Miracle on Fairmont St.

During the chillier months of 2006, as Tom and I wintered in my poorly insulated second-floor apartment (the front wall of which might as well as not have existed, for all that it leaked heat like a sieve), drinking became a regular pastime. Its benefits for me were twofold: warmth for one, and second, the temporary ability to ignore my present living situation ensconced in the squalor of Tom's belongings by  riding the highs of being invincibly drunk. Our regular Bacchanalian activities led to the birth of Wednesday Night Dipshittery - a tradition (often involving unintentional humorous nudity) celebrating the finer points of getting fuh-trashed in the middle of the week and easing into that downhill slide towards the weekend.

Our good pal Bob happened to be in town for one such Wednesday night, which was a special treat since his work often carried him to locales afar for long periods at a time. Naturally, Bob's inclination towards fine dining and quality libations and the company of good friends led him Arlington-wards, to my frigid hovel for the night.

At around 7pm, Bob's gorgeous red Mustang pulled into a prime parking spot in front of my second-floor  icebox on Fairmont St. Holding a sack of groceries in tow, Bob informed us of his intent to cook us a French meal of steaks with Bordelaise sauce. His proclamation was met by no resistance on our part - after all, nobody argues with free T-bone steak, especially prepared by Bob, whom we all knew to be an excellent chef.

We proceeded to make introductions all around with the various vintages we'd each procured for the Bob Edition of dipshittery that Wednesday night: Tom's dates for the evening included an amazing 10 year old Madeira, a 12 pack of quality German beer, a somewhat less spectacular bottle of Skyye, and a wholly unimpressive Red Bull knockoff that surely would have earned the most discerning frat boy's disdain.

Amongst Bob's selection was a bottle of 20 year old tawny port. Now, Taylor Fladgate it was not, but a 20 year old port nonetheless; the merits of which were not being lost on one such as I, who was far too poor to afford *any* port nearly old enough to buy itself. As if to illustrate exactly how well his company paid him for his time abroad, Bob planned to cook with this port.

Needless to say, his steak Bordelaise was amazing. Fresh peppercorns, caramelized shallots, steak seared to juicy perfection, all topped with a rich, creamy, sweet-savory sauce; this meal captured the very essence of decadent artery-clogging richesse that once plugged the greedy cakeholes of the 18th century French bourgeoise. Pardonnez-moi, Madamoiselle Antoinette, mais you can take your cake and shove it, I'll take yer meat and wine!

As Bob prepared his meal of a thousand bougie delights, Tom attempted to put a cap on my delusions of grandeur by mixing us all up a try of his 2 penny hooker juice: a big ol' glass of Rockstar and Skyye.

"Just try it baby, try a sip," he cajoled with the proffered glass.

With a grimace I replied, "it tastes like smashed assholes."

To those of you who might deem yourselves connoisseurs of energy drinks: you should be informed that "Rockstar" is but a reference to any occupational delusions you might have when you consume said beverage by the same name. It tastes like licking the last bits of crack off a prostitute's ass, but quite frankly, for many it's as close as they will get without learning how to play the guitar.

Bad drinks aside, we enjoyed our meal accompanied by a bottle of 2000 Clos du Bois (zee wahn zat is from Sonoma County... nat France). Upon completion of the first bottle of wine, we finished the remaining port and proceeded to the deck, where Tom built a bum fire in my copper fire bowl. Huddled around our (no doubt illegal) urban rooftop conflagration, we dipped into the German beer, and Tom his hooker drinks, and horrified my neighbors with crude conversations for the next several hours. As the fire died down we retired to the relative chill of my living room and left the rest of it to burn off.

This, of course, is approximately where the fun began. Fun a la Tucker Max.

At that point in time, it was safe to say that Tom was fucked-in-twain, and Bob not far behind. Having refused to partake in the Rockstar and vodka mix, I was left to the role of "Tard Farmer." That is to say, I got stuck with the job of wiping the asses of two very inebriated gentlemen barrelling around my home. More of this would come back to haunt me, as one may guess in the paragraphs that follow. But first, allow me to quickly preface this with an explanation as to how this related to Tucker Max, a man who elevated the act of being belligerently drunk to an art form, and one of my foremost heroes.

I'd taken Tom to the Tucker Max book signing event at BU the weekend prior, where he promptly bought a book and had it autographed. "Tom - I'm awesome. Tucker Max," the personalized inscription read. Ever since that day, he'd been reading the Tucker stories every opportunity he had. Not only did he become more enamored of Tucker with each story, he has began to make loud unfounded (and frankly laughable) assertions, my favorite of the assortment being "you know what? If I'd gone into law school, I'd probably be a lot like Tucker. Because, you know, I was thinking about going to law school back then."

It had been nearly a week of Tucker talk, and to be honest, the whole thing had gotten pretty old. In a way, I agreed Tom shared some similarities with our dear Mr. Max - mainly in that he'd thrown his dick into some pretty rancid holes in the throes of alcoholic rapture - but I dare say anyone worth their liver's done a bagger or two in their lifetime. In any case, as one might imagine, as Tom became increasingly fuh-tarded, his desire to emulate his newfound hero grew increasingly stronger:

"I'm Tucker Max Drunk!" he declared.

"No you aren't," I replied. "At most you're kind of fucked up. You haven't insulted anyone yet. Except maybe yourself."

Five minutes later, he began again, "I'm Tucker Max Drunk! Wooo!"

"Seriously babe, you don't need to use Tucker Max as a metric for your drunk-o-meter. Moreover, I can *assure* you right now that you are definitely not that drunk, and back it with the fact that you haven't destroyed anything in my house yet." At this point, dear reader, both you and I know that I should have made no such assertion, bearing in mind now that I'd certainly jinxed myself with that statement. 20/20 hindsight.

Tom, stumbling to get up, moaned "I hafta peeeee. Kim, come help me pee, I can't pee by myself."

I could see from his display of epileptic gymnastics that I was going to have to help him up unless I wanted to bear witness to a encore display consisting of his Cro-Magnon forehead going through my glass coffee table. This thought did not appeal to me, as the tard-proofing warranty I purchased on that table was only good for one glass-replacement call. I propped his ass up and lead him to the bathroom.

"Help me pee, I can't pee straight."

I understood that this was his special way of trying to live out another Tucker Max moment directly from The Pee Blame story. I should never have never let him touch that book. At this point I decided I was well and fed-up with his bull, and I called him on it.

"You wanna be Tucker Max? You really want someone to HELP YOU PEE? Fine."

With the bathroom door still open, I yanked down his pants and boxers, and aimed his dick at the toilet. Considering my options of "aim now" or "mop later," this really was the better choice.

"Oh my god, is for real?" he slurred.

"Yes asshole," I said. "Now take a piss. Because if you don't, I know you're going to end up pissing all over the floor somewhere."

Mid-piss, Tom raised his arms and started turning from side to side, yelling: "I'M TUCKER MAX!!!" Before he managed to utter the last syllable, I shut him up by poking him hard in the butt with my knee. "Shut up and piss straight," I ordered. With a yelp and a jump, Tom complied. He hated having anything go near his butt. I, on the other hand, had no desire for piss on my toilet, nor on my floor, but the bottom edge of his T-shirt was acceptable collateral damage, and in fact, partial repayment for my participation in his Tucker Max moment.

Upon the completion of dewatering his reactor, Tom ran off into the living room to aid Bob in polishing off the Madeira.

It was about 1:30am by the time the alcohol was finished, and we all came to the horrible realization that we have to get up for work in less than 5 hours. Tom more so, given that he was the only one of us three with a job where he could *not* roll into the office at whatever the hell time he wanted.

The committee reached a unanimous decision to put our special little R-tard to bed. As I assisted him towards the bedroom, he stumbled backwards and fell flat on his ass onto my palatial bathroom floor. It was at this point that I contemplated putting him to sleep in the bathtub for the night because, as Head Tard Farmer, I reserved the right to refuse to sleep next to GI Sloppy Joe, boyfriend or not. Going against this instinct, I fear, was the biggest mistake I made the entire evening. In fact, the one lesson I will take away from the events of that night is that I am always right, and should never second-guess myself.

I was momentarily distracted from weighing my options by Bob asking permission to go out onto my deck to have a smoke. Bob, as I discovered that night, was the most apologetic drunk in the entire world. During my momentary lapse of attention, Tom managed to sneak into the bedroom and get into my bed. I died a little inside. I struggled to help him navigate the single comforter on top of the bed (as I understand it, a layer of cloth can be tricky) only to be interrupted by the sound of shattering glass in my kitchen.

Upon investigation, I discovered Bob standing completely silent, and completely still with his mouth hanging wide open and a cigarette hanging out of one side of his slack jaw. On my kitchen floor, I found the stem and base of a wine glass and glass McNuggets everywhere. It looked like Clos du Bois committed seppuku. Bob began to mumble a stream of apologies while I quickly swept every last crumb off the floor before my nosey little shit of a cat could book herself a trip to the vet emergency room (which would have increased my number of handi-tarded charges from 2 to 3).

As I cleaned everything up, I asked Bob to have a seat on the floor where the glass shards had not reached. I noticed then that his pant legs and socks were filled with tiny glass shards. Images of Bob Riverdancing on broken glass filled my head. Bob silently clutched his left foot. There were little glass bits poking out of it.

Eventually, after coaxing him out of his little apologetic ball of pain, I managed to get him to let go of his foot and apply a little Neosporin and a bacon bandaid. Clearly experiencing the miraculous healing effects of bacon, Bob headed out for a smoke barefoot onto my freezing-ass deck, only to return shortly thereafter (still mumbling and apologizing all the way). With a final declaration of  "no, it's not cool, man... I'm sorry, I broke a glass," he passed out facedown on the floor in my frigidaire living room.

Glass, $3. Trip to the emergency room, $500. The expression on Bob's face in the morning when looks at his foot and realizes he shouldn't have turned down my offer to call him a cab to Mt. Auburn Hospital: Priceless.

I returned to my room to find that Tom had fallen asleep in fetal position, right in the center of my bed. I crawled in beside him and proceeded to yank and abuse the shit out of his back until he relinquished some of the blanket to me. As with all drunkards who pass out, it was impossible to move him off to one side of the bed, despite my kicking him in the behind hard several times. In retrospect, this may have been the triggering point for a most unpleasant morning surprise, but I myself was too drunk have had that much forethought anyway.

Before passing out, I tested to make sure he really wasn't paying attention or using his drunken state as an excuse to be an asshole. I picked up one of my pens from my nightstand and I poked him right in the stinky. His normal butt-phobic ways would have had him wailing like a little pantywaist at this brand of treatment, but this time, he remained completely still. As a reward for inflicting his drunken stupor on me, before falling asleep, I carefully signed in small letters along his buttcrack "Tom - I'm awesome. Kim."

***

My alarm clock went off at 5:45 am. I shook the shit out of Tom, who was still curled up in fetal position.

"Get up," I said firmly.

"Muh?" he responded as he picked up his head. "Why am I wet?"

Noticing the dampness under him, I sleepily replied "you were probably sweating like a motherfucker, as usual. Get up."

"No, I'm all wet."

At that moment, my Tard Farmer instincts kicked in and the horrible realization of what had actually happened sunk in. I forced Tom completely out of the bed only to discover a puddle the size of Lake fucking Eyrie. The puddle was the most amazing fucking thing I had ever seen. It was at least as long as Tom's torso, spanning from his upper thighs past his face, in a perfect silhouette of a torso curled up in fetal position.

"Tom, you pissed yourself."

"No... no I didn't! It can't be piss. It doesn't smell like piss. It smells like smoked mozzarella!"

"The smoke is from when were out on the porch next to the bum fire. It's pee."

"No! Maybe I puked. Did I puke? My mouth tastes terrible."

"There's no chunks! Admit it, you pissed yourself. IT'S PEE!"

"Maybe I puked behind your bed and Blackberry's snacking on it, just like Tuck-"

"No way asshole. You're nowhere as slick. Furthermore, if you puked behind the bed, all you'd end up getting is your own clothes since you throw them everywhere because you're a fucking slob."

"Oh... yeah I guess that's true."

"You peed yourself you jackass. Get into the shower and wash off the filth."

"I peed myself! I'm Tucker Max!"

"Fucking christ. You're not and you're a failure because you failed to pass the blame on to me. I'M the one who found the pee. You're caught red fucking handed. Now go wash."

I sent Tom packing, butt-ass nekkid to the bathroom. I'm pretty sure he was still drunk at the time, since he was still giggling like a schoolgirl over his urine puddle, and furthermore probably giving Bob an unnecessary show of junk. In the meantime, I stripped down the bed and started to pour water on it in order to dilute the piss. From this I discovered another incredible fact: my futon pad was Scotch-Garded. The water quite literally beaded and bounced off every single place it hit, *except* for the pee stain. This made me seriously wonder just how long Tom had been marinating in his own urine. I began to sop and scrub with paper towels, only to be interrupted by Bob's howling.

"Augghh! What happened to my foot?! It's SWOLLEN! Owwwww!"

It appeared that Bob did not remember his little tap dancing incident with the glass from last night. He hobbled into my bedroom and took off his sock.

"I have a piece of bacon on my foot."

"Yes Bob, I put it there. And your foot is right fucked up. Are you SURE you got all the glass out of it?"

"I broke a glass?"

"Yeah. I cleaned it up and put a band aid on your foot when you stepped in it."

"Oh man, I don't remember breaking a glass. I'm sorry... that's not cool, man. I broke a glass..."

Tom returned to the bedroom wearing nothing but a towel and took a look at the bed.

"Aww, baby you stripped it all down..." he slurred, clearly still drunk from the night before.

"Clever observation dipshit. Did you see the size of this puddle?! YOU WERE SLEEPING IN IT! That's how you got so wet! Do you see how far up it goes? YOU PROBABLY PISSED IN YOUR OWN FACE!"

"I did not..." he denied "that's not pee. I swear, it doesn't smell like pee! I think it's puke."

"No, puke has a very distinct odor," interrupted Bob. "I think you wet the bed. Oh god... you wet the bed."

"I'm still not convinced..."

"Yes, Tom" I added, "denial is the first step to admitting you FUCKED SOMETHING UP."

There comes a time where a sensible person knows when they've lost, and stops making up hairy-cocked theories about how mysterious liquid ended up in a bed right beneath where they were sleeping. This was one of those times. Tom, however, was not one of those people. He proceeded to ask me if he'd brought a glass of wine to bed... the only flaw in his thought process being THE STAIN WAS FUCKING YELLOW.

To his credit, the piss puddle did not smell of piss at all. In fact, much to my dismay and amazement, the piss puddle smelled exactly like 20 year old port. With a hearty dose of Madeira. I shit you not, Tom drank so much fortified wine that night that he was literally pissing a tawny. It is times like these where I thank god that we are wine snobs, otherwise my bed might have ended up smelling like Carlo Rossi, or worse. The fact that Tom pissed an exact mirror of his earlier libations, only yellow, impressed me so much that I have since considered renting him out to parties in the future.

Dear readers, you can see for yourself how impressively large this lake of urine is. For size reference, I have included my cat, Blackberry, in the picture. She explored the puddle with an unhealthy fascination, probably due to the unique odor it lent to my futon. For those of you are familiar with her, this puddle measured two Blackberrys long and one Blackberry wide. The futon pad has since become a holy relic, dubbed the Futon Pad of Turlit, the site of the First Miracle of Tom, in which he turned wine into piss. Wine-scented piss. Religious scholars, backed by proof via photo and xray chromatography, say an exact imprint of Tom lying in fetal position can be discerned from the yellow-brown stain.

After soaking up some more of the Texas-sized piss lake, I dropped Tom off at the T stop a little over a half hour late for work. As he stepped out the door, I caught him leaning over to Bob and saying proudly, "hey Bob, I pissed the bed and she didn't yell at me, and she didn't throw me out. She's a keeper!"

I found myself wrestling with a momentary pang of guilt as I imagined him falling off a ladder and dying while working in the ceiling later that day.

***

On my way home from work that evening, I stopped by the Petco. I figured I'd have the chance to get some real cleaning done that night, since I knew I would be returning to the bliss of an empty apartment free of Tom's presence (for the one thing bigger than Tom's butt-phobia, was his debilitating phobia of responsibility, consequences, and cleaning up after his mistakes). For the first time in my life, despite being a pet owner of many years, I was in the market for enzyme cleaner.

"Excuse me," I asked one particularly overenthusiastic employee, "do you guys sell any of that enzyme cleaner that gets rid of pee?"

"Oh why yes we do!" he replied, "right this way! It comes in three different sizes, the 8 oz, the 12 oz, or the 1 gallon bottle with the pump-action spray. Which one do you need?"

It was very clear that this was his first day on the job, and I had no interest in customizing my pee-b-gone.

"I don't know," I said "you tell me which one."

"Well, how big's the dog?"

"Oh, about 6'1 and 160 lbs."

"... I'll go get you the pump-action one."