Congratulations on Drinking Too Much Champagne!

The occasion will warrant it, or so you’ll tell yourself. Really it’ll just be so refreshing and sweet, so bracing. Each sip will make you feel a little more alive.

“I think you might’ve had enough,” your wife will tell you, which will make you laugh into your flute (that’s right, it’s called a flute, quick, laugh again). When you finish laughing you’ll polish off the rest of the flute and hold it out for the hostess to refill. She’ll do it, reticently, trying to send you the message that you should slow down with her body language.

You won’t.

You’ll keep on trucking, tucking away another four glasses. By the time your wife walks you out the door you’ll be giggling incessantly, feeling light and heavy at the same moment. Your feet will stumble but in your mind they’ll be dancers flitting down the stairs, trying to guide your wife into joyous celebration.

But she won’t have it. “Come on,” she’ll whisper in your ear as she drags you down the walkway into the car. You’ll slip inside, bumping your head delicately against the frame. “Shit,” she’ll mumble, strapping you into your seat like a child. You’ll lean forward against the straps, youthfully straining them with your bulk.

“We should make love,” you’ll tell her as she enters the car, but she won’t respond. She’ll start the vehicle and take off down the road.

As she drives the road outside will move with horrible speed. It’ll rush by, a series of endless streaming lights that eventually fold into trees and moonlight when the two of you reach the highway.

The nausea will have begun long before that, a miasama beneath the euphoria of your drunk. It will creep into your hands and feet and when it reaches your head there will be no stopping it. You’ll lurch forward and vomit, suddenly and violently, into the passenger side floor and dashboard of your 2004 Subaru Outback.

“Fuck,” your wife will whisper, shaking her head. She won’t speak to you for the rest of the ride home. She won’t say a word when the two of you get into bed together, and when you wake up the next morning, head pounding with the glaze of champagne, she’ll be gone. You assume that she’ll be downstairs making breakfast, but after last night that might be too much to believe.

Congratulations on Drinking Too Much Champagne!