There’s something inherently undignified about fainting, like you’re some sort of consumptive Victorian getting the vapors, but somehow I’ve always managed to make it worse. The first time I passed out was more than twenty years ago. I was at a party pursuing D, and somehow H, a woman I had previously been involved with, joined me in my pursuit. The three of us ended up chastely sleeping in my bed. In the middle of the night I got up to pee–not the most interesting detail of the story, but one I ask you to remember. Next thing I know I woke up on the floor with my head on a recycling bag full of cans. Neither of my guests woke up from the noise, so I quietly made my way back to the bed. When I explained the reason for the fresh wound on my forehead in the morning, D asked if I’d been overwhelmed by having two women in bed with me. Her question hurt more than the cut.

The second time happened earlier this year, and though not as spicy, it was just as embarrassing. During a vacation in Portugal, my wife Sabine got a bad case of the norovirus and was vomiting non stop. The nearest ER had only 2-star reviews, and I thought she might be better off staying put. I was afraid of reliving the night I accompanied her to the emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital after she had an allergic reaction; we were made to wait for 12 hours surrounded by people acting exactly like you’d expect people to act late at night in an ER in New York. But when Sabine’s head started spinning around like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist I finally got scared enough to risk it. Once the nurses had hooked her up to an IV (she got four liters of whatever it was they were serving), I went to take a pee. I came to flat on my back surrounded by the same nurses who moments before had been helping my wife. They insisted I sit in a wheelchair, which wasn’t great for my ego either.

And then there’s last week. Sabine and I were getting ready for bed after dinner with friends. (The Burmese food was memorable, as was the family of six sitting next to us, all of whom looked at their phones throughout the entire meal.) I had been suffering from insomnia for several days, so I asked Sabine for one of her sleeping pills. She told me to look up whether it would interact with my medications. Google warned that there was a risk of “confusion, hallucination, seizure, extreme changes in blood pressure, increased heart rate, fever, excessive sweating, shivering or shaking, blurred vision, muscle spasm or stiffness, tremor, incoordination, stomach cramp, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Severe cases may result in coma and even death.” I told Sabine it sounded safe.

Sometime in the middle of the night I got up to, you guessed it, pee, and—right you are again—I passed out. (The one saving grace in my three fainting spells is that I always manage to pass out after I’m done peeing, sparing me from the additional humiliation of spraying myself and the bathroom on my way down.) I regained consciousness as Sabine was telling 911 that I was not responsive. I immediately started trying to tell her to end the call, though I was struggling to get out the words, partly because I was very dizzy, and partly because I was still wearing my mouth guard. While she was talking to the operator, I slowly crawled out of the bathroom making my way back to bed, the whole time growling that I didn’t need medical attention. Sabine followed me into the bedroom and handed me some sweatpants to put on, and even though I found the activity very challenging I continued to argue that I didn’t need medical attention.

Fifteen minutes later, two EMS technicians finally arrived. They asked me to sit up and I made a huge effort to not fall back down or throw up because I wanted them to know that I was TOTALLY FINE. They said my blood pressure was unusually low and that I looked very pale. Maybe they’d leave me alone if I showed them a photo of my brother, who is much paler than me? They kept insisting that I go to the hospital, which made me feel conflicted because I didn’t want to, but I’m also a people pleaser and was afraid to disappoint them. Only when they started telling me about the great care I’d receive at Elmhurst Hospital was I able to blurt out that I wasn’t going.

Sabine didn’t get any more sleep that night, and she spent her time looking up information on seizures. “I just passed out!” I insisted the next day, and finally she said “Do you want me to show you what happened last night?” I followed her into the bathroom, where she dropped to the floor with her mouth slack, her eyes wide open, and her two arms shaking. “You were like that for five minutes! I kept slapping your face and punching your chest and you wouldn’t respond!” “At least someone got something out of it this time,” I thought.