Wanna Sleep With Me? (Cigar Smoke 12-31-09)

Would you like to sleep with me? (Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you spill your coffee.) Actually, I’ve asked that question to many women over the years and, of course, they assumed that I meant would they like to have sex with me, and their answers have ranged from “With you?” to offensively feminine finger-pointing pissy laughter to being nailed on the side of the head with a purse to having to excuse myself before the police came — and once, to having to dodge projectile vomiting.

OK, forget the sex thing. I get it. I’m talking about actual sleep. I seem to have a few quirks when I get in the sack. (And that’s not counting that spaced-out country music groupie in Bakersfield 30 years ago who mistook me for Buck Owens.)

Here’s what I do when I get in bed. First of all, I have to wear boxer shorts. I cannot sleep in briefs. I just can’t do it. And I can’t sleep naked because of the restraining order. And I can’t wear pajamas ever since I went to college and wore them once and my so-called buddies ripped them up and waited until I got back from my classes to burn them in front of me. And I can’t wear a T-shirt. Just boxer shorts. Only boxer shorts. Big, loose, oversize boxer shorts.

And once I am actually in bed I have a set of rituals I must go through before I can even think about going to sleep. I am not joking here. I have to do the following. And in this particular order. No variance at all. Variance is for sissies. First of all, I have to sigh and moan. I just lie down and it seems as if the weight of the world lies down with me. And I sigh and I kind of moan “Oh, God, that feels good.” And I throw in a couple of other moans just because that is always what I do.

Then I consciously start addressing various body parts that need attention. My back is always first. I have a chronically bad back, and I have to press it down into the bed until it hurts. And it hurts every damn night, and I keep pressing it harder and harder into the mattress and the hurt kind of feels good and I moan out a few Oh, Gods to somebody — I’m not sure who.

Then I take the heel of my right foot and push on the inside of my left knee maybe three or four times. I’ve had two operations on that knee and it, like me, is somehow just not right. So when I push it with my heel that stretches it out — and the pain is both expected and welcome. And then I moan just a little louder than my back moan.

Then I take my right heel and continue down below the knee to my left calf. And then I massage my left calf a few times to take the pressure off of it, and it seems to relax me. And then, because I want to be fair, I take my left heel and go over and massage my right calf so it won’t feel neglected. I am not making this up. I do this, dammit. Every night.

Then I take one heel and put it in the ball of one foot and massage the bottom of that foot and then take the other heel and massage the bottom of the other foot. This allows me to draw one final moan-sigh out of my excuse for a functioning body. “Oh, God, that feels good.”

Then I pull the covers up around my neck and tuck the left covers under my left cheek really securely, and then I tuck the right covers under my right cheek, and it’s all very snug and tight like a Boy Scout mummy bag. It makes me feel, well, toasty. And then I rub my bare chest vigorously for a few seconds, and just before my chest hair catches on fire, I stop and enjoy the warmth.

Now, I move into my final phase. (No, not senility.) I interlace my fingers and rest them on my toasty chest and start to crack my knuckles. But I don’t just crack my knuckles. No, I count the number of successful cracks for each hand. For some reason, I can crack more of the fingers on my right hand than on my left hand. Usually I crack, maybe, three fingers on my right hand and only two on my left. Only rarely does my left hand ever win. And even rarer still are the nights when I successfully crack all my fingers. I think this has only happened three or four times in the last 10 years. And when it did happen, I was so excited I had a hard time going to sleep. But, like I said, that hardly ever happens.

Usually, I finish my knuckle-cracking ritual and I give one final sighing moan to the gods of sleep, and I lie perfectly still and let myself metaphorically melt into the bed like a drunk Zen guy. And I fall asleep within 30 seconds. Like a damn clock, baby.

Next week, I’ll tell you how I brush my teeth.