Rewind Park

Wake Up

My eyes cracked open to the familiar seediness of Stella's and my apartment and I groaned. The morning immediately started assaulting my hangover with a noted lack of mercy. Everything hurt. 

I closed my eyes again to block the spears of sunlight coming through the window, but the concussive impact of car horns from the traffic on Hawthorne Street rattled the wounded core of my being. Spider webs of nausea tickled my innards and urged me toward the bathroom. 

Yet, stubbornly, I remained cowered under the covers, searching for a refuge from the completely offensive universe in which I had just awoke. I lay still and listened to Stella's steady breathing next to me in the bed and tried to push the pain in my head back and rejoin her in the gentle bliss of unconsciousness. 

But it was no use. I was awake. 

"Portland is not supposed to be this sunny," I muttered, finding my mouth full of some pasty alcohol-flavored foulness. I flipped off the covers, sat up in bed and stretched, being careful not to wake Stella. 

I wobbled to a standing position and waded into the sea of dirty clothes and musical instruments covering the floor, headed toward the bathroom. 

In my fuzzy-brained delirium, I completely failed to notice the head of Stella's bass guitar sticking out from under the discarded Dead Kennedys t-shirts and leather jackets we'd worn the night before; and I rammed my pinky toe wickedly into one of its silver tuning pegs. 

Through the tears that arrived in the corners of my eyes, I looked at Stella, still sleeping on the bed, and resisted yelling "motherfucker" as loud as I could.

I collected myself, and, with a strange hopping maneuver well beyond my current coordination level, I attempted to continue my journey to the bathroom. 

I made it less than three feet. My good foot became tangled in some other floor refuse  and my body twisted unnaturally. As if in slow-motion, I crashed into Stella's keepsake-shelf hanging on the wall next to the bathroom door and landed on the floor. 

That was the moment.

That was the exact moment. As Stella's collectibles rattled a glassy applause above me, as my ass landed solidly on the floor- that was the moment I realized I had done all of this before. 

I can't really explain it. It wasn't some kind of spiritual revelation: there was no sense of ecstasy or gained wisdom. It was more like a burnt-out refrigerator light in my brain had been replaced and I could now see the asparagus rotting behind the milk and ketchup. 

One minute, part of my awareness had been inaccessible, and, now, with a crash into the wall, it was working again. The pain in my head and the pressure in my bladder were gone, as if the hung-over me was just a character whose role I had simply stepped out of...

And, craziest of all, I knew what was going to happen. 

No, that's not quite right. It wasn't like I could look into the future, it felt like I was remembering everything, like I had done all of this before. Except I hadn't.

So maybe it was like looking into the future. I didn't know. 

As if to confirm my new ability, I reached out with my left hand, and, without looking, caught Stella's Portland snow-globe just as it rolled off the now-askew shelf above me and saved it from shattering on the bathroom tile.