"Insomnia: A National Concern"

Last night, I destroyed my grandfather clock. My grandfather’s clock. His grandfather’s clock.

I grabbed a hatchet from my toolbox and I hacked it to splinters.

I wouldn’t be able to tell what it had been if I didn’t already know. It was a priceless family heirloom. Now it’s just a mess to clean.

Marvin won’t let me hear the end of it:

“What the hell were you thinking, you psychotic ass? Do you know what your mom is gonna say?”

“I could care less,” I said.

I actually did care. It hadn’t really been a decision I’d thought through.

“Well what are we gonna do, then?”

I didn’t have any answers.

“No answers, huh?”

Marvin knew me better than I knew me.

“Jesus Christ. . . I’ll have to think of something.”

It was true. Marvin would have to think of something. But I didn’t regret my decision, hasty as it may have been. That grandfather clock had it coming.
First off, it fell behind by seven minutes every three weeks. This was just unacceptable.

Furthermore, that clock dinged out a soprano version of “Dixie”. . . every fifteen minutes. If that wasn’t enough reason to euthanize, the fourteenth chime was severely off-key:

Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton.
Old times THERE are not forgotten...

I should have loaned it to interrogators at Guantanamo years ago.

I haven’t slept in seven days.

in•som•ni•a (ĭn-sŏm'nē-ə)
n. Chronic inability to fall asleep or remain asleep for an adequate length of time.

Insomnia is a tricky malady to understand.

“A recent study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggests that roughly one out of five Americans suffer from some form of insomnia. It is difficult to treat, due to its many potential causes.”

That’s from WebMD.com.

It’s my homepage.

“You need to quit drinking so much coffee and start exercising.”

“Shut up, Marvin. You don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about.”

He doesn’t even have a job.

Marvin is one of those guys that’s always trying to tell you what to do. He always has his remedies and his quick fixes and his words of wisdom and his epiphanies to share. He’s the guy that when you get hurt - mentally, physically, financially, whatever - he’s the guy who’ll tell you what you did wrong.

“You wouldn’t have had this problem had you blank.”

Marvin’s been around for almost as long as I can remember. I can remember a time before Marvin, but it was so long ago that it seems like someone else’s life and not my own. I really don’t know why I hang out with the guy, much less live with him, but once someone’s been around for long enough they tend to stick. Plus, I don’t want a new roommate. I don’t like change.

Anyway, Marvin tells me I’m doing everything all wrong, and not just with this sleeping thing. He tells me I need to get a new job, I need to change my hairstyle, I need to wash my car. Unable to live his own life, Marvin tells me how to live mine.

re•sent•ment (rĭ-zěnt'mənt)
n. Indignation or ill will felt as a result of a real or imagined grievance

The most infuriating part of lying awake is what I could be doing instead:

I could be out drinking.

I could be watching a movie.

I could be dusting the tops of my bookcases.

(Actually, I need to go clean the top of the bookcases.)

ob•ses•sive com•pul•sive dis•or•der (əb-sěs'ĭv, kəm-pŭl'sĭv, dĭs-ôr'dər)
n. A psychiatric anxiety disorder characterized by obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions, such as cleaning, checking, counting, or hoarding.

I could be out drinking.

I could be watching a movie.

I could be dusting the tops of my bookcases.

Anything would be better than lying awake, but sleep, like my job, is part of my responsibilities. Long gone are the days when I could stay up until 4:00 a.m. watching poorly acted skin-flicks on Cinemax©, and then sleep through Algebra class.

“You have to get adequate rest to perform adequately as a human-being.”

(That sounds like something Marvin would say, but it’s actually not. My Dad said it.)

The bastard of the issue is: I chose to stay in and sleep, to be responsible. It’s amazing how appealing a beer or an ex-girlfriend’s phone number can look at 3:30 in the morning.

Tues⋅day (tooz-day) n. the third day of the week, following Monday.

Last Tuesday, I dusted my grandfather clock.

I mopped the tile floors in the kitchen and Swiffered the wooden floors in my combination living/dining room.

I noticed that Jay Leno was on, so I watched the monologue.

Eh...

Then I got back to work.

I sprayed the shower down with some Scrubbing Bubbles ® and cleaned the toilet. I took a Brillo® pad to the sink and wiped the cleaner from the shower walls.

“You didn’t wait long enough to wipe it off. The box says three minutes.”
Late Night with Conan O’Brien was airing, so I sat down and watched his monologue.

Quite funny.

I brushed my teeth, washed my face.

I folded my clothes, cleaned my room, and checked the doors.

Then it was time for what Marvin calls, “the light show.” The light show is Marvin’s name for my nightly pre-bed ritual. He’s also referred to it as “the freak show” on occasion.

I turned the light off in the bathroom. I turned the light on in the pantry. I pulled the drawstring in my closet, then flipped the switches in the study. I reached for the lamp next to the couch.

“No, you son-of-a-bitch!”

“What in the hell?” I yelled. My neighbor from upstairs stomped on the floor three times.

THUD, THUD, THUD.

“What in the hell was that, Marvin?” I whispered.

“Oh, that was just me.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“Yes it was.”

“Marvin, I know what you sound like.”

“I was trying to scare you.”

I didn’t believe him, so I looked around for awhile.

Nothing.

Maybe it was him.

I turned off the lamp and turned toward my bedroom.

While I crawled into bed, The Carson Daly Show’s opening theme blared from my bed-side television. I watched his monologue.

Horrendous.

And there I was, on my back, staring at my fan, wondering if the blades’ tops were clean.

The light bulbs rattled. Shit.

I willed myself up from under my Cuddledown© comforter, and flipped on the lights.
The first bulb proved easy. It’s tightening was quick and painless.

Bulb Number Two was equally simple.

The third bulb clicked into place with a satisfying pop.

Success.

Back in bed, with the lights turned off and the fan turned on, the bulbs began to rattle again.

“Jesus Christ!” Marvin yelled.

“I’ll get it, I’ll get it.”

I shot up and repeated my ritual, biting my tongue a little too hard in concentration.

The rattling ceased.

Then returned.

“Come on, tighten the damned things!”

“I did, I don’t know why they’re rattling!”

I decided to switch the bulbs’ spots in the fan’s line-up. Bulb Number One became Bulb Number Three. Bulb Three, Bulb Two. . .

I flipped on the fan, turned off the light, and sat on my bed.

I waited – nothing.

“Alright, I got ‘em.”

RATTLE.

“Turn it off!”

I sighed.

Three quick pulls and the beast was mortally wounded. The blades spun excitedly for ten or fifty seconds before resigning themselves to their fate.

Tranquility.

It was at that point I noticed that the blades were at awkward angles to the bulbs. I clenched my eyes, vainly attempting to forget about the detail. Why I even thought this was a possibility is beyond me. Seventy seconds and nine muttered curse words later, I got up.

“What the shit are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I lied.

“Are you moving those fan blades?”

He knows me better than I know me.

“No.”

“Yes, you are, you psychotic bastard, now please go to sleep.”

“One sec…”

“Come on!”

“One more second…”

The blades rested at perfect ninety-degree angles. I laid down.

“Finally! … Shit!”

I closed my eyes.

Sunlight came pouring through my window.

ex•po•sure (ik-ˈspō-zhər)
n. the condition of being presented to view or made known

Last Wednesday, or maybe two Wednesdays ago, the carpet sang to me.

Come with us, dear soul.
Down into this deep, dark hole.
Where sleep and sex abound.
Don’t worry, you will not be found.

“Get up shithead! You’re gonna get fired!”

I was lying in the downstairs copy room of my office building, drooling on the plush, red carpet.

“Get up!”

“Shut up, Marvin. Let me sleep. Nobody comes in this copy room anyway.”

This was partly true. The copier was entering its rebellious teenage years. It rarely heeded commands, and when it did follow directions, the results were often incomplete.

“Do you know what would happen if you get caught down here?”

I ignored him.

“Are you really gonna ignore me? Seriously?”

Yes.

“Fine. Do whatever the hell you want, I’ll sit back and watch ‘em shove that pink slip up your ass.”

To be fair, when I was discovered, nothing was shoved anywhere near my rectum. I did, however, receive an exclusive VIP trip to the Head of Human Resource’s office. Marvin delighted in his foresight, though I reminded him that, technically, he was wrong. After all, no pink slips were shoved into any orifices.

Marvin reminded me that there was still time.

I entered the office of Edward Roberts III less than an hour later. I seriously doubted he was the third in a line of Edward Robertses. Marvin doubted this, too. Edward had 780 books in his office that day.

“Well, well, well…” Edward began.

I could envision him hazing pledges at a lower-tier Ivy League fraternity.

“It seems someone decided to catch a little shut-eye on the clock?”

I bet he pretended to like croquet.

“What do you think I ought to think of this?”

I had no idea what he should think about this.

“I’m not sure, sir. I’ve been having a really tough time sleeping, lately, and I guess I just blacked out in the copy room. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

“Really?”

“Yes, sir.” I replied.

I was surprised. He seemed concerned.

“Well if that’s the case, we have a psychiatrist on retainer who is very experienced with insomnia.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’ll set you up an appointment for tomorrow morning. Go see him and come talk to me next week.” He wrote a name and number on a slip of paper and looked back up. “I’ll set it up, don’t worry about anything. And get a cup of coffee before you go back to your desk, okay?”

“Okay… sure. Thank you.”

“No problem,” Robert said as he handed me the slip of paper.

I exited the office with a little more faith in humanity.

"I don't trust him."

Shush, Marvin.

ther⋅a⋅py (ˈther-ə-pē) n. The treatment of disease or disorders, as by some remedial, rehabilitating, or curative process.

The waiting room was unusually warm. I never liked waiting rooms, their extreme chilliness often unsettling, but I found this change in temperature a much more drastic red flag. I don’t like change.

“Look at that one over there,” pointed Marvin.

I followed his finger to an overweight man-boy of undeterminable age. His eyes flicked back and forth as he petted the cover of an old Sports Illustrated. The tattered magazine displayed a faded image of a baseball player in blue uniform.

“That’s George Brett,” Marvin informed me. “That magazine must be twenty years old.”
He was probably right. It looked twenty years old.

I had been to a psychiatrist before, when I was younger, but never had I experienced another patient as openly troubled as the man-boy.

I felt uneasy, so I began stacking the magazines in neat stacks on the end-tables. Germs from the magazines leapt onto my hands.

“Shit!”

I jumped from my chair and hurried to the bathroom.

“It’s your turn!” Marvin yelled while I was mid-wash, but I chose to continue.

I returned three minutes later to find an annoyed orderly, tapping her foot on the fake wooden floors.

“Right this way, sir,” she said through a forced smile. I followed her down a hallway. There were seven pictures on the wall. She led me into an empty office, and there, I took up residence on a leather couch.

The doctor appeared shortly.

“Why, hello there!”

He had two moles on his neck.

“Hi, thank you for squeezing me in.”

“Oh, anything for Ed.”

He sat down, “So, I hear you’re having trouble sleeping.”

“Yes…yes, I am.”

“How long have you had this problem?”

“Years,” I said.

“Years?”

“Yes, years.”

“Hmmm…” He wrote a few lines on his clipboard. “How much sleep do you get a week in hours?”

“Less than ten.”

“Less than ten?”

“Yes, less than ten.” I was annoyed by the repetiveness of our exchange.

So was Marvin.

“Well, this sounds pretty severe. Have you tried any medication?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, why not?”

“A friend of mine had a bad experience with medication.”

“That may be, but there’s no way you can be functioning properly on ten hours a week,” he scribbled some more. “Do you have any idea what might be triggering the insomnia?”

“I think it might be my OCD.”

The doctor arched both of his eyebrows. “You have OCD?”

“Yeah.”

He flipped through the pages of my chart. “That’s not written anywhere in here.”

“I haven’t been to the psychiatrist in fifteen years.”

“Why? OCD is very serious.”

I paused.

“My friend had a bad experience with medication.”

“Well, shit,” he said. “You need medication.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“There’s no probably about it. You need medication.”

He pulled a prescription pad from his desk.

“You need to fill both of these immediately. The OCD and insomnia medication shouldn’t clash,” he said, jerking the pen across the small, white slips. “Is there anything else you’d like to ask before I let you go? I have a patient at 10:30.”

“Yeah...”

Marvin told me I’d better not.

“Would it be alright to--”

Marvin threatened to leave an unfinished puzzle at my bedside every morning.

“--take those medications--”

Marvin assured me that he would mimic the grandfather clock every five minutes.

“--if you have--”

Marvin pleaded with me. No...

“--have schiz...”