Drink Puke Sleep

Drink, Puke, Sleep
One Man’s Search for Everything across Wal-Mart, Wii and Wendy’s

“(Eat, Pray, Love) has inspired women readers to follow in Gilbert’s footsteps as they make pilgrimages abroad looking for good food, new boyfriends and personal gurus to make everything right again after divorce.”

--USA TODAY,
2/7/08

Drink, Puke, Sleep is my inspiring story. It begins with the heartbreaking decampment of my girlfriend, leaving me in a state of emotional fragility so extreme that all I could do is drink and cry and play Guitar Hero. After sixteen straight hours of gaming, a case of Keystone Light and a pint of Captain Morgan I ultimately passed out in tears on the couch, only to find myself in the exact same place five hours later, in a pool of my own urine, my sinuses clogged and head throbbing as if trapped between the very ass cheeks of Satan himself.

Out the window, through the falling snow, enlightenment beckoned from the glowing fast food signs across the street, and I found myself staggering through Wendy’s, crying as I walked up to the Drive-through window. This, at the urging of Rodney “Ramrod” Hobart, whose motor home had been parked in the Wendy’s lot since the Patriots lost the Superbowl. Unable to return home due to outstanding gambling debts, Ramrod was a prophet without honor but that didn’t keep him from sharing his wisdom with me, and it was at his behest that I tearfully ordered one of everything on the menu. But the chili proved too much for my delicate state of existential angst and, weeping, I purged the contents of my stomach copiously in Ramrod’s shower/bath, wherein he threw a Hooters ashtray at my head.

I awoke with tears and blood in my eyes. Ramrod’s wisdom had been transcendental, but his RV was gone, leaving me alone again and in tears. Wal-Mart, however, was just across the street, and it was there that I was able to find twenty-four hour solace in the arms of low prices and a clean shirt. The cheerful, gnome-like employees welcomed me into their quaint and charming culture as if I were one of their own, and I will never forget the moment that one of them faced me with the sort of candor one can only find in the eyes of a kindred spirit and asked, “Can I help you?”

Then, out of the changing room, came Tiffany. Like all the others she was wearing a red vest and a button asking how she could help me. But this was different. I knew right away that the question was not rhetorical, just as I knew that my quest for meaning had, at last, come to an end. I realized then that all of my searching had not been in vain, that in fact the person I had been looking for all along was this very woman. My mind was saying no but my heart was saying that with her employee discount I could soon be playing video games as yet unimagined. Not to mention, she was significantly hotter than my ex-girlfriend, so just getting to second base with her was a triumph, which I was about to until she got up to take her contacts out. I felt much better when I woke up on her waterbed the next morning, even though I was still fully clothed and her father was threatening me with jail time. Downstairs her little brother was playing Guitar Hero.

“Hey, little man,” I said. “Mind if I give it a try?”

With tears in my eyes, I smoked his ass on “Freebird.”

Truly, I had come full circle.