The drunkest I’ve ever been

Oh boy. Well, let me tell you about the drunkest I’ve ever been. It was this great Saturday night in summer, in July. You can smell all the flowers and all the girls have these boob tubes. Is that the name? They look like California looks. Blonde or Mexican, whatever. We had garage rock and cigarettes out the window with the wind blowing through.

All the men in ironed turquoise suits tied my jaws together with chicken wire, and told me to bite my tongue. My fingers bulged in purple, but I couldn’t look at them. I wasn’t sure I still had all of them.

I talked in vowels, and every time I did, my teeth twitched.

I couldn’t see out the windows, but the back doors of the ambulance were open and people were looking in, taking photos of me!

Imagine waking up in hospital hungover with my mouth knitted closed and a hole in my chin. The nurse said we hit a bump. That place I bit into my tongue still swells up. I wanted to ask her if we all survived. If we killed anybody. But there was just this bleached nurse like California looking at the hole in my face.