vomit, v 1.0

i don’t really know what happened last night. at some point, the aussie started vomiting and coughing and choking in the bathroom. then, not too much later, he did it again. i slept through most of it, until about half four, when i started to get queasy, seriously. i turned down the fan that was pumping fast and loud, moved to the bathroom, knelt at the bowl and evacuated the contents of my stomach so forcefully it felt like a freight train pumping through my esophagus. only one session like that, and i was quick to ask god if he’d help me keep it down, whatever it was that was revolting in my stomach. it did the trick for long enough to decide to go with the guys on a road trip to Mae Sot, a Thai-Burmese border town fraught with all kinds of problems of the humanitarian crisis sort.
About an hour into the car ride, i woke from a doze, feeling queasy again despite having downed a cocktail of anti-forceful-projection-from-any-given-orifice pills, and asked if we could pull over, post haste. We had barely pulled into the car park of a service station when i heaved again, all over the inside of the backseat and into my open hands. i threw open the door of the still-moving car, much to the shock of the thai gas attendants and my travel companions alike, and had flashbacks to a friend’s alcohol poisoning episode years ago, where he hung limply out of the backseat, vomiting.  only mine was soy milk and fried noodles from the night before, not cheap vodka. this time.
Thailand has been very good for me to get through any number of fears, such as spending time half a world away from my home, learning a new culture and language, meeting new people. vomiting all over myself in front of said new people, in the rental car hired by said people, watching said people clean my vomit out of my flip flops and buy me gum while i limp from the washroom, face moist with washing, carrying my vomit-covered pants in hand.