave a fruity pancake from IHOP.
3rd Circle: The Headwound That Won’t
Heal
Slight headache. Stomach is
upset. You are definitely not the paradigm of a productive
worker. Anytime a girl walks by you gag because her perfume
reminds you of the warm gin shots you did at your friend’s
apartment after the bouncer ejected you at 1:45 a.m. Memories
of bad behavior seep in and you cringe with shame. Life
would be much, much better if you were in your bed with
a dozen donuts and a meatball sub watching Hogan’s
Heroes reruns. You've had four cups of coffee, a gallon
of water, three iced teas and a diet coke and you haven't
peed once.
4th Circle: The Hunchback of Cheap Champagne
You have lost the will to live.
Your head is throbbing. You can't speak too quickly or you’ll
punctuate your sentences with vomit. Your boss has already
lambasted you for being late and reeking of booze. The clothes
you put on won’t win you any fashion awards and your
face looks like a golf green mowed by a blind junkie (ladies,
it looks like you applied your make-up with a shotgun).
Your eyes are red enough to give your features a lizardish
cast and your hair makes your coworkers ask if you’re
starting up a new wave band. You vaguely remember doing
some really dumb and embarrassing things last night and
you don’t care. You would murder your favorite bartender
for a foot-long Bratwurst smothered with dijon and fried
onions.
5th Circle: Dr. Kevorkian’s Dream
Date
You don’t feel human,
you don’t even feel like a mammal. Your long morning
shower didn’t take, no amount of soap could penetrate
the coat of sleaze. You have a second heartbeat in your
head which is actually annoying the employees sitting near
you. You’re getting drunk from the vodka vapors seeping
from every pore. You still have toothpaste crust in the
corners of your mouth from the futile attempt to remove
the taste of decaying rat. Your body has lost the ability
to generate saliva, your tongue flops in your mouth like
a nightmare-plagued wino thrashing around in his cardboard
hooch. You'd cry like a baby but that would steal the last
few drops of moisture left in your body. Death seems pretty
awesome right now. You definitely don't remember who you
were with, where you were, what you drank, and why there
is a stranger still passed out in your bed.
6th Circle: The Infinite Nutsmacker
You wake up on your bathroom
floor, your arms death-locked around your porcelain lover.
You would vomit but you quite apparently took care of that
last night, with none too good of an aim. You turn your
head too quickly and smell the funk of 13 packs of cigarettes
in your hair. Suddenly you realize you were smoking, but
not ultra lights—some sadist handed you a pack of
Pall Mall nonfilters and you chain-smoked them like it was
your full-time job, telling anyone who would listen that
smoking filtered cigarettes is like drinking whiskey through
a bar rag. You look in the mirror and find the Ready to
Rock stamp has migrated from your right hand to your forehead
with the help of Jager magic. You try to rehydrate
but all you can stand is one cupped handful of brackish
tap water. You crawl into the shower and the coldest water
fails to revive your nerve endings as you mumble solemn
oaths of never, ever letting a single drop of
evil alcohol inside your body again. Ever .
If you could remember your behavior
last night you would never step outside your apartment again,
but the last thing you recall is accepting your ninth shot
offer with the exhortation, “Fuck yes! Let’s
get this party started!” Everything after that
is a black vacuum populated with shifting, vaguely-menacing
shapes.
Instead of yelling at you for
being late, your boss solemnly invites you into his office
to ask you if a parent or sibling passed away. Your super-sensitive
ears pick up low talk among your coworkers about “interventions” and “rehab.” The
cute girl from accounting you’ve been flirting with
for three months looks at you like you’re a leprous
hunchback who has come for her organs. You cannot
bear to eat, the granola bar from the snack machine sticks
in your craw like petrified log jammed in a woodchipper.
You curse yourself for not calling in sick because all you
can manage to do is sit in your chair and breathe . . .
very gently.
