[ToC]

 

INSOMNIA DOOR

Blake Butler

1. Every moment that I sleep I've fought for with my entire body.
2. God still insists on waking me up every other hour.
3. Every other every other hour I am compelled to stumble to the restroom.
4. I believe I have the same size bladder I did at age eight.
5. If it's not the matter of a small bladder, there's a chance I have prostate cancer.
6. I should probably see a doctor.
7. At age 27 I weigh eighty pounds less than I did the year I got my learner's.
8. I experienced fat terror from age ten to almost seventeen.
9. Husky is the preferred term for fat kids but still not something you want to hear.
10. Once at a car show with my parents an MC called me on stage to play along in his joke routine. He asked the question 'What do you do for fun?' and as he leaned down so I could speak into the microphone, he whispered a suggestion: 'Eat.'
11. I said 'Eat' into the microphone.
12. The audience cackled wildly.
13. Afterwards my mother asked me why I'd said it. I said I didn't know.
14. Afterwards also the MC gave me a free T-shirt: 'The Heartbeat of America: Today's Chevy Truck.'
15. The shirt was XXL.
16. I slept in it for years.
17. I slept so much better as a fat child.
18. Better sleep then often the result of having eaten an entire box of cereal before bed.
19. Perhaps surprisingly, the cereal in question was most often Crispix or Rice Chex, and 2%, not skim or whole.
20. I imagine this procedure is still effective for inducing drowsiness at age 27, though my stomach's no longer up for it.
21. I still get big kicks though from buying sub par synthetic sugar cereals such as Waffle-O's and Mini-Swirlz.
22. Bad sugar fuels fucked dreams.
23. Constantly recurring dream as a very young child in which I lay paralyzed in my bed, an enormous boulder lodged in the ceiling and rolling toward me in slow motion.
24. Always waking with the boulder just inches from my face.
25. Further research revealing this state was most likely hypnopompia: an intermediate consciousness occurring during waking.
26. Consciousness in which hallucination and sensing a presence are common.
27. What presence; when what where; who what this thing lodged in my ceiling.
28. Also associated with this phenomenon: alien abduction, telepathy, apparition and prophetic vision.
29. Often having slept with my head hung in the hallway so as to see my parents in the living room, fearing the presence.
30. Even just my mother's voice a comfort.
31. Though often also: sleep walking; sleep terror; talking in sleep; sleep sound.
32. More active maybe in my sleep than I often am in waking.
33. Perhaps infused within my blood.
34. A cousin once having woken with the front door to his house wide open, knowing he'd gone out.
35. If the walker commits a criminal offence while asleep, the defence of automatism may be available.
36. [List item 36 deleted for fear of repercussion.]
37. My sleep speech probably more exactly what I mean.
38. The dream me a clearer me.
39. Last night the real you having moved the dream me from my sofa to my bed.
40. Last night the real me having thrown a candy bar in frustration.
41. Never again, if anything, taking my fury out on candy.
42. Candy my one irrefutable, perfect lover.
43. Whose breasts and brains will never malform.
44. Who would wait forever by my deathbed, regardless.
45. Candy marriage still not legal in 50 of 50 American states.
46. Also not legally possible: marriage to one's dream self.
47. The becoming of one's dream self.
48. Willful confinement to the hypnopompic state.
49. The boulder above me, still proceeding.
50. My mom forever just down the hall.

 

 

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This list is the 2nd in a series of 50 lists of 50 items, right now titled 2500. It, like the other lists in the series, was written in one sitting in my Gmail browser while at work in a law office. I liked writing lists at work because it distracted me from thinking too much about the writing, but I got fired from that job while writing list 13. Now I write lists at home. I continue to write in my Gmail browser, though. Sometimes I'll pretend to answer the phone "BASS LAW GROUP" while I write certain list items, for sanctity's sake. Other lists in the series can be found archived at www.deadwinter.com.