Hungover, facing a toilet, it smells like chlorine as the water I'd just drank less than three minutes before started to flow out of my nose while my throat contracted in repetition pushing it back out of my stomach. Suddenly, I'm all of eight years old, my eyes closed and grunting while the water from my grandpa's pool stings the sensitive inside-skin of my nose. I'd jumped in without floaties for the first time, as I wasn't much of a swimmer, and without holding my nose I found my stomach suddenly full of pool water, thick with the stench of chemicals.
      This morning, I woke up with the distinctive stomach ache typical of only two things: influenza or a hangover. I didn't have the flu, no. I was very, very hung over. Crawling onto my floor off of my bed, perched high above the ground, was much more of a task then I had anticipated. By the time I mad it to the bathroom floor, I was already glossy with the violent heat of my vomit reflexes, suffocatingly warm with a fan on me as my forehead collected beads of sweat. The smell of chlorine, the tasteless liquid crawling back up out of my esophagus. I guess I really felt just as helpless, childlike actions leading me to be reprimanded by force of nature. Yet the slurring, the stranger-hugs, the yelps of laughter, and the beer-stench... those are all things I wouldn't take back.