At roughly 2 a.m. last night, the bathroom floor had become a place of solace. Lying on the cool, hard floor, stairing up at the ceiling, a heat vent by my side making the chills just bearable, and the loud fan above, this is where I began to realize that things would probably work out. When I was living with my roommates in Kelly Court, a few years ago, I had an attack of food poisoning so intense that the three of us still bring it up. Brought on by what Justin figured out must of been a bad oyster (I had "classic Norwalk virus symptoms," he said) I started a tally on the dry erase board that hung from the fridge, racking up an astonishing 13 seperate runs to the bathroom to puke, before that got old, and I started to pray to the Lord to just take me.

Last night, I think, beat that Norwalk-induced night of misery.

Things started out fine - I met friends for just a couple beers, but on the way home my stomach began talking to me. "You'd better drive faster," it said. Upon arriving at home I yelled out a hello to J, who I'd already called, warning him of the potential disaster, and ran to the upstairs bathroom, of course wanting to be as far away from my fiancee as possible, in order to spare him hearing the wrenching noises caused by me puking up the entire contents of my stomach, including what seemed like some vital organs, my lungs, perhaps, my gall bladder.

I felt better afterwards - this was a deceptive tactic of the spiteful little bacteria or whatever that had entered my system (I still don't know how). Not even twenty minutes later began the cycle that encompassed most of my night until 4 in the morning. It involved lying curled up trying to rid myself of the sharp pains in my stomach and lower abdomen, and of course running to the bathroom every ten to 20 minutes so that my body could attempt to rid itself of everything that have ever entered it EVER until I couldn't believe that my 5'2 frame was capable of holding so many disposable contents.

In between my sessions lying on the bathroom floor, I'd come back to the bedroom, cringe at the happy people on television, and try, selfishly, to wake J up, just so I wouldn't have to be alone. Feeble attempts like "Hey, I'm not going to make it. I'm going to die," only served to ellict a slight stirring and trail of nonsense words from my boy, until I really got serious at one point and made it absolutely clear that I was going to DIE and he woke up, got the computer, and looked up food poisoning on the internet, including diffrent kinds of bacteria, their symptoms, and when to seek emergency medical attention. As it turned out, nothing was bleeding, I finally started keeping water down after drinking it at a tortuously slow rate, and I didn't have a fever, so J proclaimed I was not going to die, and that if I was, he would, of course, take me to the hospital.

It is amazing how much having him awake with me for that hour and a half or so made me feel so much better. It's morning now, and I still feel awful - my mouth has never been so dry, my stomach is still going through spasms of pain - but certainly, I will be alright. Furthermore, I realize one bout of food poisoning is nothing to complain about when things could go so much worse, but I'm telling you, lying there last night, on the cold, hardwood floor, all I could think was to offer up some sort of prayer to whatever spirit reigns above. "I'm sorry," I thought, "for whatever I have done. Please, I feel I have been punished enough."

During the night I watched a wide range of late night programming, including the beginnings of infomercials, sexy shows about dating, but really about one-night stands, and one particularly ridiculous game show, in which the contestants were so ebulliently cheerful, I couldn't help but smile a little. One of the questions on this movie-based episode was to fill in a quote from the tragically sad "Love Story."

"Love means never having to say you're ________," asked the host, and the contestants knew their stuff - "sorry!" they screamed. But I think there is more to it. Love means never having to worry that telling someone the specific, grusome, details of what just exited your body will be grounds for them leaving you. That's the stuff that matters.