Day 6 of 100

I heard it rather than felt it, but as my head rebounded through the frame of the now broken plate glass window I knew this weren’t going well.

I was in college, UC Davis, and a junior. A friend’s father had been buying up old houses tearing them down and fixing them up. He would let us throw parties in the houses before they were torn down.

So here I was a normal, very drunk college kid in a dilapidated house party playing dice with a bunch of Crips.

I remember the sound of gun shots and people running everywhere. I remember looking for my friend Patricia and standing outside a window asking a person inside the house if she had seen her. And I remember the sound. But not the feeling.

I was pulled into the house and a plastic bag filled with keg water and ice was placed on my now bleeding eye with apologies and concern. I remember worrying that blood would get on my only nice shirt and that I was going home in the morning.

Friends came barreling into the house and pulled me out to the car. “Let’s go!” I asked where, but no one seemed to know.

With the fading sounds of sirens we drove back to Davis everyone talking at the same time and me saying “I’m fine” on repeat.

The I’m fines turned into I’m hungry and we ended up at Dennys. The waitress suggested strongly that I go to the ER, and we did, after some Moon Over My Hammy.

At the ER around 3am I called my mom and told her I had been hit in the face with a crowbar (which I was told happened after my head went through the window), I was fine and at the ER. Still drunk, I hung up on her.

Above my right eye sits a scar that I carry from that night. Luckily it’s the only damage. I think often about that night and what I learned, and realize that I didn’t learn much. The truth is that it was just another night in a life time of bad decisions, and it carries no significance. If anything it built my ego rather than killed it.

A true bottom simply requires the ability to admit complete defeat, and that wouldn’t happen for 25 years.