Asleep at the Wheel

There I was standing on the corner of 28th and Broadway in the dead of night with a pounding headache and a gun in my hand. Not again, I thought quietly to myself. Then much louder to myself, I thought SHIT FUCK GODDAMNIT!

This wasn't the first time I had gone out at night and found myself in an awkward situation. There was the time I found myself in the apartment of two half naked strippers (not hot night strippers, but your average daytime strippers) with a bong in one hand and a gyro in the other watching "Highlander." Then there was the time I was at the lake in my underwear soaking wet, my clothes on the far shore. More often than not, I'd wake up in the house. Once I was in the kitchen eating flour straight from the bag. Other times I'd be sitting ina cold bathtub or standing in front of the thermostat wondering how I got there.

The gun was also a not infrequent prop. I never shot it off. I kept the bullets in the box on the opposite nightstand. For some reason, I had never loaded the gun. Still, you don't want to get caught walking down a busy main drag at 3 a.m. with even a toy gun. Cops have a way of frowning on that sort of thing in the harshest possible way and they do load their guns.

Darla sent me an email about a man who killed his wife and claimed to be asleep through the whole thing. She thought that kind of thing funny. I suppose it is until you kill someone in your sleep. Who knows? Maybe it was all bullshit. That's what my shrink calls most of my problems. Bullshit. I like him. He doesn't even pretend to coddle me and my issues. That's not what I need, he says. "You need someone who will kick your ass." Darla thinks that's her job. Her job is more complicated than that.

I like frankness in a medical professional. Not in people in general you understand, just people whose job is honesty. Everyone else should practive an abbreviated form of honesty. Tell me what I need to know and leave it at that. If I've got a boog hanging out or my flies down, let me know. If you think I'm ugly or stupid, keep it to yourself.

Darla's not honest with herself and is therefore in no position to tell me the hard truths she thinks I need to hear from her. If she were truly honest, she'd tell me that under no circumstances will she ever have sex with me. She would tell me that she keeps me around as a security blanket. She'd tell me that if she ever got a boyfriend who didn't want her to be friends with me, she'd not only drop me in an instant, but try to make it look like my fault. She doesn't tell me these things because she isn't consciously aware of them. Darla's not atypical. It amazes me the sort of mental gymnastics people perform so they don't have to acknowledge that they're shitheels.

I don't mean to sound like a misanthrope. I only hate people about half the time. The other half the time I'm watching TV. TV is great. At least it's the great equalizer. The people on TV treat everyone in the audience the same. And when you're afraid to go to sleep, agoraphobic and broke, TV is always there. People on TV seem like they'd be really nice if you ever met them. They seem like they'd be friends with a guy like me if only grudgingly. I'd be the wacky neighbor or the weird guy upstairs or something. More likely, I'd be the guy everyone hates because he got pissed off that they kept playing hackysack in front of his living room window so they come up with a clever plan to get back at him. Everybody on "Friends" would probably make fun of me behind my back and not even apologize for it at the end of the episode after having learned a valuable lesson about treating people fairly. I have no delusions about how cool I am.

I also have no delusions about how nice I am. I don't aspire to nice and I don't like nice people. I don't trust nice people. Nice people will let you use their toilet with a forced smile and then clean the hell out of it the second you leave. Nice people will treat you like a member of the family when you come to pick up their daughter for a date, then threaten to cut her out of the will if she doesn't dump your monkey ass pronto. Nice people can go fuck themselves.

Sometimes at night or whenever I pass out, I dream about all the nice people I've known. Good religious people. Teachers. Friends. I'll dream that I am seeing them for the first time in years and we talk. Sometimes it goes well. Mostly I just relive old injustices. Then I wake up some place I know I didn't fall asleep at.

One night I was dreaming about my old English teacher. He used to encourage me to write any time I was emotional. He liked reading my stuffn and was a real good guy. It didn't bother me that everyone said he was a fag or anything. In my dream he tries to blow me. He never did that before and I had no reason to suspect him except for this dream. I woke up with some new friends one night at the bowling alley. It was Cosmic Bowling night. They turn off all the lights except for a few blacklights that reflect off glittering shit on the ceilings. I bowled three and a half games with a 110 average. Not bad for a somnambulist. I think there must have been some connection between blowing and bowling that my sleeping brain made. Best not to dwell on it, I suppose. The really odd thing was that I seemed to be getting along pretty well with the community college kids I was playing with until I woke up. So I left. No point overstaying your welcome by more than a few minutes.

That used to be my greatest personality flaw ... besides being a dick. I never had any clue when it was a good idea to leave. I'd be having a good time at a friend's house and then I'd linger waiting for the good times to just keep on rolling. They never do and the smart house guest knows it is best to leave BEFORE things start to slow down so people always want more of you. It's a fine line for some people between life of the party and "the weird guy." No one should ever have to tell you "sorry to have to kick you out" because once they say that, it's too late to leave with dignity. Always leave before things die out or you'll look like a desperate freak.

The other side of the coin is to live like a shut-in. When you just can't figure people out, it's tempting to stop trying. Why leave the house on a Saturday night when you've got a fridge full of food and a TV with friendly faces? The bars, malls, restaurants and movie theaters are full of hostile REAL people who look at you with distrust and disgust.

If you look, really look into people's faces, it's a wonder they can keep going. There is so much sadness in everyone's eyes I think I can feel it myself. The funny thing is that a lot of people don't even know it themselves. Maybe I'm wrong.