1st Circle: The Ducked Bullet
No pain. No real feeling of illness. Your sleep was deep and all those
carbo-loaded beers have gifted you with a week's worth of misplaced energy.
During lunch you torture your less fortunate coworkers, bragging about how
you can pound booze all night, drink warm gin out of a dirty ashtray for
breakfast, and still show up fifteen minutes early for work. You crave a
steak sub and a side of gravy fries.
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2nd Circle: The Thirsty Mongoloid
No real pain, but something is definitely amiss. You look okay but you have
the mental capacity of a staple gun. You are definitely dehydrated and after
drinking two Gatorades you still feel that way. You feel kinda dumb and
you notice the temporary lowering of your IQ has made you more sociable and
less concerned with workaday worries. You crave a fruity pancake from IHOP.
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3rd Circle: The Head wound That Won't Heal
Slight headache. Stomach is upset. You are definitely not the paradigm of a
productive worker. Anytime a girl walks by you gag because her perfume
reminds you of the warm gin shots you did at your friend's apartment after
the bouncer ejected you at 1:45 a.m. Memories of bad behavior seep in and
you cringe with shame. Life would be much, much better if you were in your
bed with a dozen donuts and a meatball sub watching Hogan's Heroes reruns.
You've had four cups of coffee, a gallon of water, three iced teas and a
diet coke and you haven't peed once.
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4th Circle: The Hunchback of Cheap Champagne
You have lost the will to live. Your head is throbbing. You can't speak too
quickly or you'll punctuate your sentences with vomit. Your boss has already
lambasted you for being late and reeking of booze. The clothes you put on
won't win you any fashion awards and your face looks like a golf green mowed
by a blind junkie (ladies, it looks like you applied your make-up with a
shotgun). Your eyes are red enough to give your features a lizardish cast
and your hair makes your coworkers ask if you're starting up a new wave
band. You vaguely remember doing some really dumb and embarrassing things
last night and you don't care. You would murder your favorite bartender for
a foot-long Bratwurst smothered with Dijon and fried onions.
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5th Circle: Dr. Kevorkian's Dream Date
You don't feel human, you don't even feel like a mammal. Your long morning
shower didn't take, no amount of soap could penetrate the coat of sleaze.
You have a second heartbeat in your head which is actually annoying the
employees sitting near you. You're getting drunk from the vodka vapors
seeping from every pore. You still have toothpaste crust in the corners of
your mouth from the futile attempt to remove the taste of decaying rat. Your
body has lost the ability to generate saliva, your tongue flops in your
mouth like a nightmare-plagued wino thrashing around in his cardboard hooch.
You'd cry like a baby but that would steal the last few drops of moisture
left in your body. Death seems pretty awesome right now. You definitely
don't remember who you were with, where you were, what you drank, and why
there is a stranger still passed out in your bed.
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6th Circle: The Infinite Nutsmacker
You wake up on your bathroom floor, your arms death-locked around your
porcelain lover. You would vomit but you quite apparently took care of that
last night, with none too good of an aim. You turn your head too quickly and
smell the funk of 13 packs of cigarettes in your hair. Suddenly you realize
you were smoking, but not ultra lights-some sadist handed you a pack of Pall
Mall nonfilters and you chain-smoked them like it was your full-time job,
telling anyone who would listen that smoking filtered cigarettes is like
drinking whiskey through a bar rag. You look in the mirror and find the
Ready to Rock stamp has migrated from your right hand to your forehead with
the help of Jaeger magic. You try to rehydrate but all you can stand is
one cupped handful of brackish tap water. You crawl into the shower and the
coldest water fails to revive your nerve endings as you mumble solemn oaths
of never, ever letting a single drop of evil alcohol inside your body again.
Ever .
If you could remember your behavior last night you would never step outside
your apartment again, but the last thing you recall is accepting your ninth
shot offer with the exhortation, "Fuck yes! Let's get this party started!"
Everything after that is a black vacuum populated with shifting,
vaguely-menacing shapes.
Instead of yelling at you for being late, your boss solemnly invites you
into his office to ask you if a parent or sibling passed away. Your
super-sensitive ears pick up low talk among your coworkers about
"interventions" and "rehab." The cute girl from accounting you've been
flirting with for three months looks at you like you're a leprous hunchback
who has come for her organs. You cannot bear to eat, the granola bar from
the snack machine sticks in your craw like petrified log jammed in a
woodchipper. You curse yourself for not calling in sick because all you can
manage to do is sit in your chair and breathe . . . very gently.