Careful! This One's About Vomit.

All names have been changed to protect future employers from being humiliated that they actually hired any of us.

One weekend in college, my roommates and I hosted a party in our on-campus apartment. We were all acting in our typical fashions. Craig was making Ultimate Frisbee freshmen chug beers out of discs, Tom was holed up in his room talking about philosophy, I was nervously putting cups under coasters and cleaning up after everyone, and Corey had jumped ship and wandered upstairs to visit his girlfriend. Or so I thought.

As the party was winding down, I was entering my usual mode of "I'm stressed that people are still here because I should be in bed right now on account of all the homework I need to do tomorrow," while pretending to have a good time.

Then I found out Corey was not upstairs.

I was trying to subtly tire out a guest - "I love Sealy Posturepedic mattresses. I love it when it's late and you're tired and you can just crawl into bed and sleep for hours and then you can pass all your classes because you are so well rested..." - when Jeb tapped me on the shoulder.

"I have a question," he said. "Why did Corey just walk out of his bedroom, walk directly into your room, and close the door behind him?"

I really didn't know why, so I lead the charge to my room. I stood outside the door wondering, "Do I knock on my own door? I don't want to be rude. I guess I should knock. " I tapped on the door and called out his name. Nothing. I knocked again and cracked open the door, cautiously peering in.

It didn't look like my room anymore. It looked like someone had played paintball in what used to be my room using bright red paint balls, only the paint was kind of chunky and smelled like rotting fish guts and cherries. Then I saw Corey crouching like a little abandoned kitty in the corner wearing only his boxers. His eyes were watery and confused and there was some of the cherry fish paint running down his chin.

Confused, he looked up at us, pleading for answers. We had none. My first thought was of the time, when I was a child, that I found an abandoned kitten starving in the bushes and wanted it to live so I shoved a huge chunk of doughnut down its throat, only for it to be hacked up a few minutes later.

This memory made me realize that Corey had puked everywhere. Apparently he had drunk too much of some sticky, sweet, cherry and sugar and giggles flavored alcoholic beverage at his girlfriend's party upstairs and now it was all over my room in vom form. I later learned that he had, in a drunken haze, mistaken my room for the bathroom. My emerging face was his first lucid memory of the incident. The slop was everywhere - on my bed, on the window, dripping off the window sill, running down the walls, even in the light socket. Somehow, by the grace of God, the splatter went all around my desk but perfectly missed my computer in the shape of an angel.

By this time, all my roommates were standing in the hall. Corey stumbled out past everyone and bumbled into the real bathroom. I just turned and closed the bedroom door behind me. The cherry fish vomit was of the most horrifyingly pungent variety, and the scent had begun to drift into the hall. Sensing a situation that required some form of actual responsibility, most of the party guests made their way for the door.

Finally, Tom decided that something must be done. He marched out to the kitchen and returned with an empty trash can and some cleaning supplies. "We have to fix this right now. It's going to stink up the whole apartment. I'm already gagging."

"No way!" the rest of us pleaded. We can't open the door again. It's too gross and it will release the smell.

This was a real dilemma. On the one hand, we could hold our breath and try to slosh around as much bleach as possible. On the other hand, that's gross and maybe if we just kept the door closed we could pretend like nothing had happened. I could forfeit all my belongings and move into the common room and we would never open the door or talk about it again.

I was all for the latter option, when Tom decided he was going in to at least open the window in the room for ventilation. With the way we carried on, you would have thought he was sacrificing himself to the explosives on the meteor in Armageddon like Bruce Willis. We begged him not to go. Finally, he looked back at us as if to say goodbye, swiftly opened the door, and disappeared.

We all waited in disbelief (and to be honest a little relief because none of us wanted to go in there). This is what we heard: "Ugh! Ergh! Mmmmmph!" Bang!, Bang! "Damn it! Ugh! Gag!" The window was stuck. (I actually knew it was stuck shut but I forgot.)

Finally, the door flew back open. Tom took one step out, closed the door behind him, leaned forward, and puked into the trashcan. Once he had emptied the contents of his gullet, he looked up and said, "The smell was too much. I couldn't take it." The rest of us squealed with delight.

At this point, Corey had emerged from the bathroom and in a drunken haze of shame, went into a furious cleaning mode. I'm telling you, he staggered into that room and made it spotless. It was incredible.

Meanwhile, Tom had brought the trashcan of his own vomit out onto the porch. He was sitting next to it, talking to a friend, when Jeb returned. He had left the party before we found Corey crouched in my room and was unaware of what had transpired. Apparently, Tom decided to jokingly insult Jeb for leaving the party. Jeb, having no clue about the contents of the trashcan, did what anyone would do in this situation. He dumped that trashcan right on Tom's head. Imagine his surprise when Tom's very own vomit came oozing down on him. Jeb immediately sensed that he was in for it and turned to run. Tom was chasing after him, threatening to give him a big vomit covered hug. They ran off screaming into the night.

The next morning, I woke up and immediately realized that I had set my alarm for the exact time I was supposed to arrive at work. I had a job in the welcome center and I was supposed to stand in the student union to greet prospective students and their families as they arrived for an on-campus event. I grabbed my pile of dress clothes and screamed into the hallway for Tom to fire up the Impala. Tom sat up in bed and, no questions asked, picked up his keys and headed straight for the parking lot.

In a panic, I scooped up my clothes, shoes, and socks, and made a dash for the front door. As I sprinted out onto the lawn in front of the apartment, I felt my foot hit something squishy and slid out from underneath me. Laying face up in the grass, a familiar smell helped me realize that I had slipped in the vomit from the overturned trashcan and I now lay in it. There was no time for anything, so I rolled around in a cleaner spot of grass, jumped in Tom's car as it pulled up to the curb, and threw on my clothes as we sped off toward the union.

Later that day, as I was serving on a student panel for prospective students, one kid in the back raised his hand and asked, "Does everyone just do homework at this school, or do people like party and stuff?"

"If it makes you feel any better," I responded "I'm currently wearing my roommate's vomit from last night."

He was pretty satisfied with that.