Beer Goggles & Second Base

Let’s lighten the mood a bit from last week’s post to something a bit more humorous. Well, humorous for you, the reader, not for me, the star of this week’s sad tale from the single side.

So there I was (no shit), at a small get together with friends at a bar in DC a few years ago. It was wintertime, and there was snow on the ground (this is important later, trust me). I met a guy who seemed fairly interesting and wasn’t too bad looking (as you know, the more you drink, the lower your standards are), and we decided to go back to his place. We arrived at his apartment complex, he parked, and we started walking toward his building. What I didn’t realize, due to the snow cover (and possibly due to the amount of Guinness in my bloodstream), was that the parking lot was split level. I was walking behind the guy and didn’t notice that he’d stepped down. It was just two little steps, but I missed both of them and fell directly onto my right knee. I thought I felt something odd, but didn’t really think anything of it at the time, as I was anticipating the pleasurable (please God, please let it be pleasurable) experience to come (ha! get it? Yeah. Me neither. ME NEITHER). I just picked myself back up, made a joke about my clumsiness, and continued on to his apartment. I distinctly remember his beautiful white bedding; the sheets and the down comforter were both lily white. We undressed, did some stuff, ho hum, oh yes oh yes (I should get an Academy Award. For real. I’m half white, so I should be mostly good to go on that….too soon?), are you done yet, please be done (seriously, I have very bad luck in this department, which, as mentioned in previous posts, is why I own lots of AA batteries and probably have carpal tunnel in only one hand), it was finally done, and I got up to go to the bathroom. I sat down on the toilet, shaking my head at my poor decision making skills and yet another lack of a finish, when I realize that my knee and shin feel wet and sticky. My first thought was that there was no way it could’ve gotten way down there (UGH, seriously??? gross), and then I looked……..my right knee had an approximately 2″ gash that was not only currently bleeding, but also had been, profusely, for quite some time. I walked out of the bathroom and asked if he had any Band-Aids. “Uh, I don’t know. I don’t think so.” I shook my head, walked back into the bathroom, and started looking around. Amazingly enough, there was a box of giant sized Band-Aids under the sink. I cleaned up as best as I could, put on a Band-Aid, and gingerly got back into bed. I’m not sure what his sheets looked like because to be perfectly honest, I never looked, but he must have thought that he’d spoiled a virgin or something when he noticed all the bright red blood. Just saying. Sorry dude. And no, I didn’t want to spend the night, but it was snowing, he probably shouldn’t have driven us back to his place in the first place due to his own beer consumption, and it was only a couple hours until the Metro started running again (poor decision making, remember?). You see my friends, as nothing in my life is easy, I had realized as I was doctoring my wound that I left my debit card at the bar (why did that occur to me then? I don’t know. Maybe I was thinking about having to pay the copay later). Yep. And to add insult to injury (see what I did there?), he lived in one of those Northern Virginia neighborhoods that is NOT Metro accessible, or I would have just walked there, busted knee and all. He agreed to drive me to the nearest Metro station, so I set an alarm and passed out. I’m fairly certain that when I put my jeans back on a couple hours later I heard them crack from the dried blood. Thankfully, they were black jeans, so you couldn’t tell that I’d lost half a pint of blood. He took me to the Metro, I thanked him, and that was that. At this point, I was hungover, hurting, had bled through the Band-Aid, and just wanted to go home, but I had to go back into DC to get the damn debit card. The manager of the bar, who was friends with the dude I went home with and friends with another mutual friend, was there that morning, and he noticed that I was wearing the same clothes I had on the night before. He didn’t say anything to me (he just handed me my debit card with a smile), but he texted my buddy about it immediately after I left the bar. Awesome.

The Metro ride home was almost unbearable. You don’t realize how much Metro cars sway until your still slightly intoxicated brain picks up on it and your gut decides that maybe throwing up isn’t such a bad idea after all. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and I made it home, where I spent the rest of the day changing the bandages on my wound over and over again because it wouldn’t stop bleeding. I finally sent a photo of it to one of my friends and asked her if she thought I needed to go to the doctor to get stitches, to which she replied, “What the hell is wrong with you? YES! Go to the doctor now!” So I found an urgent care clinic that was ridiculously far away from my house because apparently I don’t know how to figure out which ones accept my insurance, and I got myself some stitches. The doctor told me he’d never seen such a perfectly symmetrical and fairly serious injury from something as simple as falling down a couple stairs. He said I must have hit the ground at just the right point with just enough force to split my knee open in just that way. Yay, physics. That’s me, a miracle of modern science. At least I got that going for me. But wait…….there’s more…..

That Tuesday night it was time for co-ed softball.  We always played doubleheaders since we only played once a week, and I usually played right field. However, that night, for some strange reason, the coach put me on second base. Me, the lefty and non-infielder since I was 9, at second base. The first ball hit to me was a grounder. I instinctively went down on one knee to stop it (which I did, and we made the out). Guess which knee I went down on? Yep, you guessed it, my right one. I knew the instant I stood up that something bad was happening down there (that’s what she said). I had taken precautions by wrapping it in an Ace bandage, but I could feel that something was wrong (that’s what he said). Unfortunately, that first out came quickly (much like the guy in this story and unlike me in almost every sexual encounter I have….IF AT ALL), but the next two did not. It felt like ages before we got back to the dugout and I could check my knee. I rolled up my pant leg, removed the bandage, and saw that all but two stitches had popped. The two stitches remaining  were at either end of the gash, so, quite frankly, they weren’t really doing anything anymore. And yes, I had started bleeding a bit again. My teammates tried to convince me to go to an urgent care clinic, even going so far as to look up the closest one on their phones, but I refused. Hey, the bleeding stops eventually, and we still had another game to play (yes, that’s right, this happened during the first inning of the first game). I promised to go first thing the next morning, which I did. The doctor took one look at my injury and said, “There’s no point in putting new stitches in. It’s too late.” He put some butterfly bandages on it, told me to be more careful, and then offered me the name of a good plastic surgeon (I suppose that’s the kind of thing his patients are concerned about). I laughed and said, “Scars build character. Although now I can give up on that career as a knee model.” To his credit, he laughed. I spent the next couple weeks explaining to people that I hurt my knee playing softball, which is sort of the truth. Now when people see the scar they think I had some sort of cool orthopedic surgery on my knee, and I just tell them that it’s a battle scar. The moral of the story is: when you’re wearing beer goggles, watch your step. You might not fall, but you’re sure as hell not gonna trip and fall into a happy ending. Just saying.