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.

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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