Two AM Tuesday, Again
I’m a great napper. I can do it upright or leaning on a window in an airplane or bus or train seat, in an office chair at work, in an easy chair or on the couch during a family gathering. And if I can stretch out, god damn, then we’re in business. I’ve napped outside under trees, on benches in public places, on the floor at work and in my living room, on couches during soundchecks for bands at punk clubs, and with my head in my hands at tables at libraries. I’ve recently discovered coffee naps - a quick cup then trying to get to sleep as fast as possible and waking up after about twenty minutes, extra refreshed by the combo of caffeine and a little sleep. It’s awesome. It’s a distant second, though, compared to dozing off with one or both of my kids, one of their heads on my shoulder or chest, or holding one of their hands, or both. It’s cozy and I love them so much, I feel happy and calm and I don’t realize I’m even falling asleep, I just feel a bit warm and stoned from all that parental delight and then I wake up and realize I must have dozed off. Actually going to bed for real sleep though is a huge pain in the ass.
Getting the blanket over my eyes but not my nose and mouth takes some arranging, every night, more than once. I lay on my back, cover my face. My body starts to relax a little. I doze off, wake up, think too much, turn, on my side, the blanket’s over my whole face now, so the air I exhale is trapped, too hot, stale. I rearrange again, relax a bit more, turn on my other side, relax, doze off but then wake up - or I don’t doze off at all - and think too much then turn on my stomach, re-arrange the blanket again. And so on.
I’m like a dog I had as a kid, a little runty mutt with bristly hair who slept in my bed snuggled close against my chest, but before he would sleep he would turn in circles, five, ten, twenty times, like he was tamping down grass. Sometimes I would laugh and sometimes I would be annoyed, I just wanted to sleep. I basically do the same thing now, though. I guess we had similar puppyhoods.
Sometimes I get to sleep. Sometimes this is because of a real accomplishment, getting my mind to quiet down, and other times it’s because stayed up until I’m so tired I can’t think, or because I worked out a ton so my body’s worn out enough that it over-rules my brain. Other times I stay awake and eventually give up, get up. Like tonight.
My friend Lina and I got a little drunk once at a hotel bar when we were at a conference for work, that kind of drunk where the booze gets away from you because put the first few down too fast and you never quite catch up. We hadn’t seen each other in a year or two. I like her a lot. We just click. She swears and shrugs at the right times, the times when I would, or when I would want to. I feel like we’re wired similarly emotionally and morally, the same sorts of things make us angry, outraged. We’ve hung out and mesh well in motion - the pace of conversation and travel together - but I don’t know her very well. What kind of music does she like? Is music important to her? (I will later be appalled to learn she doesn’t like the Smiths, though her husband Rene does. I always liked Rene.) Does she like fiction? What was her childhood like? She’s mentioned in passing that her mother has had recurrent clinical depression, and that she and her brother check in a lot on their mom. I responded by saying there’s similar issues in my childhood. We never exchanged stories so much as bullet-point summaries of stories. Now you know this fact about me, rather than now you know what this experience was like, kinds of stories.
Drunk that night I mention that I dread packing in the morning. I’ve bought too many books on this work trip. I always do that. Lina talks about how hard it is to pack because she brings her pillow with her. She pauses, laughs nervously. You bring your own pillow when you stay in a hotel? Yeah. Okay. No judgment, but why? Well, it’s an old beat up feather pillow with half the stuffing missing. I sleep on a similar pillow, not feathers, but old, beaten very thin, flat, soft. I just like that kind of pillow. No, it’s not that, it’s, well, I put it over my face. You sleep with a pillow on your face? How do you breathe? Not my whole face. My eyes. Wait? Really? Really, yeah, I know it’s weird. No, I mean, yeah, it’s weird but I do the same thing. You sleep with a pillow over your face? Not a pillow, a blanket, and just over my eyes, not my mouth and nose. Lina orders two more shots and turns back to me, says, this has got to be about how we grew up.
A few days later I call my brother Rick, because I need to find out, hey I’m sorry I know this is weird but bear with me - do you cover your face when you sleep? Oh yeah totally, I use a floppy old pillow, can’t sleep otherwise, makes it hard to sleep with a chick if one comes home with me, but I just gotta do it, why you ask? I found out my buddy Lina sleeps like that too, and I guess it never came up between us but I sleep that same way, Lina had a childhood like we did and she and I thought that maybe it was because of our upbringing so I wondered if you did the same. Yup, I do, what do you think it means? I dunno. Does this mean we’re weird? Yeah Rick, I think it does.
I’m going back to bed.