How utterly unpleasant. Here I am, an adult legally allowed to vote, fight in a war and buy as much alcohol as a seven-year-old in France, and I’m hunkered over a toilet wondering if calling my mother would be the grown-up thing to do. Ever since I was a boy I’ve dreaded vomiting. The smell of stomach bile, the sight of a half-digested turkey sandwich mixed with a more thoroughly digested bagel, and an unexplainable completely intact piece of bell pepper—it’s simply no good. Now there are people out there who encourage the nauseated. “Just get it over with,” they say. “You’ll feel better!” Fuck them! They aren’t the ones with their face inches away from the vessel typically reserved for defecation. What do they know about making a person feel better? I just won’t tolerate it. Those holding a pro-vomit agenda simply need to face the facts that vomiting is an unpleasant, physically and emotionally scarring event that can shatter a person’s entire evening.
I’m not sure when my distaste for the act of vomiting began. Perhaps it was all the vomiting as a child. I was like a small machine designed specifically for vomiting. Whenever I suffered from the slightest ailment my body’s immediate reaction was to spew various colored liquid onto irreplaceable objects such as fancy table cloths, oriental carpeting, or whatever else was on hand that looked like it may have been a foreign import. I suspect that my inability to shout groceries somewhere acceptable as a child came from my refusal to acknowledge that it was going to happen. If I ignored it for long enough this nausea would go away like magic. Regardless of my stern volition, I was never able to will away the impending stream of grossness that was destined to spew out of my six-year-old head. Thus, my parents, scarred by high dry-cleaning bills, introduced an object which to this day haunts my dreams: the bucket.
The bucket typically housed the family’s cleaning supplies, but when one of the King children whined of an upset stomach, its contents were emptied and it became a cauldron of our darkest nightmares. “Want me to get the bucket?” The words still make me shiver. The stench of Windex that lingered on that bucket still makes it difficult for me to give my windows the streak-free washing that they deserve. My parents never even put a bag in the bucket for easy cleaning. They would simply wash it out with the hose out back and return it in case of any aftershocks—but the smell still lingered. The bucket still sits in my parents’ broom closet all these years later, patiently waiting to torment the next nauseated person that happens by it. I know that the bucket had nothing to do with my sickness as a child, but to this day when I see it, I tremble.
Since I’ve managed to overcome my childhood refusal to vomit in a toilet, I’ve discovered a whole new world of vomit anxiety that comes with puking in a bathroom. Vomit anxiety comes in stages when dealing with a bathroom. First, you have to accept that you may, indeed, be sick in the near future and move into the bathroom. The action is in the same vein as grabbing an umbrella on the way out the door if you suspect rain. It’s completely precautionary. After all, the feeling may pass, right? You keep telling yourself that.
Stage two involves pacing. There you are; your stomach churns and your mouth feels dry. But do you really want to get down on the floor? The feeling could still pass. After all, if you get sick you’ll have to clean the bathroom, and that’s just a chore. But then it hits: the palms become clammy, the throat begins to tighten, and saliva flow begins to increase. Stage three begins when you accept the inevitable and prostrate yourself in front of that horrible white demon and wait as your insides ready themselves to purge. Your shoulders tense up, your neck arches, and your throat opens up. Then all sorts of ugliness comes out of you. It’s at this point when you realize how long it’s been since you’ve cleaned your toilet, as odor from the unseen residue of human waste makes its way into your nose. If you had taken any stomach-soothing medicine beforehand you watch as it separates itself from the bile you just choked up. A lot of good it did. Then you sit back and flush away the madness like a bad dream.
There is, however, one undeniable perk to the act of vomiting. It automatically gives one an excuse to skip out on anything. Don’t want to go into work today? That’s okay, you just vomited for God’s sake—you could get someone sick! Or worse yet, you could get sick again. At work! Nobody wants to see that. Children constantly get out of school because of it as well. If a child wasn’t feeling up to finishing the day in elementary school, all he or she had to do was throw up during lunch. And within minutes they would come in, cover the mess in sawdust and send the child home with an excused absence and a smiley-face sticker.
Sure there are other perks to vomiting as well. It could save your life one day if you decide to drink a bottle of Lysol, or rid your body of harmful bacteria or viruses. But who needs any of that? I don’t care that vomiting is the healthy alternative to death. I care about wondering if I should throw away my toothbrush after using it to clean my mess of a mouth post-vomitum. I care about that horrible taste of stomach acid and tacos that sticks to the back of your throat. Healthy immune system, my ass. I’m looking into having the vomit center of my brain surgically removed. That’ll show those pro-vomit elitists a thing or two.
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