Warning: This is another brain dump of a post. Feel free to bypass it if navelgazing gets on your nerves. It won't last forever, I promise.
Dear friends,
Today's post comes to you from the big snuggly couch at Freeze Peach, where the wireless is cheap and the teas are magnificent. Yes, I live right down the street, and could just be writing from home for free, but sometimes it's good to broaden your horizons, even if only by 500 feet or less. Besides, this is a nice little space, and the owner is Good People.
I had known from the day I agreed to participate in this year's Blogathon that I could not bounce back from a night of not sleeping the way that I could in my twenties, so I was careful to check that I would be able to take the day off work before saying yes to Blogathon. Of course, if I were really honest with myself, I would own up to the fact that I have never been good at allnighters, not even in college. I know people who talk fondly about the allnighters they pulled in their college days, the papers written hurriedly at the last minute, the coffee boiled, the No-Doz consumed like Pez, all rendered in a tone of voice meant to suggest the vigor and rashheadedness of youth, just slightly less fun than the next day's celebratory kegger. Maybe their allnighters really *were* that much fun. Mine, on the other hand, I remember as a combination of Strindberg-esque self-loathing psychodrama and humiliating comic missteps a la Fawlty Towers or Curb Your Enthusiasm. This is supposed to be a seven-page paper, but I only have 5 1/2 pages worth of material here! Stuff, stuff, stuff! Need more coffee! No, more than that! Oh, look, I typed the whole paper with my fingers moved over one position to the right! Retype, retype, retype! Okay, the paper's done and it's only 6:30. I can get two hours of sleep before class -- (crunch) why look, I've just accidentally leaned on my glasses and cracked the frame right in half! Duct tape, duct tape, duct tape! Okay, now I can get ninety minutes of sleep. Lying down now. Blink, blink, blink.
Once I graduated from college and went out into the world, I wasn't much better. It wasn't that I minded the clubhopping, or the trips to see our buddies' bands play at CBGB (here's some CBGB trivia: the success of a gig is measured by how many drinks are sold, so if your starving-artist friends have landed a CB's gig, one of the nicest things you can do for them is to just stiffen that upper lip and pay $4 [in 1991 dollars] for a bottle of Rolling Rock), or the breakfasts at Leshko's that followed all of these adventures. But I knew that I was incurring a debt, and as Stephen King once wrote, the debt may hurt you but it's the interest that breaks your back. (Of course, this allnighter trouble did not extend to those nights spent in the company of lovely boyfriends. I can't explain it, but somehow the act of shagging like crazed weasels for hours at a time would leave me brimming with pep and cheer that would last until at least 4 o'clock the following afternoon, or until one of my long-suffering coworkers would ask me to get that goddamn loopy grin off my face, because nobody likes a gloater.) My friends could stay in bed until early afternoon and wake up feeling fresh as a daisy, but I knew that even if my head hit the pillow at 5:30, my eyes would still snap open at 7 a.m., 9 at the very, very latest. "Just go back to bed!" my friend C would cry, and I would look at her as if she had suddenly turned into a giant crawdad.
I don't know if you've noticed, but I seem to have a little problem with recapturing lost sleep.
The good news is that there's something about Blogathon that has made my attitude better this time around. I'm probably still as scattershot and headshakingly neurotic as ever I was, but today, on my day off, T + 1 past an insane but successful and just plain fun endeavor, a computer on my lap and a blackcurrant iced tea by my right hand, I am filled with the urge to kiss the foreheads of the next 100 people I see. Fortunately, the only person I will see tonight is Lloyd, and he is more than willing to pick up the kisses for 99 people. 