I tend to stay away from bar culture in general because they’re not my people. They can do whatever loud, loutish bar culture things they want from their stools and dingy public couches. I’m fine with that. I’ve never been a big bar-goer-to, so when my nemesis David stopped drinking it was almost a sigh of relief because I didn’t have to go with him to bars and pretend I was enjoying myself. The whole concept seems foolish to me. If I want to drink, I’d rather pay less to get some beer or moonshine and sit around with friends. Why pay the extra to potentially get punched or deal with sloppy drunks that I don’t know personally. My friends are bad enough on the sauce.

On the blue-sky morning of 8/9/08, I woke around 10:00 AM. I moved from bed to couch and watched the Olympics for a while, specifically the female fencing team sweeping the medals for the event (go girls with swords!). I thought that it would be nice to run over to Einstein’s and grab a bagel as I had no prepared food in the house and somehow the act of driving somewhere and buying breakfast felt like less work than making something. I tossed on my sunglasses and left the apartment, wallet in pocket and hunger in belly.

Before I get to the half-digested meat of the story, let me explain that I somehow live on a nice street. It’s mostly large houses populated with affluent older people, aside from my apartment building and a few shared houses across the street. It’s a generally quiet neighborhood in which, by midnight, it’s usually dead silent. This is a tree-lined street with well-cut lawns and polite people. It’s an area I was happy to move into, whether I felt like I belonged there or not. Things being such, I’ve always felt comfortable leaving my windows down a bit to ward off the heat of summer in the mornings. My car doesn’t even have locks in the front doors, so it’s constantly unlocked. Where I live, this seems reasonable, if ill-advised.

As I discovered that morning, the four inches I’d left my window rolled down was exactly the opening necessary for a wandering, drunk stranger to vomit into my car. Having emptied the contents of his/her stomach onto the passenger seat (those contents being mostly burrito ingredients), the individual decided to root through the contents of my glove compartment and put those contents on top of his/her vomit. I don’t know if this was a sloppy attempt at hiding what s/he had done or if s/he was incredibly interested in the secrets contained within my car manual and old registrations.

My first reaction was a non-reaction. I stood there and stared. To add to the sensual texture of this story, let me remind you that this was almost noon on an August day in Virginia. That means the temperature was in the 80s and this stuff (again, burrito ingredients and stranger bile) had been cooking for hours. I eventually regained some sense and sent a few text messages of bewildered almost-outrage to several members of my posse. Katie came outside to take her trash out and I invited her to look at (and inherently smell) what had happened. I don’t remember her reaction. I don’t remember anything as it exactly happened as my rage began to grow.

After realizing I didn’t have gloves at my place and not wanting to give the puker the satisfaction of watching my clean it up should s/he be lurking in the bushes, his/her clothing caked with what didn’t make it into my car, I took the car over to David’s. He has a more secluded parking lot. This, of course, meant driving several blocks with my semi-liquid passenger. This was accomplished by driving, dog-like, with my head most of the way out of the window. I’m pretty sure I also held my breath for most of the trip.

Not wanting to deal with the situation immediately, I relayed the story to several people and generally messed around for a little while. Then I spent an hour scooping the vomit of someone I don’t know out of my car, Lysol wipes and paper towels held tightly in my glove-covered hands. David watched from about 30 feet away, alternately playing his PSP, looking grossed out, and just staring. I had to unscrew parts of my car to get to some of the deeper pools. Does that gross you out? Are you getting queasy? I WAS THERE. Trust me, reading about this anonymous vomit is far less traumatizing than holding it.

In the end, it cost me $50 to get the car shampooed out. Not to mention another $30-something to buy Spaced on DVD because I needed something amazing to do as a distraction from thinking about the attack. Yes, I said attack. For me, this was the bar culture (as I assume it was a wandering bar-goer stumbling back home from further downtown) bringing the battle to my doorstep. 8/9/08 was a day that will live in infamy. 8/9/08 was my 9/11/01 on a small, even-tasteless-to-compare scale. Next move is mine, bar culture. Next move is mine.

Actually, I went to a bar last night to see traveling trubadours Tereu Tereu and made a point of not vomiting in anyone else’s car (or anywhere, for that matter). I think I’m winning the war already.

But I will never forget.