Shorties

Nightcap

Daniel Gutierrez
Monday, August 02, 2010

I feverishly type at my computer. I start to feel sleep creeping. Facebook.com. Enter. The screen glares back at me with the harsh white light of a loading web page. Sort of gives me a jolt of energy. Ok, I’m on. No new notifications. No messages, or invites, or pokes. Nothing.

Yet I stare at the home page. Very few of my friends are still up at this hour. It’s only 3:26 AM. Early for my standards.

Facebook’s homepage is filled with people’s unnecessary and sometimes annoying whining, bragging or bitching. I scan the list of status updates and photo uploads. Pete Walton from my days upstate wrote “Megadeth concert…unbelievably sick!!”. Hey at least Pete’s up. I glance at the time posted. 2 hours ago. Shit.

Since this isn’t satisfying my need to not sleep, I turn to the cabinets. I am in the kitchen...I might as well eat. I’m not particularly hungry, so I’m just looking to look. Yeah yeah, it’s bad for you to eat late. Suck it. I open the top cabinet where all the cookies and pastries are and see a freshly bought 6-pack of cheese pockets. I know, it sounds kind of disgusting, but they’re these things that are made of dough and have a flakey crust, with something that resembles cheesecake on the inside. Really good. I open the pack and grab the first one on the bottom left. My first bite.

Not as appealing as I had thought it would be. Who would’ve known that eating food this late wouldn’t be as tasty as, say, eating food at a regular hour? I chew labouringly through this bite, feeling the goosh of the cheesecake-y inside collect along my teeth. My tongue has the job of collecting all the fragments of food into a ball suitable for my consumption. Time to swallow. I painfully force the glob of pastry down my throat. Damn. It ever so slowly makes its way down my esophagus to my stomach. Next bite. Repeat process.

After 5 labor-intensive minutes, I had finished the cheese pocket and was back at my computer. This Facebook thing is going nowhere, yet I know I’m going to continue staring at it for another 20 or so minutes. Sleep is starting to pry now, but I push it away, and feign interest in Margaret Jo’s status (“this new cadillac is my dream come true! takin it out for a test spin tomorrow. whos comin with??”). A flurry of comments follow it.

Sleep is still there, in the back of my head, waiting for me to slip up. One false move and I’m done for. Maybe I don’t sleep because I’m bored of it. No that doesn’t make sense. Am I an insomniac? No! I’m so fucking tired! Please let me sleep!, says the voice in my head, which I ignore. No, I’m not an insomniac.

The glare from the screen is starting to dry out my eyes. Time check. 3:39 AM. Aghhhh. Sleep hits full force, hammering me with its necessary-ness. You. Need. Sleep. Get. Some. Sleep, that faint voice tells me.

Feeling: dizzy, faint, tired, perhaps about to vomit that cheese pocket. Heartbeat: a tad faster than average speed. Good Mind says: Please get some sleep. You need it. Evil Mind says: Don’t sleep, let’s stay up and watch TV. I think Chris Rock is on.

Ah, fuck.

I always wonder why I can’t sleep. Or, should I say, why I don’t sleep. I’ve gone through the possibilities. Bored? No. Insomniac? No. Doing important things that can’t be done at any other time in the day? Not really. Maybe I don’t sleep because I don’t allow myself to sleep, not because I can’t sleep. Because in the emotionless state that is my life, the pain from not sleeping is the only thing I can feel. Maybe it’s just me trying to feel something. Anything. I don’t feel any other way, perhaps this is it. This is all I have.

Maybe this is why I don’t sleep.