Something to Wash Those Pills Down With?

About the time I turned 14, my grandparents got the travel bug.  They decided that it would be ok to leave me alone in the house for extended periods of time.  I obviously had no problem with that!  I do have to say that the timing was bad. My father and pregnant step-mother had just been killed; I was a LOST kid.

Before my grandparents would leave, they would have me make a budget based on the number of days they'd be gone.  What I'd do is get the newspaper, go to the Walgreens or Furr's liquor ads and calculate how much booze I'd need. That was my budget!  Once they were gone, I'd hit up Morie's liquor store in downtown Albuquerque.  It was one of the few bars in town that would sell to minors at the time.  It's now gone and a Federal Court building sits where my favorite bar was.

I had many, many fun and crazy parties during my grandparent’s vacations.  One party though stood out from the others, and here is what happened.

My cousins, John-O and Jamie were up from the beautiful town of Socorro, New Mexico.  They lived in an old trailer that was virtually held together with bailing wire and duct tape.  Their mother, God bless her, had to work constantly to make ends meet so John and James were mostly on their own.  John-O was particularly a vile young man.  He always had his fingers in his nose or crotch and seemed to have an endless supply of mucous.  In fact, he was so mucousy that he prided himself on having hundreds of mucous stalactites hanging from his bedroom ceiling.  I'd go into further detail but I'll save that chapter for later.

So John-O, Jamie and various other pasty skinned, long haired drunk pubescent boys were sitting around my grandmother’s dining room table drinking Mad Dog 20/20, Rainer Ale and Popov Vodka.  Part way through the afternoon, a friend of mine who lived in the neighborhood showed up with some people we didn't know.  His nickname was "Deuce" and he was being extremely obnoxious.  I'm not sure what had gotten into him, I bet it was his way of showing off to the uninvited friends he brought to the party to drink my booze.

About an hour into Deuces arrival, I'd had enough.  I decided to teach him a lesson that he'd never forget.  John-O, who had been sitting next to me all afternoon, had a can of 7-UP that he'd been using as a "spittoon" for his chewing tobacco spit. As usual, John-O was mucousy but on this day, he was a snot factory.  His 7-UP can was filled to the rim with saliva, tobacco and thick snot.  I slyly grabbed the can, took it to the kitchen, cleaned the top and placed it in the ice tray to quickly chill it.  About 20 minutes later, we were in the middle of a drinking game.  I turned to Deuce and asked him if he wanted to pop a couple of my Valium pills.  I obviously knew that he'd jump at the offer.  I told Deuce I'd go get them for him.  I walked into the kitchen, grabbed the chilled can of mucous and returned to the table.

Deuce never knew what hit him; he fell for it hook line and sinker.  He reached his hand out for his pills, I obliged him.  I nicely handed him an icy cold can of "7-UP" to wash them down with, which he grabbed.  The next scene was virtually in slow motion.  Deuce threw the two yellow pills high in the air.  He then leaned back in his chair and perfectly caught them in his mouth.  While still leaning back in the chair, he held up the can and slowly began to pour it into his mouth from about a foot above his mouth.  The look on his friend’s faces, who knew nothing about what I'd done, was absolutely priceless.  Their jaws fell open as the frothy tobacco spit and thick mucus slid out of the can into Deuces mouth.  It was so thick that it was one long string of gelatinous looking slime from the can to his mouth. It literally was one, slow giant blob of gelatinous horror that nicely hit his palette.  It was such a large glob of tobacco laden slipper secretion that it went over his tongue and straight down his throat from the weight.

Before the last mucous tentacles had reached the back of Deuces throat, every single boy in the room was scattering from the table like the cockroaches they resembled.  We all knew, including his friends who were innocent, that when Deuce figured out what happened, there would be hell to pay.  The problem was, those of us "in the know" (John-O, James and myself), were laughing so hard, we were literally crawling across the floor looking for safety from the "Wrath O' Deuce".

I vividly remember Deuce rushing to the sink and tilting the can to see what the hell he'd just ingested.  When the mucous and tobacco spit fell out of the can, he began belching, then vomiting.  It first exploded from his nostrils, then his mouth.  It was unbelievable how much of John-O's fluids came back out of Deuce mouth and nose.  It was equally shocking just how much additional material came out of his skinny body.

This of course just made me laugh harder, I couldn't move.  I was laughing so hard; my body was convulsing and not responding to my commands.  This became a real problem when Deuce finished vomiting, wiped his mouth, turned around and spotted me on the floor in hysterics.  He knew, there was no doubt; it was Donnie, that mother-fucker!

Deuce jumped on me and began to punch me as hard as he could.  I was still laughing so hard, his blows didn't cause much pain or damage.  This frustrated him, especially when he noticed his friends laughing like hyenas.  Deuce stopped punching me.

Deuce and I remained friends and continued to socialize on a regular basis but he never crashed another one of my parties again.