Degraded - In The Bath

 

 

I look up from the Tequila Sunrise that I've been nursing for the last half hour and smile when I see you enter the bar. Ever so vaguely I remember the night before, your helping me out of the restroom and taking me to a cab to get me safely home, but not much else, although the tequila in the Sunrise is beginning to sober me up, or so it seems.

 

"I wasn't sure you were going to call," I say, then catch myself, hoping that I don't come across as being so sarcastic.

 

You stop short in your tracks, give me a mock shock look of surprise, then smile as you seat yourself next to me at the bar. "Don't I always do what I say I'm going to do, Tessa?" you ask, motioning to the bartender to bring you a gin and tonic and to re-fill my drink.

 

I return your smile and wince, my head still aching from the night before, our night before. I remember the sound of the alarm going off banging and bouncing through my brain making it feel like some kind of human pin ball machine. When I woke up I had a migraine that wouldn't stop and my mouth felt like the entire Russian army had shot their rocks off in my mouth, the taste a disgusting combination of vomit and alcohol and sperm, though I had no memory of where the latter might have come from. In short, I felt like shit.

 

I reached over to the nightstand to slide the alarm clock lever off, managing to knock over the half-filled glass of rancid beer that I'd used to wash down my sleeping pills the night - wait, make that early this morning - before. The big hand was on the 12 and the little hand was on the 4 and I realized that it's four-fucking-p.m. in the afternoon.

 

"Mom?" my daughter Brianna's voice rang out from downstairs forcing another white-hot lightning bolt of pain to shoot through my brain. "Time to get up!"

 

She's seen me still hung over the morning after way too many times, my having gotten totally wasted and shit-faced the night before. I leaned on one elbow to lift myself up, noting the puddle of beer staining the hard wood floor at the side of my bed and made a mental note to avoid stepping in it barefoot, then lifted the not-quite empty glass and washed the last of the room temperature golden liquid down my throat before sitting my sorry ass up in bed.

 

"Coming honey," I called down to Brianna. I figured if I responded quickly enough she wouldn't come upstairs. Even though she's seen me like this before I'm still her mother and need to set the best example that I can. Flipping the covers off I saw that I'm still wearing last night's dress, only now it's got some bizarre permanent wet-spot stain at the top, right between my boobs, and my head began to reel as I tried to figure out what excuse I was going to tell my dry cleaner this time, when I realized that all I had to do was change dry cleaners to someone who hadn't been jaded by seeing me bring in dresses and tops with stain after stain after unidentifiable stain, so that's what I did.

 

"Mom?" Brianna called out again and I heard her footsteps as she crossed the living room and headed for the stairs.

 

"I'll be right down baby, don't bother coming up," I shouted. My head started to pound even more than it had been as I staggered over to the bathroom. When I sat down to pee this deja-vu memory flashed through my mind and I suddenly had this vague image of a man standing in front of me, watching me take a piss. As my stream came to an end so did the image of the man disappear.

 

That's when I realize that the man watching me pee looked just like you, the guy who's sitting here next to me. I avoid making eye contact with you, trying to hide the look of shock from you, and down half of the fresh drink that you had delivered to me and convince myself that I must be mistaken.