Manufacturing Zs

I haven’t been sleeping well. I assume that most people go through phases of insomnia and restlessness and many times it’s a direct reflection of the curve of anxiety in their daily lives. I’ve been feeling a bit of stress lately; mainly in relation to the next step in the grand-but-sketchy career plan I’ve laid out. I routinely find myself waking to look in the mirror after 12-15 snoozes, looking ten years older than before I went to bed, with no time to shower.

Everyone, of course, has quirks in sleeping routines. My college roommate and close friend, Caroline, used to triangulate blankets around her face so that only her nose and mouth were exposed. I’ve been made aware of some habits as well—most recently by Amy, my bedmate for an upstate wedding, who let me in on some of the conversations I was having with myself in the wee morning hours. Once, during high school I had a dream that the boys I babysat regularly, had locked me in their hall closet. My dad was watching a movie downstairs and heard my pleas for release, as I had walked into my own bedroom closet and was banging my fists again the wall.

The answer for me is simple. I sleep best with weight. A friend once told me that W.H. Auden was known for taking pictures off the wall and putting them on top of his comforter when he was a guest in someone’s home. It would be a dream for me to fashion a blanket out of those torso X-Ray vests that dentists make you wear when they photograph molars. In this summer heat, however with or without AC, I simply cannot pile on the fleece and down. It is just too goddamn hot.

This week in reaction to my broken habits I’ve had a series of insane dreams. This morning, in fact, I awoke from my very first wedding dream. I’ve never quite imagined the act of getting married in a big white dress. I’m always a bit jarred when a woman says she’s been thinking of her wedding since she was six, or seems to react to someone else’s wedding story with an overabundance of her own preferences. I was certainly a girly girl—my mother was tolerant enough to indulge me from ages 4 to 10 when I refused to wear anything but dresses, with ruffles and tulle please—but I’ve never really imagined myself in a long white gown and longer aisle.

This morning however, in the midst of my Zs, I was a very angry bride. I was yelling because one of my hypothetical and unrecognizable bridesmaids had decided to go swimming in a river in my wedding dress. She claimed she didn’t realize it was mine. “Of course it’s mine, it’s the poofy white one!” I yelled. Meanwhile my hypothetical and unrecognizable husband was lounging at the end of the buffet table eating some grapes in the nude.

I’m half tempted to march to the closest book store and buy a book on dream analysis in order to deconstruct the seething bride I became just before the alarm this morning. Regardless, I think tonight I’ll pull up the living room rug, futon mattress, and maybe even the coffee table and try to balance them on top of my covers.

A Clean Getaway

I endured a bad date last night. I wasn’t looking forward to the night, I hadn’t really even thought about it ahead of time—All pre-date interaction led me to think that he was a very nice person, intelligent, and well-intentioned. So I agreed.

I made the mistake of running after work in the 90 degree heat. My standard four mile route took over 45 minutes, leaving me only 20 minutes to shower, stick some clothing to my sweaty torso, and hustle to the bar. I arrived with a red face and mop of hair, sweating like I’d just finished a series of interval sprints. Outside the bar, one of my acquaintances from the Brooklyn Inn pool table was having a beer, a man named Claude who is quite attractive despite a dead front tooth. We exchanged hellos and I resigned myself to head into the trenches.

The conversation was just fine, pleasant enough for a bar exchange. The discomfort creeped in when ten minutes into our beers he said, “So I hope you like this bar, I was hoping for somewhere romantic.” I cleared my throat, “Yeah sure, it’s very air conditioned.” I excused myself to the bathroom and when I returned my date had resettled himself in the corner of the couch where I had been sitting, his feet elevated on the chair he had formerly occupied, and his arm stretched over the top of the couch leaving me no place to sit but under it.

Simultaneously the bar’s “Singer/Songwriter” open mike began. A man started strumming and singing a song about a condom breaking. I attempted to hunch my back so that there was no chance of touching my date’s arm. To my right at the bar, a man was playing one of those nudie matching games where you have two photographs of semi-naked women side-by-side and you have to identify the small differences between the images by touching the screen. The nudie game blipped every once and a while and the singer held a long note “Laaaa-aaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaatex.” My date turned to me and muttered “So how do think this date is going so far.” I could see Claude outside talking to some people in a convertible. I wanted to sprint past him and hop in, Dukes of Hazard style, screaming “Let’s make a clean getaway.”

I managed to finally wiggle out of the evening at 11 pm when it was still about 115 degrees, and my date wanted to hit another bar and “maybe play a game of pool.” I thought to myself “no way, not at my Brooklyn Inn, what would all the contractors, ex navy-guys, alcoholic teachers, and aging hipsters think?” Instead I trotted home and collapsed on the couch.

All-in-all I really hadn’t felt like an interesting or pleasant date. My energy for conversation slowly leaked out, deflated by the heat, surroundings, and attention. I wasn’t sure why my companion wanted to continue the evening, to me it was clear that the thing called “chemistry” was buzzing no where near the air between us. As so many songs preach and women’s magazines try to advise, chemistry is indeed unexplainable. I suppose part of that unknown is quite exhilarating at times. Other times, I kind of wish we could devise a system where we hold up a score card like a figure skating judge. Earlier in the night, when my date was playing the air-drum to the condom song, I would have held up a 2 and he would have known that things were going downhill. He could have protected himself a little.

Maybe next time I’ll just perform the gesture of a knife cutting my throat and the boy will get the picture. Though on the other hand, maybe next time I’ll be the pushy romantic attempting to impress with a candlelit bar, big vocabulary, and experiments in performing arts. I guess you never know when you’ll pop up on one end of the see-saw or the other.

Buy Me Some Peanuts and Crackerjacks®

On Friday night I hopped a train to watch the Phillies in their new home with my cousin and her boyfriend. It was my first baseball game of the summer, and I was excited to wash down a hot dog with some watery beer and feel the breeze off the field, under the bright lights.

I love baseball. I remember the first time I walked onto the upper deck of Memorial Stadium and what a brilliant display the diamond seemed from above. It was nothing like the foreshortened pitcher-batter relationship on TV. At that time the Orioles teambase was a Ripken family operation. Two brothers on the field and a father coaching felt comfortable, it felt like something close to small town little league, it even felt heroic. Of course I was only 10 years old at the time.

There is no doubt that Veterans' Stadium needed to be updated from its one-size fits all, seats and cement as far as the eye can see image. And I guess someone decided the war veterans would continue to be honored by the parking lot that now hosts Hummers, BMWs, and pick-up trucks. I now realize I simply wasn’t prepared for the glory that awaited me in Citizens Bank Park—” Philadelphia's spectacular new ballpark.”

The stadium is indeed comfortable, I believe the seats are wider to accommodate the growing size of the average American. I satisfied my hot dog and beer craving and tried to nestle into the game. The first unfamiliar stadium feature I noticed was the neverending row of TVs placed approximately every 5 feet, and mounted to the mezzanine overhang. I suppose that having the actual game in direct view as well as several massive screens for replays and advertisements isn’t enough to accommodate today’s baseball fans.

A few moments later the true focus of this stadium hit me like an F train at midnight. First an onslaught of Independence Blue Cross replays, then a segment of theTurkey Hill Fan Cam, followed by several CocaCola jingles on the big screens and a Fuji Film game recap. The enormous fluorescent Liberty-shaped bell sitting atop the Citzens Bank Park logo began to feel like it was boring a hole into my head and when “Take me out to the ballgame” was curtailed in the seventh inning stretch in lieu of a Turkey Hill Kiss Cam I began to feel truly antsy.

The game came to a close. Atlanta pounded the Phillies with three homers and more than a handful of runs. But the 45,000 red white and blue clad fans still had a fireworks show to look forward to. Advertisements for various other sponsors flew by on the big screens and then finally the bright lights were dimmed for a celebration of good ol’ America. I’ll admit the stadium looked lovely in the low light and the fireworks held my attention for a few big booms while Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown” played (familiar to the public at large as "that song from the Beef commercials"). Then I realized that the hundreds of small TVs hung from the mezzanine overhang were featuring an episode of Dr. Phil.

The music heigtened into Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” and Dr. Phil shook his finger at a woman who had an obsession with Brad Pitt, a woman who had cut pictures of Brad Pitt out of magazines and put them in frames next to her bed.

At the next “Cuz there ain’t no doubt I love this land,” I had to leave; I needed some fresh non-patriotic air. My cousin and I wandered out into the acres of parking lot and searched for her car, while most of the redwhiteandblue families cuddled up to eachother under the warm lights of fireworks and Dr. Phil.

We managed to find our car before most of the crowd, yet we sat in traffic waiting to exit the parking lot for nearly an hour and a half. I closed my eyes in the backseat while my cousin explained more of the rules of baseball to her Polish boyfriend. Thirty mintues later I announced that I was officially writing a letter to the city to request more Turkey Hill exits and atleast a dozen Independence Blue Cross cops to guide traffic after the games.

I wish I could articulate the specific sadness that one experiences when you realize that childhood perceptions were either completely naïve or inspired by a very specific and archaic era. In many ways it seems natural that cities change, business ebbs and flows, and money continues to drive many aspects of human life. On Friday night the ebb and flow began to give me a headache, but I tried not to wallow in it. In fact I sat in the backseat of my cousin’s Isuzu Trooper, thought about Dr. Phil’s advice and drank a Coke.