I like to think that I stopped sleeping when she stopped loving me, but that would be impossible. You see, we only had one thing in common, we both loved her. Not much to build a life on, I agree. But still, I could sleep until... until near the end when I would lie awake and jealously watch her dreaming face, knowing that she did not dream of the hollow hearts we showed one another.
That was months ago, too far for me to really imagine, I have to construct it from bits and pieces, like a dream. I don�t sleep. Did I tell you that already? Well, I don�t. At least I can�t sleep by myself, I can only sleep with a woman beside me. Ah, now you think I�m crazy. It shows. Don�t worry, I think that myself alot, too much really. I mean, what does it mean, what could it mean. I don�t know. I don�t sleep, not much at least.
I didn�t notice at first, kinda funny when you think of it. I�d just stay awake all night. Oh, I felt tired, the kind of bone weariness that rest or sleep don�t help. It�s always been difficult for me to get to sleep, like a little kid afraid I�d miss it if I closed my eyes. But something happened during the time I was with her, and now I need someone to sleep with. Not that! Sex is easy enough to get, just follow the rules and you�ll get it. The mating ritual. No, but that�s what they all think when I ask, beg, plead, weak and weary, �please sleep with me.�
It is too much to ask, really. Too much to lie vulnerable with a stranger, to open up your dreams where he may eavesdrop. None of them will do it. Oh, sometimes you can find a woman asleep at a bus terminal or airport and sneak into the seat beside her, for a few minutes, sometimes for an hour, enough to go on. Though I don�t know why I go on. It�s like that opera, the Flying Dutchman, Wagner I think. He keeps trying to sail somewhere against a storm, forever against the same storm. But every hundred years or so he gets shoreleave, and if he can find a faithful woman then the storm goes away. So I guess he sails against a storm for a hundred years just on the hope that next time he�ll find her. In the opera he finds her, which makes him free, but she kills herself, so I don�t see the point. It�s not like he has anywhere to go, its been centuries, and wouldn�t he feel guilty, he�d have no hope of being free of that. I don�t think he had a choice, but I�d have chosen the storm again.
The hospitals are on to me. Before, I could visit a comatose lady, I�d sleep for an hour or two, then read to her. It must be lonely to be asleep all of the time. There was only a Bible there, I�m not religious, but I figured she was, so I read it. Well, I looked for parts that were interesting, and read them. The only one I remember was "Fool, don�t you know that tonight your soul is required of you!" That struck me as strange, that a soul should be required. I didn�t get a chance to read more because I went to see a doctor about my insomnia, he was a meat doctor. He couldn�t find anything wrong, so he sent me to a meat-in-the-head doctor. They both gave me pills, lots of pills. They didn�t help, I want to sleep, not be knocked out with some chemical baseball bat. So, I told the head doctor that I could sleep when I was with a woman. And I asked him about that line from the Bible. He just wanted to have me locked up, he said I might be dangerous. That worried me, and I didn�t try to sleep for days, thinking about it.
I guess what I miss most are the dreams. I read books about them sometimes, to try to make up for not having any. It doesn�t really help. I found one once with lots of odd pictures, alchemy drawings, by Jung I think. It was kind of funny to think of alchemists dreaming, was that where they found gold? But there were a lot of pictures with one man and one woman, working together on alchemy. It makes some kind of sense, if they were doing alchemy in their dreams, wouldn�t they have to sleep together? The book said that they each carried the other�s soul. Maybe I just need someone to carry my soul while I sleep. But what of the line from the Bible, that tonight my soul is required of me?
� 1996 Troy W. Pierce