About the Author Yak is DeLeon DeMicoli's second short story in Nuvein.

The interior of the car is merry-go-round spinning. My friend in the front-passenger seat is talking monotone and I don't understand what he's saying. It's all words, without meaning like a class lecture that can't keep your attention. Blah-blah-blah.

I try to block everything out, but I can't. Every sound makes it worse: crickets, the buzz of telephone wires, the gulp sound from swigging the bottle, the crunch sound of kicking garbage under the seat. It all makes it worse. The cigarette smoke that dances in the air makes it worse. Then I say, "Dude let me out of the car. Dude, seriously, let me out of the car!"

I push the passenger seat forward as my friend moves up, opening the door. I jump out of the car and walk behind as I fall on my hands and knees, feeling small broken pieces of pavement stab the inside of my palms. My eyes water up. Tears goober up my vision as I look at the black cement.

Swallow, a big gulp of saliva.

Swallow again as it comes back as a burp moments before regurgitating two forties of malt liquor and beef jerky.

I feel the tears start to slide down my face. A string of saliva starts to break through the open crevasse of my mouth and leak down, hanging like a yo-yo.

Then I burp again, a loud bull frog burp that tastes spicy, meaty, and carbonated with the acidic liquid from my stomach climbing up and touching my tongue.

It's tangy.

Sour.

I don't spit it out, just open my mouth as it slowly drains like syrup from my lips, collecting in a pool on the road, in front of me.

I close my eyes with images of the past hour: drinking and eating.

I see myself, laughing and smoking, mounding down strips of jerky and taking long, hard swigs of beer to get drunk as fast as possible.

It was either that or staying sober on a Saturday night.

The images in my head keep reminding me of what I did. It doesn't make it better as my mouth opens wide. I feel my jaw bone start to get sore as I leave it open, making small little mouth farts with saliva and tears drooling
off my face.

I start to breathe heavy as I feel it climb. I lock my lips tight and wipe with the side of my arm. I hear a friend ask if I'm alright. I nod my head without saying a word. Then, I take a monster deep breathe as the first load of vomit sprays out my mouth. Big buckets of fish guts, thrown into water to hunt sharks, that's what it sounds like.

It hurts as it comes out. I feel like I'm choking as I smell beer. I feel the warmth of the light-brown liquid touch my hand. Then, the after-taste from the dried meat lingers in my mouth, the aroma climbing into my nose, making it worse as another agonizing breathe releases with more puke.

The sound I make is of a coffee maker, idling with the last few blurps leaking into the pot. It's a congested sneeze with snot collected in my throat. It sounds like the moments before diarrhea, but think of it coming from your mouth.

Yes, it's that bad.

Foam and liquid lay below me. Small pieces of meat like bacon-bits in a salad top my bile soufflé.

I think of queso con carne. Chorizo con huevos. That's what it looks like as I tell myself, I'm gonna die. I'm never doin' this again.

Then, Raaalph! More comes out.

Think of me getting to this point because we couldn't score anywhere else. Think of all the dealers we visited, saying the same thing throughout the night, "Sorry dude, I ain't got shit."

It was either continue driving around and hope we run across something, or sit in the 7-11 parking lot and ask someone if they'd buy us beer. So that's what we did. The only sure thing we could think of that would get us fucked up on a Saturday night.

The first half-hour in front of the store was a discussion on who would ask. Everyone coming up with excuses to why they couldn't do it. It went like this:

"Dude, I ain't fuckin' askin'. I'm drivin' so you ask."

"I ain't fuckin' askin'. Why doesn't he do it, he's in the front seat?"

"What does me being in the passenger seat have to do with anything?"

"Because, it's easier for you to get out!"

"Fuck that, I ain't askin'. You ask, besides you owe me twenty bucks!"

"What does what I owe you have to do with this?"

"If you ask, you won't owe me shit."

"Will ya buy my beer tonight too?"

"Sure."

I got out of the car.

I walked to the pay-phone. I stood next to it, reading the graffiti, glancing over my shoulder every time I heard a car pull-up or someone walk into the store. I would look to my car of friends and wait to get the ok, or the nod.

In twenty minutes, there were three no's, and two yes's. But, I chicken'd out to ask, so the yes's became a no. I wasn't ready, I couldn't think of what to say. Finally, the car horn blasts in my ear. I hear the mumbles of my friends with fingers pointing to someone on a ten-speed, riding up. You could say, he wasn't your average exercise enthusiast. He was, what we called "White Trash" sportin' the classic loser uniform of plaid jacket, mullet hairdo braided in the back, a lit 100 cigarette dangling from his lips, and black high-top shoes with the laces scraping across the cement ground as he rode up.

My motivation came as I thought about dealing with my friends sober for the rest of night, that and the ridicule of being called a pussy. So, I walked
up to him as he leaned his bike against the newspaper stand and said, "Sir, can I ask ya a question?

Lifting his blue mesh hat, wiping his forehead with his sleeve, he looked at me as he pulled the glass door open, smothered with sticker advertisements, and said, "Shoot!"

So, I asked.

Obviously, he said yes or else I wouldn't be puking my brains out. The only thing he asked in return was that we drive him home with his bike in the trunk.

Now, where do we drink the beer?

We decided to get drunk in front of my friend's house. It would be one less person to drive home at the end of the night. And, he lived in a brand new neighborhood that was still building homes, so we wouldn't have to worry about cops patrolling the area.

Parked in front of his house, me leaning against the bumper of the car, is what it looks like from a bird's eye view.

And I continue yaking, more and more, as it starts to come out more fluid than solid. I still hear my friends ask if I'm ok, but I don't answer.

I feel my jeans start to soak up my bodily fluids, especially around the knees. My hands and sleeves are spoiled with snot and tangy acidic stomach fluid.

Beer foams like a bubble bath on the ground. I find tiny pieces of jerky stuck in-between molars and dig them out with my tongue, spitting them on the ground.

Then, I hear a loud fog-horn burp from the other side of the car. I wipe my eyes and look up-front, seeing my friend start to yak out the window.

It looks like a waterfall as it shoots out from the car. It sounds like a hose that's watering the lawn. As he spits out the remains, spits, spits, spits big watery clumped together gobs of sticky saliva, he looks over my way and says, "Dude, when I hear it, it makes me wanna puke."

Then, seeing him I start to swallow again and again, feeling it come up and I turn my head back on the street and shoot--sprinkler shoot-out whatever my stomach has to offer on the cement ground.

Again, I hear it up front, this time on the driver's side. Then, on the passenger side. Then, I puke again. It goes this way for a few minutes, call it the domino effect. One after the other like a beer commercial of frogs on lillies, saying "BUD_WHY_SIR! BUD_WHY_SIR!

Finally, the puke fiesta ends and I get up off the ground. I tippy-toe, and hop, and long-step over puddles of vomit to get back inside the car. On the way home, no one says a word. When I get dropped off, I spit on the concrete ground, and make my way inside of my house, stumbling until I reach my room, falling on the carpeted floor. I don't even undress from my fouled-up threads. I deal with the smell until I fall asleep.

On Monday, when I return to school, my friend's sister walks up to me, and yells in my face of how disgusting her brother is. She says, "You and my brother are fuckin' nasty. Our whole street is filled with vomit and it smells like open asshole. When we came out of the house on Sunday morning, leaving for church, the first thing that hit us was that nasty smell of open beer cans and dead meat. YUCK!"

I say sorry, and laugh in her face. Then, I tell my friends and we skip class to see what it looks like during the day.

We only stay for five minutes because the smell starts to remind me of that night, and my eyes start to water up again. I start to swallow big breathes of air, and my friends, I can see, are doing the same. We drive off, lighting cigarettes and spitting out the window. Then I tell myself how I'll never drink again.

That was the first time it ever felt like I was gonna die.