I am very much in love with bed, pillows, blankets, pajamas, and all other things having to do with sleep, but since Iâve been sick all week (yes, still) I have been coming home early from work and taking a nap right away, and then when itâs actually time to go to bed, at night, for day-job purposes, Iâm all laying awake with dry-eye, blinking and rolling over and unable to get comfortable and totally, annoyingly alert. I should be snoring delicately in my bed right now, instead of eating cookies and grimacing at the clock not-at-all delicately right now. Iâve checked my email. Iâve watched a DVD. Iâve read a book. Thereâs nothing to do but update my journal.
Yeah, man, Iâm such a wimp. I donât remember the last time I stayed up past midnight. Maybe a couple of months ago to watch a movie? I kind of miss it. I was just thinking about how I used to spend the night at my friend Amyâs house every single weekend for most of my junior and senior years of high school, just sitting around in the air conditioning and talking and putting her boyfriendâs name up on the ceiling above her bed in glow-in-the-dark stars. I canât believe we didnât sneak out and walk around the Key more oftenâŚexcept I totally can, because I was and remain such a good kid that anyone who spends any time with me at all automatically becomes a good kid too. Of course, now that I think about it we did go to the beach sometimes, although I hardly think it could be called sneaking out because we just went through the front door with no fanfare.
One time, the first summer I was home from college, I was up sort of latish in my old room, and there was a knock on the window from a boy I had liked in high school who didnât quite like me back, who was coming by to talk to me and tell me he was sorry he hadnât liked me, and could we please be friends again? We could, and we still are today. We walked around the island that night, that summer, a couple of times, being nineteen years old and talking about everyone we knew and everything weâd done and said and thought about our first years at college, although he hadnât gone as far away from home as I had. He smoked the whole time we walked and I wore a shirt with a manatee on it in the wet Florida breezes. There was a house going up at the end of my block and we went inside the half-finished rooms and balanced on what would become the roof rafters and sat and looked at what stars we could see through the construction beams and the street lights. I still see that house every time Iâm home for Christmas, white and lovely with its Spanish tile and bouganvillea, and I wonder if the people who live there now have any idea about the late night I spent in the skeleton of their master bathroom.
In college of course I went to parties and stayed up all night skinny-dipping or just talking in peoplesâ dormsâŚnever studying, though, it was a point of pride with me (huh?) that I never stayed up past midnight to study or write a paper. I was at an all-night prayer vigil once, during the precarious zenith of my career as a Teen Evangelist, and I remember thinking that our prayers were enveloping the entire campus in a net of light, that if we clenched our fists hard enough and closed our eyes tightly enough, thenâŚsomething, something would happen, the way we were trying to live our lives would have meaning, the beliefs we espoused would make some more sense in the context we were in. I remember praying passionately for the conversion to Christianity of my long-suffering and very patient shaven-headed roommate, poor girl, who never held such things against me and taught me more about forgiveness and grace than any of the other teen evangelists, with their Vision Teams and spiritual retreats and earnest, twisted worship songs.
When I wasnât praying I was very often painting sets for a theater production at four oâclock in the morning or playing Suck-and-Blow and French-a-Wench on one of the playing fields or urban spelunking in the townâs storm drain system. Talk about terrifying. I was very much in love with several of the nerds from the engineering school across the street who were really into that at the time, and so of course I asked to go along with them even though it was pretty scar, such was my need to fit in with that group. What you did was get some knee pads and headlamps and wait until about three oâclock, and then go up past the grocery store, on Baseline, I think, and wait by a certain manholeâŚunobtrusively, as if there is anything unobtrusive at all, in any way, about a gaggle of twenty year olds in climbing gear just sort of loitering around trying hard not to look sneaky. Anyway, you had to sort of get the manhole cover off, and then all fifteen of you had to somehow lower yourselves, one by one, down into the drain. Then came the scary part, where you had to scootch down a very narrow tube on your butt, like so narrow that you couldnât sit up, and you couldnât go backwards and get back to the manhole if you got scared. Everyone whoâd done it before would assure you that youâd get to the end of the tube and be able to stand up in the main tunnel, but it was a really uncomfortable and breathless ten minutes, eyes closed very tightly, trying to get to the end of the tube, screaming a little in your head but trying not to look uncool in front of all the geeks. Youâd careen through the main tunnels, through ankle deep water (just rain runoff, not, like, raw sewage or anything. I think.) and the geeks would try to measure the time their echoes came back to them and eventually you came out at a big reservoir and could walk all the way back to the dorms, giggling and leaping around, proud and subversive, wanting everyone to know what youâd done but also wanting to keep the memory private, of being down underneath the small city where no one could find you and you could be quietly brave and adventuresome.
Usually we went in a big group but one time, I donât remember why, Anna and I went alone, and I felt so cool being with just her, without any of the tall geeky boys that usually took us with them on these expeditions. I was so impressed that she knew the way and could get us to where we wanted to go; I knew I never could have done it. I forget what we talked about or if it was any different that night in the tunnels but I do remember the long walk back from the reservoir with her, the silver gray clouds and the absolute power of being by ourselves, without the boys, tired and dirty and triumphant, all alone in the foothills in the middle of the night. I still have some old pictures of some of the times that we all went in a group together, in a box on one of the shelves of my closet, but I canât look at them because seeing all those eighteen, nineteen, twenty year old faces of the people I know now as spouses and parents and good responsible citizens sort of kills me. I havenât seen some of those faces for almost ten years, and some of those faces I wonât ever see again, underground or otherwise.
Itâs just really different to be up late by yourself, at thirty, with a stuffed up head and chapped lips, wishing violently you could get to sleep because you really need to get up for work in the morning and you really want to be healthy for your stupid party this weekend. I canât help wishing I were with people I love right now, giggling and passing the cookie bag, playing MASH or Spin the Bottle, or deciding to make a poster with a stuffed duck attached to it for a boy we like in the dorm across the way, because, as everyone knows, boys love posters with stuffed ducks attached. I wish I were sitting on the couch with someone dangerously magnetic, feeling the seconds slip by and feeling the space between our side-by-side arms grow smaller and smaller with every minute, knowing that the kiss is on its way, soon, now, any minute now, my god, what time is it? Itâs really late, are you sure youâll be okay to go home? You can justâŚstay here if you want. You know, on the couch. Or whatever, whatever you want. I wish I was at the beach at home, walking up to the lighthouse on the packed sand and wondering if itâs sea turtle season yet, watching the cool light on the water, all alone in the middle of the night.