When we go out for a night of drinking and debauchery, there are several ways we imagine the night ending. Most often, these endings involve stumbling home with a burrito, getting naked with a gentlemen of our choosing, or passing out in a random location. What we don’t often foresee is the possibility of the night taking a turn for the worse…and I don’t mean see-your-ex-MOing-someone-and-cry-in-public worse. I mean like, emergency-room-getting-a-body-part-sewn-back-together worse.
It was Friday night, and I was more than ready to blow off steam after a long week of feigning interest in my classes. My roommates and I were all in a frisky, let’s-get-beyond-wasted sort of mindset, and our neighbors were having a party at their townhouse. I thought this was the recipe for an absolutely perfect night. No crowded, sweaty bars, no screaming at the bartender for watered-down vodka drinks, no getting hit on by creepers, and no long walks home. Just me, my friends, and my boyfriend, getting absolutely wasted. I wish I knew how wrong I was.
After getting all dolled up and re-applying lip gloss in between no fewer than 7 pre-game shots, my roomies and I put on our highest heels and headed next door to our friends’ townhouse, where I met my boyfriend and we went straight to the kitchen. Lo and behold…BURNETT’s. At least a dozen handles lined the kitchen counters in varying colors and flavors. Not one person in sight was casually sipping a beer or glass of wine. Shots were being poured left and right and handles were being swigged from and passed around. No wait, there might have been wine. In a bag. Getting slapped. It was that kind of party.
In no way, shape or form do I remember any more details from being out, but at some point, I headed home with two of my roommates and the bf. We then did what any normal, blacked out couple would do after a long night of destroying our internal organs with alcohol; we made an attempt at sexual intercourse (heavy emphasis on the ATTEMPT). I remember standing in my room while clothes flew off, and then moving to the bed. He then, for some reason, left my side…to get a condom? to finish taking his pants off? I’ll never know. Either way, he was no longer holding me upright and I was such a drunken, amorphous blob that I couldn’t support myself vertically. I fell sideways, and everything went black.
When I came to a few seconds later, I was rocking back and forth and holding the side of my head. I was so drunk that it didn’t actually hurt that badly, I just kind of had a numb feeling on the side of my head. My boyfriend turned the light on to see what was wrong, and that’s when we saw it. Blood. We moved to the bathroom to get a closer look, and it was EVERYWHERE. All over my face, dripping down my cleavage, on his hands, in my hair, smeared on the walls. I had hit the corner of my nightstand, hard, and my right ear was almost split in half horizontally. At this point the two of us are panicking and start running through my house (still in our underwear) to find help. Roommate #1 (who is normally the most reliable) was passed out on her floor, shoes still on. She’d be no help. Roommate #2 was missing (we would later find out that she slipped in someone else’s puke and passed out in the hallway of the next building). Roommates #3 and #4 attempted to calm us down while playing rock-paper-scissors over which of them would risk getting a DUI driving me to the emergency room.
We somehow arrived safely and casually had a seat in the waiting room while I was becoming more and more drenched in my own red bodily fluid. I’m also like, 75% sure I was still only wearing a lacy tank top and boxers sans underwear. In public. I made my boyfriend buy me cheese doodles from the vending machine (because why let a small injury get in the way of drunk eating?) and then the triage nurse asked for my insurance card. Fumbling around with my wallet, I handed her my driver’s license (nope), student ID (nope), several credit cards (try again), and a fro-yo frequent buyers card (which I think she stole) before finally handing her what I can only assume was my insurance info, since they finally let me in.
My doctor could barely speak english (which in retrospect should’ve been a red flag) but hey, at that point, neither could we. I laid down on the examination table, held my boyfriend’s hand and winced as I watched the needles and stitching go in and out of my ear. The next morning, when I more soberly assessed the damage (after cleaning all of the dried blood off my body, face, walls, furniture, and boyfriend) the big, hideous black stitches looked the way they might had a 6 year old taken a needle and thread to a stuffed animal with a hole in it. To this day, if you look closely enough, you can still tell that two sides of my cartilage were sewn together in a quite unnatural way. But I guess that’s the price I paid for being a complete lush.
Moral of the story? Don’t place furniture with sharp edgess next to your bed. Also, fuck Burnett’s.