La Nausée

5 PM: Struck by a sudden wave of nausea. I try lying down to counteract it, and spend the next hour staring at the mildew pattern on my ceiling.

6 PM: Realizing I hadn't really eaten anything all day, and connecting the dots between nausea and an empty stomach, I head out to the dining room and forced myself to eat some chicken soup.

6.30 PM: With the nausea increasing, I decide to take a nap.

7 PM: One of the maids interrupts my sleep to tell me to eat something. I told her I had already eaten, so we had the perpetual argument--"You didn't eat enough!" "Yes, I did; I think at 22 years old I know how much I want to eat."--which ended only when I, still groggy from my thirty minutes of sleep, told her I was sick and would eat more when I woke up from a nap.

9 PM: I wake up abruptly from my "nap," only to realize that I don't really have the energy to change into pajamas or brush my teeth. I roll over to try to go back to sleep.

9.30 PM: Not successful at sleeping, I finally drag myself out of bed to put on pajamas and brush my teeth. After turning on a quiet CD, I fell asleep again.

10.30 PM: Still nauseated, this time I wake up to realize that I have to throw up. Now. Dash to the bathroom to clear my body of everything I have eaten in the last 24 hours.

11.00 PM: Wake up next to the toilet, not wearing any pants. Stumble back to my bed, still without pants.

11.30 PM: Trash around my bed trying to find a cool spot in the sheets. Wonder what is making me so sick.

12.00 AM: Throw up again. Still nauseated, the thought strikes me: this must be what morning sickness feels like.

12.30 AM: Throw up again. Begin pondering ways I could possibly be pregnant.

12.31 AM: What if there was a little drop of semen on the motorcycle I rode yesterday and it leaked through my underwear and made me pregnant?

12.32 AM: That's ridiculous. I wouldn't be feeling morning sickness nearly that quickly.

12.33 AM: Bathtubs! Isn't there some urban legend about a bathtub?

12.34 AM: Or toilet seats!

12.35 AM: Realize I don't even have a bathtub. Or, for that matter, a toilet seat. Fall back asleep.

12.47 AM: Rape! Rohypnol! I could have drunk something at a party...

12.48 AM: I don't drink. Or go to parties. And wouldn't I remember waking up in some strange place? Fall back asleep.

1.01 AM: Virgin birth!

1.03 AM: My school's not going to be happy about this. They'll never believe it's a virgin birth. Try to think of how to say "virgin birth" in Indonesian, in case my principal asks.

1.04 AM: Kelahiran perawanan? Kelahiran dari perawan?

1.36 AM: Throw up again, this time with diarrhea too.

2.04 AM: Toss about in bed shouting something that I now don't remember. Someone was misunderstanding me, I think, or maybe they just wanted me to lie quietly in place, but they were wrong, wrong, wrong! How could they think such a thing?

2.37 AM: Throw up again. Decide to call in sick for school the next day.

3.17 AM: More random shouting. More tossing. More throwing up. Consider finding a bowl to throw up in from bed, and realize that I don't know where the bowls are. Curse God, and hope to die.

6.01 AM: One of the maids pops her head in, wondering if I'm going to school. I stare at her blankly, trying to find the Indonesian words for "Are you kidding me? I just expelled my intestines through my mouth and you expect me to stand in front a bunch of 17 year olds all day and lecture about debate?" Settle for "No, because I'm sick."

6.18 AM: Call my school principal to tell him I'm not coming in today.

So now I've got the day off, which I'm mostly using to lie around in bed reading Virginia Woolf's "Orlando," with the exception of a brief excursion to the internet cafe, where the cigarette of the person sitting next to me is doing nothing to help my nausea. I think I'm going to use my afternoon by returning home, climbing back into bed, watching a movie, and maybe falling asleep. A night like last night justifies a little daylight decadence, don't you think?