When Wood Attacks

When I moved to the city for the first time, I couldn�t sleep for two weeks. I had an apartment on the 17th floor of this high-rise building downtown. A block to the left was an office building with a gigantic bell tower at the top that would ring once an hour. Every time that thing would go off, I thought the Russians were attacking or something. How could an entire city of people have been listening to that fucking thing every hour all this time and not taken serious measures to destroy it?

A block to the right was the Aramark tower with its huge glowing red neon A that shone like a evil beacon directly into my retinas no matter what position I was in or what part of my tiny apartment I tried to escape to.

A block straight ahead was city hall with its clock tower and statue of the city�s founder. It was a beautiful sight during the day, but at night the clock would glow bright yellow and give my apartment the feeling of perpetual sunrise.

Then, of course, there was the noise. I lived in the bar neighborhood, so there were always loud drunken idiots screaming and yelling at all hours of the night, stumbling into the street in front of speeding cars that would slam on their breaks, screech to a stop and blow their horn in aggravation.

For two weeks, I spent every night sitting up in bed and wondering what in the hell I�d done with my life. After two weeks I got my first paycheck from my job at Starbuck�s, and I went out and finally bought curtains for the windows and earplugs for my ears. And sleep came with a sigh of relief.

The noise, or the memory of it anyway thanks to my earplugs, still had its effects. I used to dream about being in traffic or waiting at stoplights with the sounds of traffic in the background. One night, I dreamt of being a spy on the run. I had stolen something, something important, and the people chasing me wanted it back desperately. I was on foot, running through the streets, dodging cars and light posts, and trying to keep ahead of the van load of pissed off people coming after me. The van was always inches away from crushing me like a bug, but never caught up to me. I must have been running at 60 miles per hour, or the van�s top speed was 3. Dreams are stupid.

In any case, I rounded a street corner too fast for the van to make the turn and it slammed into a gas station. The explosion threw me to the street and blew the van 100 feet in the air, directly above me. I watched as it started to fall and knew I didn�t have time to get up and run away, I�d have to roll over a few times to get out of its line of descent. I rolled and rolled in my dream. I rolled and rolled in bed as well, until I rolled right off the bed, hit my head on the nightstand, and fell on the hardwood floor.

I woke up laughing hysterically, unable to stop long enough to explain to my boyfriend why I was lying on the floor in a puddle of sweat and rubbing a big red bump on my forehead.

This morning I did almost the same thing, except I don�t remember the dream and now I keep a bookcase next to the bed. This morning, when I rolled, I rolled into the bookcase, slammed my head against the shelf and bounced back into bed where I landed in basically my normal sleeping position. I waited for SP to ask what happened, but he slept through the entire event. For some reason, it�s not quite as funny this time. I feel no relief from having dodged death and a flaming van, and I feel no silly embarrassment at having to explain to someone why I�m lying on the floor and holding my head in my hands. I feel only my usual desperate need for coffee and Advil, only this time my headache was brought on by something other than sinuses or alcohol.

This time I was attacked by wood first thing in the morning. When the actuaries at work ask about the red bump on my forehead, I�ll tell them I was attacked by �morning wood� and see how they react. Given their general sense of anxiety around me since I�m the only homosexual any of them have ever known, I can�t imagine what they�ll think � only I know no one will get it. To them, it�ll be just another awkward conversation with the office fag which ends with him giggling uncontrollably and them wondering what makes gay people giggle so much.