Power Cleanse

“Am I really gonna puke again?” I thought.

The answer was yes.

I asked myself the same question every ten minutes for the next several hours and got the same response. After that I stopped asking; it was just assumed.

Four hours into it I was quite delirious and my thoughts drifted back to the kebab I had eaten right before getting on the train in Brussels. I thought about them explaining my death to my parents, that the disease vector was a pita pocket filled with shitty, rancid meat.

It went on like that for two days. Erika would check on me and bring me water, which I would promptly throw up. Twenty-four hours into it I reached agreement with my body: I would expel everything I’d ever eaten and it would not die. Throwing up became as regular as breathing. I got used to retching over the toilet for half an hour and not producing anything.

The thing about food poisoning that no one tells you is that you have to mind both ends. This is because no one can think of an eloquent way to say that you will strain so hard to vomit that you will shit yourself.