the tension, the existance

I wake up at four in the morning sweating all over the sheets, teary-eyed, nauseous, burning sensation in my chest.

The only sounds were the leak in the shower head dripping into the tub, the buzzing refrigerator, and a not-so-distant train whistle.

I cough, belch, and feel a sneeze gaining momentum in my nasal cavity, but my mucous membranes have decided they aren’t irritated enough, so the sneeze temporarily withdraws.

I lie in bed, waiting for that paralyzing sleep, as the drip drip drip from the showerhead reminds me of all those World War II B-movies where the Japanese tortured our POWs by dripping water onto their foreheads.

Drip, drip, drip. 

I hear the guy upstairs moving around.

I can even hear him pissing into his toilet; you really know you’re living in a cheap piece of crap when you can listen to the guy above you pissing into the toilet.

He flushes.

He might as well be flushing my toilet; that’s how loud it is.

He turns on his TV; another poor b*****d is kept awake by the voices taunting him in his head. 

I try sleeping on my right side, my left side, on my back, flat on my stomach, left side, right side, fetal position, two pillows, three pillows, no pillows, one pillow stuffed between my legs, covers kicked to the foot of the bed, just a sheet and a blanket, two blankets over my head, under my chin, under my arm.  Why are my arms always in the way whenever I try to sleep?

The guy upstairs has got the blender going.

Margaritas at five in the morning?  A milkshake?  What the hell could he be pureeing at this hour of the f*****g morning?

Oh, good, now the birds are awake.

Is that a woodpecker?

Sounds like a drum roll on the bark.

And now the guy upstairs has decided that his carpet needs a going over with the vacuum at five-thirty in the morning.

Christ, with that kind of suction power, he ought to be able to suck the dirt right out of my carpet, too.

Deep breaths.

They say if you close your eyes and take deep breaths, it’ll help you get to sleep.

In through the nose, out through the mouth, in through the nose, out through the mouth.

Now, the cockapoo next door is whimpering for her breakfast; that’s nice.

And somebody on the other side of my bedroom wall is doing jumping jacks, calisthenics, or Zumba. Suddenly, people are rising and shining and taking showers and flushing toilets and making breakfast and opening and closing cabinets and drawers and closet doors and medicine cabinets and locking their front doors and walking down three, four, five, six flights of stairs in high heels and steel-toed boots and opening and slamming car doors, and igniting their cars, sometimes two or three times before the engine finally turns over.

Tires squeal and crawl across loose gravel, and garbage trucks lift dumpsters and empty them of refuse.

Later that day, I got a message on my answering machine from the management of my apartment complex.

“Somebody reported a disturbance coming from your area last night. They said there was some dancing or jumping around going on. A television apparently was being played loudly, as well as some very aggressive vacuuming.  If you know anything about this, please give us a call at your earliest convenience, and thank you for your cooperation.”