Taxicab Confessions (Brown Version)

We were talking about puking last night, backstage, before the show. Thursday night's show was performed admirably by a cast member who felt like he was going to vomit. Last night, same thing, but it was the lead. Thursday, I spent a lot of stage time very tense and listening for constrictions in the fellow’s voice and hoping he would be fast enough to find reasoning to stick his head beneath the desk on stage and quietly rail. Last night, during a scene with me and noted lead, I heard him start coughing and immediately thought, "Oh sweet glory, here it comes."

Nobody barfed, everything was cool, but it reminded me of a story that I shared with the cast. And a little advanced warning, this story involves vomiting (duh), so if you're one of those faint-hearted softies who can't even read about ralphing without choking up yourself, you may wish to skip this. Also, this isn't a story of one of MY varied journeys into the land of regurgitation, there's enough of those floating around out there already.

So somehow somebody got free tickets to a screening of the final Absolutely Fabulous episode that was being held at the Warfield in San Francisco. There was a big gala party involved, including an open bar. Now a word on open bars: They’re great in theory, dangerous in practice. The prevailing attitude with a hosted bar seems to be get while the gettin's good, myself included. This can lead to an unprepared level of drunkenness that is best left to professionals - people like Bukowski, people like John Bonham, people like the crazed Jamaican who accosted me for twenty bucks the other night during a break in the show, and upon telling him that I was in a costume and had no money on me, proceeded to up his request to 30 and then 50 dollars.

Hell yes, I got good and drunk, no joke. Not to a level of dangerousness that I have been known to dance towards, but toasted nonetheless. Beth's old neighbor from the Chico days on the other hand stepped stumbling to the other side. After she had her time to aggressively hit on each of the other four other members of our little group, she passed into the realm of incoherent.

We led her out to Market Street and hailed a cab. Five of us piled into the car; one in front, three in back, and Drunky McDrunkfuck laid out across the three of us in back. Lucky me, I had her passed out and snoring head on my lap.

The ride up to the Haight was fairly uneventful, but when we were mere blocks away from home, I began to feel small, yet tell-tale tremors coming from the pass out queen. "I think you're gonna want to stop the cab," I told the driver. He either chose to ignore me, or thought I was talking to the other driver in the car.

We were a block away from home now, one frigging block. "Seriously," I started, but then I felt a wetness on my lap that had a certain, shall we say, viscosity to it.

"Stop the cab!" The guy took me seriously, and with a choreography that seemed almost beautifully rehearsed, two ladies got the girl out and I slipped out the other side managing to not spill one drop of slightly soured cosmo from my lap. Corado paid the driver.

I finished the journey home in my underwear, sans pants, and the girl finished out the evening spilling what remained inside of her into our bathtub.

*Side note: Bathtub? Really? Seriously? I'm telling y'all now, if you come over and spill your liquor drenched guts into my bathtub, you will clean it out. I don't give a flying squirrel's ass how hung over you are.

Well, that was the last time we saw, or even heard from, Biffy's old neighbor. Apparently, some people get all awkward and bashful when they're told that they have puked on someone in the back of a cab.


Rocktober song of the day: I'm Waiting For The Man by The Velvet Underground.