I was in the midst of shaking off one of those powerful, full body drunks when I found myself with a bum’s index finger jammed in my mouth. The foul taste of dirt, salt and filth encrusted for years on skin played over my tongue. We were locked in a rough embrace near the door of my apartment, both of our arms pressed against the other’s shoulders. Our stance was mirrored as well, legs split, my left foot forward and all my weight pressing off my back leg, the same for the bum. His eyes seemed to be careening in opposing directions and my head was still swimming with booze. At some point during the struggle he adjusted his grip in order to gain better leverage, moving his hand up the side of my neck like a hateful lover and then painfully pinching my cheek and that’s when his finger found its way into my mouth.
Repulsion had driven me to desperation as I gagged and shoved back with all my might. He was mumbling something, a name I heard after I smelled his hot, horrible breath, a name the came from behind clenched teeth like a growl.
“Nannnggghh…Daaavvvee!!” But I couldn’t reply because there was a finger violating my mouth.
It had been an epic party, an epic party that had quickly expanded far beyond our original meager intentions for it. But, there had been a change over the course of the evening where it had ceased to be a party of friends and known associates and it turned into a free-for-all, an open to the public blow-out. Strange people appeared at our door materializing from thin air but, nearly all had their own bottles and a few were with attractive women, so we of course had no choice but to let it all slide and invite them in.
Considering my own impressive consumption during the evening it was a small miracle that I was still standing much less attempting to deal with an unruly guest, especially considering I was normally the one on the other end an expulsion. Despite having a solid three inches of height on my opponent, not to mention the advantage of youth, he was blessed with drunken bum strength and my sense of balance was complete screwed up, making us more evenly matched.
During the evening’s the obligatory police visit it became obvious that no one was in control of this party. A person had yanked me from the kitchen where I was engaged in conversation with an extremely buxom woman and steered me toward the door to deal with the police. After convincing the officer that we would definitely be much quieter from that point on, that in fact we thanked his visit as it was plainly unclear to any of us just how loud and boisterous we had become, I turned and regarded the room. Upwards of a dozen unfamiliar faces danced around to strange music booming from the stereo. I poked my head around corners and into rooms in search of my roommate Eric or any of the people we had invited with no luck. Still I played the genial host as hands clapped my back in appreciation and I let the spirit of good times and debauchery, not to mention to bottle of wine I kept swigging from, wash away any concerns I might have had over being a stranger in my own home.
The finger flicked around near the back of my throat and I was very close to vomiting. A ratty fingernail poked around in my cheek causing great discomfort but I did not lose sight of my goal of extricating this man from the party.
It had been right around 4 AM, at a moment when the party seemed to in the first stages of coming to a close, no one was ready to leave just yet but, the rotation of various orbits indicated that the door was the direction people would next be heading, when the bum molested one of the guests. The endowed woman from the kitchen was sitting on the good couch in the living room. The bum was perched above and behind her on the arm rest and as I noticed him sitting there a thought entered my mind, “That’s a filthy old bum”. I watched in horror as his right hand slowly crept over her should before it plunged violently down the front of her dress and retrieved a plump white tit.
At that instant I felt I was completely sober but it was more likely that I, like the rest of the room, was being hypnotized by this surprise nudity. Noise was replaced with silence. For a moment he groped at the fleshy orb before the woman screamed and smashed a champagne flute into his face causing a bright red flower of blood to blossom from his nose. I realized in an instant that I had to do something.
Eric, drawn by the scream and possibly the sound of nudity, bounded in from whatever room he had been hiding himself in and together we dragged the bum bodily to the door while he flailed away punching at my ear. It was now that he first begun to cry out for a “Dave”. Eric ran to the open the door while I braced myself to expunge this fiend, but the bum dug in his heels and we became embroiled in a stand-off at the door that would result in my mouth becoming a brief home for one of his digits..
Hot and gritty particles of dirt flaked off the finger and filled my mouth. The cut from the champagne glass zigzagged across his nose and glowed red with exertion as blood pumped to his face. The finger then came to rest between my upper and lower back teeth. I saw my opening and I bit down on the sausage-like appendage. Unlike a sausage though there was no pleasant snap of the casing, this feeling was the sense of biting into something soft and gummy until my teeth struck bone. My mouth began to fill with hot copper blood which is was what finally caused me to vomit. The bum’s hand was drenched in bile and blood as he pulled his hand from my mouth and ceased struggling. I however, held tight and as my body continued to convulse spewing red wine and stomach acids I fell forward with all my weight. The two of us tumbled out the door on to the landing then halfway down the first flight of stairs. The incessant cry of “Dave” had turned into a pained howl. Behind us I could hear the party reaching a fever pitch; people flooded onto the tiny landing and were hollering, egging us on to fight.
I was able to stop our fall down the narrow staircase by grabbing the banister. We were both covered in vomit and awkwardly balanced on the stairs, my left hand clutching the bum’s collar, my right hand holding the banister.
“Dave!” he continued to whine.
“Get the hell out of here, you’ve ruined our party.” I rasped. My throat was raw from vomiting and the fight. Actually, I didn’t say anything, I wanted to say something but I was too exhausted to think. Instead I silently climbed the stairs back to the party; the taste of dirty bum finger was still strong in my mouth.
