Sleepless in Manhattan
What a way to culminate my first full week of little or no stress by not being able to get to sleep last night. After being ousted from my room while my roommate (the good one) had company (no - not that kind of company), I went to watch VH1’s most recent “Behind the Music” on TLC. I’d seen it at least once before, and of course I remember vividly that Left Eye died back in April of 2002, but for some reason, it was especially sad, knowing what she was going through in her last years. She wanted to be apart from the group and go off and do her own thing, but due to the popularity (and notoriety, perhaps) that she had acquired as part of the group, she stayed around and put out their last two albums. The rest, as they say, is history, as she went to her favorite vacation spot in Honduras and died in a car crash. I’m not sure why I was so moved by this story at 2 AM.
Against wanting to go to sleep, I stayed in the lounge and allowed my roommate to have the time and space to entertain his friends, and I channel-surfed some more, running into New York’s public access channels, most of which carry advertisements for escort services and phone sex. Even The Weather Channel (which I usually find interesting) didn’t matter to me at that hour, and I didn’t have any energy to do any of my homework.
All I could do was think about the sleep I was missing out on…
Finally, at 3 AM, I wandered back upstairs and to my relief, they were gone. I got into bed and just sat upright for a good half-hour. Now that I had the time to sleep, I couldn’t sleep for some reason. But this feeling was temporary. Gradually, I drifted off, until…
“STOP FUCKING SMOKING!”
Just when my eyes had finally closed, I awoke to that. Even at 3:30 it didn’t take me long to put two and two together. My other roommate (the one who doesn’t speak to us) and his girlfriend (who rooms with my lesbian lover, Kaitlyn) were in her room smoking - cigarettes, I suppose. They were only there because I put a moratorium on them doing it in my room. Seems they tend to forget that they live next door to the R.A. ON THAT FLOOR!! In their defense, they say he doesn’t care, but I know he does. He must have cared, because he was pounding on their door screaming that he was through giving them leeway and now they’re probably facing some kind of disciplinary action…
So this situation didn’t apply to me whatsoever, but I was still not able to sleep. I stood at my door for a good twenty minutes scared to death that the R.A. was going to go on some kind of tirade and kill us all. This guy’s known the whole building over for his short temper and even while I like to fuck with people sometimes to see what they’ll do, I know not to even bother where this R.A. is concerned. When I finally went back to bed, I still lay awake. Moments later my roommate came back to our room with his girlfriend and I could have sworn I heard them plotting what they were going to do if they did indeed get in trouble. I felt very uncomfortable, even though I wanted to laugh out loud because they finally got in trouble.
To make a long story short, which I obviously failed to do, I didn’t get to sleep until 5 AM. Another hour, and I could have seen Michelle Charlesworth on Eyewitness News Sunday Morning. Consequently, I didn’t roll out of bed until 2 PM, knowing full well the amount of work I have to do.
But everything will be all right, because in just a few days, I will be living it up with a certain someone…