I haven't been reporting to work for two full days. I had called in sick but I havent been sick at all. The reason why I had stayed home was that I felt like sleeping. This was not plain lethargy, but a real desperate need to sleep, but my idea had been defeated.
It was a bad time for me to have guests in the house, because I had to now share my room with a friend who snores with the sound of a concrete mixer. I believe the concrete mixer was working well over time through the night because I was still tossing in the bed at 7 in the morning. My head and back felt as though they were completely cast in concrete, my bedding and pillow felt like they were made out of concrete. If only my ears were rather filled with concrete. I had gone to bed in my cosy apartment bedroom, which had all of a sudden transformed into a concrete jungle.
The other friend was sleeping in the couch downstairs and I should tell you he is such a sadist. He brought along with himself 2 puppies. I am sure he wedges the puppies' tails between the toilet door, waits for me to slip into the slightest of stupor and then slams the door shut. The howling retrievers bring me back to rapt wakefulness. I was wondering if he would believe me, if I told him that I was trying to just push the puppies back into thier crate using the barbecue fork.
It was about this time that the concrete mixer flipped over to his side and the snoring stopped. I was going to pop champagne in celebration (trust me a bit of bubbly wouldnt have been such a bad idea if it would knock me off to bed.) , but the joy was shortlived. He was snoring again but his pitch was slightly different, this time like a blunt saw rasping through fine redwood. Just hearing the sonorous depth of the snore, you could almost trace the wind through his pipes. With your eyes closed you could see his epiglottis and uvula reverb in violent cacophonous protest to the flow of air, like they would be happier if he choked and died.
It is a complete misnomer that sleeplessness makes you drowsy and groggy. To the contrary it heightens all of your senses. Every nerve ending and synapse works with sheer electricity. When you are unable to sleep, you are aware of everything, every smallest discomfort is magnified as though under a huge lens. My pinky toe was hurting, my throat felt dry as though I had a spoonful of dry plaster, the room was getting too bright, the air was getting heavy to breathe, and despite the riotous snoring I could hear the floorboard creaking as I turned in bed and my beard was feeling itchy even though I had no beard. I wished I was hermetically sealed in something like a ziploc bag.
Now that sleeping seemed to have become a lost cause, I thought that it would be a good idea to lie awake in bed and perfect my coughing technique. I tried to come up with a convincing "cough" which I could use in front of my boss when I reported to work in the morning. I was contemplating between a gentle tuberculosis wheeze, a dry throaty cough, or a wet phlegmatic chesty one. The trick was to strike the appropriate balance of believability and drama. It was among one of these congested wheezes that sounded like the batteries had died on an old taperecorder that I had finally and gently slipped into sleep.
In almost cinematic climax as I was typing this down, my boss shows up to ask how I was doing. I was in brief shock making frantic efforts to minimize the windows. My voice box failed me as I tried to reply and the bewildered and speechless vocal chords rang an empty dissonance. It was like my throat had gone sore from 3 days of flu. In afterthought, I must have sounded convincingly sick.
