Every Morning Hangover

It’s 7:30 in the morning. You bring the digital glow of your cell phone inches from your face and then toss it back to the floor in hazy discomfort. The whitish late autumn sun peering through your bedroom window is nothing short of blinding. You roll over onto your back and slowly become cognizant of your body and the wreck you have made it. The smell of Camel Light’s yellow stain clung onto your moustache hair, the whiskey headed dryness, the paper cup staleness in your throat, the stiffened, beanbag body ache. Only after you have committed yourself to this personal prison do you begin to question your reasons for doing so. Perhaps your darkened psychology has led you to solace in the bottle, you wonder, you wonder why you never think about the hangover when you are at the bar, drinking and talking, laughing as if you will never die, when in fact the next morning you will come pretty damn close. “Wake up!” It’s your mother, she yells a high-bird chirp through the house, “Leaving!” You knew you had your cousin’s 8th birthday party today since last week, but last night rolled around and once you started mixing a shot of boredom with two parts desire, a squirt of risk, and a couple drops of heroism, you find yourself in the morning dragging ass to the bathroom mirror looking at mockery of a human face, a stretched out plastic Halloween mask made poorly in your former image. You don’t change your clothes because you are already late. If you take anymore time, your family will start interrogating the events of your evening that contributed to such tardiness. And you’re a good actor, so just go with the flow of things. And you can’t be late for the birthday party, of course. He’s turning eight, dammit. You don’t want to disappoint him; you’re the big cousin. He’ll hang your absence like a dagger above his head for the rest of his life. So impressionable, that age.

You’re usually the optimist, the self-affirming, well-stabilized gentleman, but today you appear the walking carcass of a bear-attack; the road kill dance partner of some wide-hipped hipster chick dancing to sweaty tunes in a dive bar. You begin to feel time pumping again through your constricted blood vessels, you begin to understand it again, realizing the 5-hour drive to Detroit may, in all reality, be the death of you. Your Dad is already sitting in the car out in the driveway, adjusting all the rear view mirrors and fixing his clip-on shades. Your Mom is running between the kitchen and the garage in shuffle-footed fury, fuming, “Did everybody eat? No food for a long time! Are you hungry? What you want? Want me to make you eggs? I’ll make you eggs. Should I make you eggs? Eat something! We have to go!” Your Sister is yelling upstairs, complaining about how her hair is too curly, it never cooperates with her, how her make-up is fighting all shades of stubbornness today. You throw on your coat and grab a bottle of water out of the plastic package sitting on top of the old box of shoes in the garage. One, two, three, four, five, fix, those gulps pour into your body and cleanse your organs like dirty kitchen bowls washed in the sink. Everyone hustles into the car and you immediately fall asleep in the backseat.

You wake up when the sun is arching its way above the clouds, golden in the crisp, blue highway air. Your eyes open with heavy effort. The shadows of tree limbs scatter across your face and the grey cloth interior of the family jeep in crystalline pattern, something like a spider web over all you see. The hum of the car engine drones across the quick asphalt. Sister is in the backseat too, listening to her iPod and trying to paint her nails in the shaky terrain. Mom is upfront in the passenger’s seat, doing a cross-word and cracking salted pumpkin seed shells across her lips all splintered and messy. Dad still manages an air of humor in his motionlessness. A sunglassed statue who bears a striking resemblance to Saddam Hussein without a moustache, and maybe just a slightly greyer head of hair. Everyone is silent, content in their own worlds, trying to maintain a baseline homeostasis, even if if they don't know what the hell it is.

From the sound of the engine and the smell of the warm manufactured air pouring through the AC vents, you can tell there’s a little over 3 hours to go until you reach the outskirts of the Motor City. The rolling motion lulls you back to a parched and inconsistent snooze. If you sleep it off, you’ll forget how miserable you are right in time for some afternoon cake.