Embarrassing Moments in Gabe’s Life Part IV: Kim’s Place

I went to Europe after high school.  Me and my buddy did the “go backpacking across Europe” thing.  It was fun, but I found it incredibly stressful.  I was always worried about catching the next train or booking the next hostel or not getting robbed.  In retrospect, I wish I’d slowed down a bit and gone with the flow, but I wasn’t to learn that technique for about six years.

We started and finished in a Belgian town called Ghent.  My Dad’s friend’s brother-in-law lived there with his beautiful Belgian wife and their two little boys.  It was a great place to start our trip, and after five weeks of traipsing around Germany, Italy, and Greece, we were real happy to get back.  The Mrs. cooked up some fine food, and the Mr. happily indulged our taste for smokes and drinks.  On one of our last nights there, just two days away from flying home to the good ol’ USA, my companion and I set out on foot for the neighborhood bar.

We’d been to the bar once at the very beginning of our trip, and we felt sort of like returning conquerors as we sidled up to the bar and ordered a pair of beers.  The bartender remembered us, and since it was early and the bar nearly empty, we got to chatting.  We told him of our adventures, how we’d loved Greece and stayed in a room with a view of the Acropolis, and how we’d fallen in love with a little beach town on one of the islands.  We smoked a cigarette with each beer, and soon we’d had four or five.  We asked our close friend and bartender Kim if he had anything special behind the bar, and indeed he did.

Kim reached into his little fridge and produced a small, dark-bottled beer labelled “Duvel”.
“This beer is called ‘Devil’”, he explained “because it is very strong”.
We smiled and nodded approvingly, Kim poured the beer into matching “Duvel” glasses, and we set to drinking.

By now we were feeling superb.  We held up our glasses and admired the beautiful color of “Duvel”, and posed for some photographs.  We smoked another cigarette and ordered up another pair of Duvels.  We were really going to miss Kim, we decided, and we got him to pose for some photographs with us as well.

We asked Kim if he had anything else special from behind the bar, and he didn’t disappoint.  “Ename” was the name of our next beer.  It tasted even better than Duvel, and was just as strong!  We really enjoyed the Ename, and the accompanying cigarettes.

The bar had slowly begun to fill, and soon the table beside us became home to a small group of Belgian girls.  They began to talk to us, which was incredibly exciting because I’d hardly spoken to a single female on the entire trip.  I don’t remember what they said, but I remember that they were smiling at me and I remember feeling pretty cool wearing a sleeveless shirt underneath a sweater vest.

My companion got up to go to the bathroom, and having finished my Ename I got up to get another beer.  Kim asked me where my friend had gone, and I told him he’d gone to the bathroom.  We exchanged knowing looks and Kim said something about how I could hold my alcohol better than my friend, to which I nodded in smug agreement.  I prudently decided to slow things down and ordered a regular beer from the tap.

I said goodbye to my dear friend Kim and sat back down at my table to regale the Belgian beauties beside me.  I didn’t feel so good, all of a sudden, and I figured I’d best head for the bathroom.  Standing up, I began to make my way through the now crowded bar to the back.  The only way through was a narrow gap immediately behind the row of Belgians seated at the bar, and I sidled slowly through the tight space, eyeing the bathroom door.

I didn’t make it.  Halfway there, wedged between people in front and behind, frantically sliding sideways, my stomach turned and I let loose a shower of vomit.  I didn’t pause to survey the damage.  Puke flying from my mouth, I desperately clawed my way through the crowd and into the bathroom, feeling at once completely sober and utterly devastated.

I found my companion sitting on the toilet, pants on, a puddle of puke at his feet, fast asleep.  I envied his position.  I rinsed my mouth at the sink and wondered what in the world would become of me.  A girl entered the bathroom behind me, and began to clean my vomit from her jacket.  I looked at her in horrified embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s nothing,” she said.

Soon Kim entered the bathroom and asked if we were OK.  We were fine, I told him.  I was very sorry.  I gave Kim 10 Euro, which he assured me was unnecessary but finally accepted, saying it would go in the tips.

I roused my companion, and together we made our way hurriedly out of the bar and into the street.  Our host pulled up in his Mini Cooper S, and popped out.

“Shall we head in for a drink?” he asked.

I shook my head solemnly “Can you please take us back?”

Just then, the girls that had sat beside us and witnessed the whole thing came out and yelled towards us.  I pretended not to hear them and tried to get in the car, but they called again and I saw they were holding a coat.

“Your friend!,” they called.  “His coat!”

Head down, I shamefully made my way back to the bar door, grabbed the coat, said “Thanks”, and made haste back to the car.

With my companion fast asleep in the back, our host asked quizzically: “so what happened?”.

I sat in silence, staring out the window, knowing that I could never return to that bar, praying that I would never see any of those people again, and wishing I could go directly to the airport and fly home across the ocean.