 I went for the
heavy thread count when I bought my fitted sheet at Higbee's last week. I
needed a sheet that I didn't have to break in, a sheet so buttery soft it might
have been manufactured by Land O'Lakes or Chiffon. So I got the highest thread
count I could find-230 per inch-threw that bad boy in the washer and dryer, put
it on my mattress, and prayed I wouldn't squiggle around in agony on it for
three hours like on that 180-count, $7.50 dog of a new sheet I'd used the past
two nights. I thought I could handle a 180-count, and in my younger, grittier
days I could. But my body is a sensitive instrument now, and it's not going to
put up with low thread counts anymore.
I'm desperate. I can't sleep, can't sleep, can't sleep,
like that poor guy on the TV commercial several years back. It's just a phase,
but it's driving me crazy. That's why I'm buying the fancy sheets-I need all
the help I can get. I use to drink myself into a mini-coma every night, but
that's no good, is it? Then I took the infamous L-Tryptophan amino acid pills,
recently pulled from the drug store shelves because it gave some people a
terrible blood disease. I also recommended L-Tryptophan to my friends, so they
all could get blood disease and whisper to me from their hospital beds, "You told
me to take those pills." Now I don't use anything, except for the three
cigarettes I smoke (the only ones I have all day) in the bathroom before I hit
the sack. The cigarettes make me nauseated and dizzy, which helps me conk out
quicker. Or so I believe. I can't tell you how stupid I think this is, but I
keep doing it anyway.
The old classic
insomnia-beater of reading before retiring hasn't been working so well for me,
either. My troubles actually began while I was reading Death of a President, by William Manchester, the minute-by-minute
account of JFK's assassination. I couldn't sleep after reading about this
stuff, though it's a little late to be worried about it now. I read about Lee
Harvey Oswald sitting in front of the TV, going mad. It didn't take much to
send him around the bend. How much would it take to send me? I go ape over
ridiculous things like when my girlfriend unbeknownst
to me, refrigerated the corned beef I had deliberately wanted left at room
temperature for sandwich purposes. I get so worked up by trivialities that I'm
afraid when I'm really stressed out they're going to have to call out the SWAT
team and Channel 8 will have pictures of me handcuffed and being pushed into a
police car without a shirt on, like those other crazy guys.
You might say,
Hey, stop reading that book! Well, I did. I switched to a theatrical
autobiography by Moss Hart that was guaranteed not to disturb, but I still
can't sleep. After a half-hour of reading about this playwright's experiences
at summer camp, I go to bed. I know it's too early, but I'm so bored of the
waking life that I want to sleep. I'm also anxious to tackle the insomnia,
which is precisely the wrong attitude to have. Insomnia isn't something you get
geared up to overcome. You don't want to be up; you want to be down. But I come
out wanting to kick insomnia's ass and so it kicks mine.
I lie
there-hapless as Elmer Fudd-wide awake, songs running through my head, on
occasion flopping like a seal or waving my tingly leg around. I'm not worrying
about anything specific-like when I couldn't sleep the night before the Browns
played Denver in the AFC Championship game, and I knew they were going to lose,
and I worried about how miserable I was going to be-except not being able to
sleep. I get up and walk around the bed, arranging and rearranging it, like a
phantom. I'm blind as a bat, and walking around my room in the dark at 3am is spooky. My bed looks like it's
floating, and I feel like I'm floating, too, because I can't see my feet. Night
of the living dead! Finally I do fall asleep, but I can never pinpoint just
when I go down. It seems while I'm flipping and flopping that I'm only going to
get an hour's sleep, but I probably get four. To be honest, I don't really feel
any worse getting four hours instead of seven, but I hate to think insomnia's
beating me this way.
I am going to
kick its ass tonight.
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