One night I went out to a sports bar to watch a hockey game. I live in the Midwest but my team is located on the east coast so the game wrapped up fairly early, around 9:30. It was a weekend so I decided to head down the block to an Irish pub that I knew many of my old high school class mates frquented to see if I recognized anyone. Turned out to be a very busy night, and saw ma y familiar faces I hadn't seen in years. Hours flew by and many people bought me drinks, on top of the drinks I was buying myself. At some point I remember finding myself alone on a bar stool, looking up at a tv screen and an episode of South Park was showing. For whatever reason I just remember being like, "well it's time to pee now."

The bathroom was horribly crowded with one stall and 3 urinals. I ended up taking the middle urinal when it became free, but through the drunken haze remembering not being able to go. Even while drunk I was horribly pee shy. With no where to go I stumbled out of he pub into the packed streets with no particular place to go.

I passed by a Subway sandwich shop shortly after, and to this day all I remember is the smell of their stale bread and horrible meats hitting me hard in the gut.

At this point I was fucked.

I had two choices. Puke where I stood and risk the chance of being picked up for public intox, or obey the flight part of my fight or flight command and get the hell out of there.

I ran.

Toward the smell.

The threw the doors of the my sanctuary, the subway, open. I never made eye contact with the employees. I made a bee line toward the bathroom and, lucky me, the door was unlocked. Slamming the door shut I dumped my guts into the porcelain bowl, all the while wondering how the fuck I had gotten to this point. At some point in the middle of this, someone tried the knob. Not knowing what else to do I simply bellowed, "Occupied!"

20 mintues later I woke up.

Scrambling for my phone which lay beside me on the dirty checkered floor, I looked at the time and saw it was just 10 mintues to close. I had to get out. Now.

I cleaned up the few dirty areas around the toilet where I had missed, looked and myself in the mirror. For what it was worth I thought I looked pretty good. In reality I'm sure I looked like complete shit, but I was just eager to leave. Again I made a bee line for the exit, and snapped my phone to my ear, calling for a cab, just wanting to forget the whole thing.

It's probably my lowest moment since I've started drinking, but, shamefully, I'm sort of glad I went through something like this just to have a good story. I still wonder to this day if one of the Subway employees that night knew what was going on in that room. If you were that employee and had to clean up after me that night I humbly apologize.