It’s 9:02 pm. The stars are awake. My intestines are as if interstates and the Taglioni is swerving like a motherfucker. I’ve vomited on this rooftop bar, and my vomit’s color is green. Which surprises me because I am not a cartoon dog? I would’ve liked to, were it inevitable to vomit at my boyfriend’s work christmas party, have produced something of a more sophisticated color.
These people will think I eat dyes. They will think I am a child who only looks old. Assume that when I sign a form, I pick up Crayola as opposed to Uniball. I have really fucked myself over to seem immature and gastrointestinally unstable. Weirdly, Mark doesn’t comment on the color. It’s like he doesn’t even think I’m capable of vomiting non-fictional colors? He deals with me as though I am inane IP of Pixar and not a gallant woman of five foot nine.
A woman slips in my vomit. She’s ruined the cumulonimbus shape with her legs. But I don’t say anything about it. I also don’t say anything about the shortness of her legs.
I only look at Mark with searching eyes as if to say, uh oh, and then ask, is she an enemy of yours? Hurry and speak with your eyes. Has my work been ruined for nothing? No advantage? No revenge?
Many people Captain America forwards to show this woman she is cherished and will never die alone. They offer her things like napkins, mints, and forearms. Even Mark is suddenly a helpful person. My boyfriend + Nine people help her up despite everything on the floor. Statistically speaking at least two of these people are emetophobic. They are playing nurse despite themselves — like actors signed with William Morris Endeavour. They move with collective determination as though with SAG-AFTRA. As though to leave this woman alone is a line they would never ever cross.
At first I think to myself: short-legged woman, uncoordinated, known in office for poor balance, pitied because you can infer from these factors she will likely fall again, many times in her short-legged life, which itself may be shorter than average on account of all the falling. Essentially this is Make A Wish llc. This is the sort of philanthropy that Ellen did before she was corrupted by Portia and still sponsored by Chevron. But I am then hurt to find out she doesn’t work where Mark works. She’s married to Mark’s colleague: hapless idiot Brent, who Mark often says snidely, despite his bigger salary, doesn’t even work where Mark works. Mark says Brent might as well work where I work: nowhere.
But I know Mark is lying about this because Brent has capable hands. Mark’s hands are bigger but sort of plasticine so their largeness is sort of pointless? Anyway, I thought Mark said bad things about Brent because of this jealousy, which has to do with the firmity of his hands. But now, I wonder if this jealousy has to do with his wife, who is shorter and for that reason, more compact than I am. I am to her, what Mark’s hands are to Brent’s.
Also, where was this fucking parade of concern when I spilled my guts on the floor? Does it not follow from the logic of triage that people vomiting green things are closer to death than people who fall into those aforementioned green things?
I am much more injured and humiliated than she is but no one is embracing me in their bosom right now. By humiliating herself in the source of my humiliation she has double humiliated me. I have been double jeopardied, this is so fucking unconstitutional, are you people not lawyers?
Some neat little waitress emerges to clean away my vomit. Does she ask my permission first? No. In fact, when she arrives, everyone is so concerned about the wife that the waitress assumes the wife has both fallen AND vomited. She remarks, with a teacherly voice of praise and niceness, how rare and impressive it is to vomit bright green. And the wife nods, silently assenting as though she in fact did the vomit. So now this is also plagiarism.
Now Mark, suddenly conscious of my achievement, puts forward his own little remark, “yes, that is such a vivid green.”
I’m not going to make a scene but I am going to say something because this is wrong. I politely remind everyone that I was the one who vomited. I feign concern about the wife, her legs. I apologize for the mess. I pull a fifty out of my purse and hand it to the waitress. I begin explaining, in a wavery voice, how I’ve been vomiting a lot more as of late because of my treatment. I go on intimating, in a plausibly deniable fashion, that this treatment is chemotherapy and I have never, despite my tall age, been taken to Disneyland.