Monday, April 03, 2006

A Bloody Nose And A Frozen Juice Box

Editors Note: Thanks again to Sadielady for letting me poach another one of her stories. Read more about her adventures at her blog http://oystersnbeer.blogspot.com .
When I first started dating the guy who became my boyfriend for 3 years in college, he totally did not want to be in a "relationship," and he made that clear up front. So for about 3 months, we dated each other AND other people.

Well I had a formal to go to, and I needed a date. And the guy I was seeing the most of, the "I don't want to be in a relationship" guy, turned me down; he said he didn't want to go, it was a sorority thing and it just wasn't his scene, he didn't want to wear a tux, etc. etc. So I asked this other guy who I had met at the beginning of freshman year, a real cutie, but someone who I was just friends with, nothing more.

We had a fabulous time the night of the formal - at first, that is. We went to a cool little cocktail party, dinner at a fantastic restaurant with a few other couples, lots of good stuff to drink. We had a great time when we first got to the event, too; my date was a dancer, or at least he was the kind of guy who is up for getting out on the dance floor with his date if that's what she wants to do. So he and I were dancing at one point, having a great time. He had some nice moves, I remember thinking his mom probably made him take ballroom dance lessons as a kid or something: I know a lot of people who did that. Anyway, at one point during a fairly slow song he dipped me back, a nice low dip, and as he pulled me back up fast, this other couple got in our way, and as I came up my face slammed into another girl's elbow - - HARD!! The blood immediately started gushing from my nose and flowing down my face, and I ran to the bathroom. Several other girls rushed in after me to see if I was okay; well, I wasn't. My nose was fucking broken, if you can believe that shit! I mean, there was full force going in both directions when the collision took place; my date pulling me fast back up from the low dip, and the extremely drunk girl who slammed her elbow down in my direction while dancing. (She was way too drunk to even realize what had happened - - she just kept on dancing, the bitch.) So somebody got a towel and held it up to my nose, and someone got ice from somewhere, and someone got a wet towel to help wipe up the blood. So there I was, sitting on the floor in the ladies' room off of the ballroom of an elegant hotel, in my strapless black-velvet formal gown, with a bloody towel in front of my face, my nose totally swelling up. My date was such a good date kind of guy, and so clueless about what to do, he just hung around the door to the ladies room, and every time it opened and someone went in or came out, he would say "is she ok? Sadie, are you ok in there? Is there anything I can do?" Poor guy. Finally I was ready to just get out of there, so one of the girls said "yes, can you get a cab and take her back to her dorm room?" Which he did, the sweetie. I felt so bad; I kept apologizing for ruining our evening, and I told him how embarassed I was. He felt bad too: he kept saying "I don't know how it happened! It just happened so fast!" Oh, he felt bad about it. He paid the cabbie, helped me walk up the stairs to my room, walked me inside and sat me on the bed, and kept asking if there was anything else he could do. I said no, no, I'm just so embarassed, I'll be okay though, let's just say goodnight. So then he left. (I think he was pretty relieved to be leaving.)

Well you're probably thinking that's the end of the embarassing story, right? Are you kidding - - do you not know me well enough yet to know that there's got to be an even more embarassing part to the story?

I went to the bathroom on my hall to look in the mirror and wash my face, and I ran into another girl who lived on my hall. She was totally drunk, like me. She said "you've got to put some ice on that!" I said "where am I going to get ice?" She said "I know! Come with me." So I followed her back to her room, and she opened her mini fridge, which had a freezer shelf on the top of it. "I don't have any ice, but here, this Hawaiian Punch juice box has been in the freezer for the longest time, it's frozen solid by now. Put this against your nose!" So I did. I went back to my room and sat on my bed, still in my formal dress mind you, and held the frozen juice box to my nose.

But I was still really unhappy, and there was no one else around, since the drunk girl went back outside to re-join her friends. And man, I don't think I did enough justice earlier in this story to the amount of alcohol I had to drink that night: from a pre-cocktail or two while my friend and I got ready to go out, to several cocktails at the cocktail party, to lots of bottles of wine at our table at dinner, to more drinks at the formal - - I was shit-faced. Shit-faced with a shitty broken nose. But not drunk enough to do what I should've done, which was pass out in my bed - no no, I wanted some sympathy, I wanted somebody, so I decided that I wanted Craig - - the guy who I had been seeing casually for a few months and who had turned down being my date to the formal. So I got up, left my dorm room, and went over to his dorm, just across a small quad from mine. I went inside, went to his room - - open, but empty. So I went down the hall to the lounge, and there he was, hanging out with a bunch of other people, listening to music and laughing and getting high. I could see him in there, but he had his back to me at first. "Um, Craig?", some guy who recognized me said. "What?" "Dude, turn around." So he turned around, and his eyes got big as saucers. There I was, standing in the doorway, in my formal dress, barefoot, and holding a frozen juice box up against my obviously broken nose. Oh, and I had cried earlier in the bathroom at the hotel, so my eyes were completely bloodshot. Plus, I was fucked up. But then again so was he; we were just fucked up on different stuff. "Heeeeeyy! What happened to you?" All the guys were just staring at me; they didn't quite know what to think, except that I looked pretty crazy. Craig told me later "man, you don't know how stoned I was when you came in there, and it kind of freaked me out, because suddenly I had to deal. That was fucked up! Don't ever do that shit to me again! Or at least wait til I'm sober to do shit like that to me!"

Anyway, so that's my story about the bloody nose and the frozen juice box. I probably completely scared the nice guy who was my date that night, but at least I didn't scare off Craig; he and I started dating exclusively pretty soon after that hideous night, and he did go to the rest of my formals with me, through the end of college. None of his friends who were there that night when I walked in ever let me live down the frozen Hawaiian Punch box I was using to help the swelling of my broken nose, though.