Okay, okay. Sometimes, betwixt the dumb things I do for a time, lethargy, and general debauchery, I do a lil writin, here and there. Did that 24 hour play festival last weekend, and I ended up musing about sleep- because lately it’s all i can think about, the frantic getting of it – in a way that I think might be cute or cosmically important, so here I will share.
It’s called the Bedmaker’s Revenge, and involves one Sleepyhead, one Bedmaker, and one Sleepfairy.
Here, the Sleepfairy speaks. Or, at least, it’s pieces of things that she says.
SLEEP FAIRY:
‘How are you? Tired? Oh – You’ll have to excuse me, I’m already in my pajamas.
So Are you tired? I’d like a count, please, how many of you are tired?
Please don’t really raise your hand. Awkward. You’ll make the person next to you feel very uncomfortable, and that person is probably tired.
Speaking of tired, I’m tired, though I have never slept. Is it fun? It looks fun.
Would you like me to put you to sleep? Later.
There was something important I – I was –
(Pause. She thinks and dreams.)
I’m sorry, I had something important to say, but I was thinking of sleep.
Ah.
So what time is it, anyways? How tired are you, if you could measure it? How many cups of tired?
You’ve had your Coffee, I bet, this morning. And then more coffee, coffee part two, then wine with dinner – your bed is looking pretty good right now, isn’t it? Well – your bed or the bed of your lover – the person you have chosen with which to bed.
By the time you get out of here, the 43 minute commute – by the time you’ve twice fed the whiney cat and taken out all recyclings – the getting of mail and the clipping of fingernails – you’ll get five and half hours of sleep.
Not enough. Didn’t your mother ever teach you?
You have to be at work by nine, which means you’re up by seven, to allow for the hair-scrubbing and face scrubbing to give the ILLUSION of adequate sleep. Then there’s the getting of the egg sandwich after the fiasco in which your metrocard expires and there you find yourself, tired, tired, cussing in front of small children.
And There’s somewhere to be tomorrow night, too. Obligatory. You won’t get a real night’s sleep until Friday, and then if you sleep in Saturday, you’ll have wasted half a free day, and I can tell you’re not the type to waste anything.
Really, the only hope is that you’ve found a proper person to share your bedplace with – a person whose sleep sounds and sleep-moving lovingly juxtapose with your own. That they match.
That’s the only hope, really.
But what if they don’t?There was something important to say, somewhere – there something – I love beds, don’t you? I was saying something.
Oh.
ONE NIGHT EVERY YEAR, YOU ARE VIOLENTLY AND MALICIOUSLY AND VICIOUSLY ROBBED OF ONE HOUR OF SLEEP.
I’m sorry. It just really pisses me off. It’s not my doing, I promise. It’s got something very complicated to do with gravity or the growing of grass.
I think I was saying – I was going to say something about compatibility, love, sleep numbers, mattress salesmen. Or wine glasses floating on mattresses while old men drop bowling balls to prove a point.
When you sleep, your body is paralyzed so you don’t get up and do what you’re dreaming.
Elephants sleep standing up, I was going to mention that.
If I had a lover, I would make him stare at me until I fell asleep. I would just pretend, though, and then he would fall asleep, and I would watch him do it.
Cruel and unusual. Maybe it’s handed back to us months later, but by then, the tired has already happened, been dragged out over hundreds of days.
And for the following days, we find ourselves discombobulated. Picking fights, Swinging our large bags into innocent strangers.
And by we – I mean you.
One day, I’d like to sleep. That’d be nice.
I think was saying something.
I think I was saying something like- There is the first time you sleep with a person, and the then the first time you Sleep with a person. One is more vulnerable than the other.
I think people are most lovely with their bed hair and broccoli breath. It is like – this is me. This is how I look and smell when you’re not looking.
If you oversleep you lie like a dog and pretend you didn’t. Your forgot your keys or she forgot your keys or something exploded or someone died.
When you wake up, you are a like a baby, clenching your fists and kicking your feet.
I hear that sometimes, you’re so tired, it’s like you’re drunk. You forget what it’s like to not be tired and this becomes a constant feeling of average despair, which feels like life. ‘