Nighttime Ruminations

I've never been a very sound sleeper. In fact, despite what everyone thinks, I'm not very good at sleeping, even though I enjoy it so much. Once, a girl I was going out with karate chopped me in the neck while we were sleeping in bed, which is weirder than most things I'd done, until now.

Sure, I've pushed a girl out of bed before (I toss and turn a lot, hot huh?) and everyone knows the old pillow/marshmallow joke. My variation was dreaming about Rebecca Romijn while caressing a compatriots leg. Caressing, NOT HUMPING, as I've been accused. I'm a gentle man, not a dog. But these events were scattered over many years. Lately, my strange nighttime behavior has increased, and I've stopped eating anchovy pizzas before bed.

It all started with a dream a few months ago. I was a secret agent for Hugh Hefner, a double agent in fact, though I'm not sure who else I was working for. Definitely not the Reds though. It was me and this sergeant guy, and we'd hang out in Hugh's apartment. He no longer had the mansion, but instead lived on an old, beaten up couch in a modest apartment and lay under a blanket a lot. There were no playboy bunnies, and ol' Hugh didn't look so good. I don't quite remember the mission, but I ended up watching a weird muppet-like creature espousing the benefits of his new theology, or ideology. It might have had something to do with Communism, and he was convinced it was going to work, as he ambled along on a dirt road, carrying a giant tree trunk. Something about him, led me to believe it would!

Since then, I've dreamed I was on a river flume type ride, on a real river, riding a real log, past asian guys I knew in high school, calling them the wrong names even though it was the second time our paths crossed in that dream. That's just unacceptable, I mean it's not like it was the first time I saw them. From the log flume, I ended up in Sudan, hanging out with rebels, but friendly ones who liked candy and checkers. Maybe they were children. Then I had a bad feeling that we were being surrounded, I grabbed my friend Shiva out the bathroom where he was fixing his hair, went all invisible commando and ending up escaping. My next dream, the next night, sent me to the Amazon river, which had been relocated to Africa. Leaving the temple we were in, my band of 4 or 5 set off, when one man broke off and drove his pickup in the Amazon to find his way back to camp. But he went the wrong way. Meanwhile, I tried to capture dolphins with a hastily made net so they would lead us to camp. My efforts failed. The art director in the pickup came racing backwards up the river, yelling about ants and we had to get out of there. The doors to the temple were locked! The art director said we had to run to the sand, but I knew better. Ants hate water, but in fact love sand. With their swarming and buzzing getting closer, we lunged for the pickup and with the dolphins showing us the way, headed back to camp and safety. I hope.

But even these crazy dreams aren't that bad. I've always had strange, vivid and surreal dreams. What really got me was my sleepwalking. I was told about this later, but I left my room, walked down to the living room where my dad was sleeping on the couch bed, curled up on the side (which wasn't very comfortable because he was sleeping diagonal and his feet were in the way) and drifted back to sleep. The whole time, I kept saying, as if in a trance, Sleep, Sleep, Sleep, Sleep, Sleep, Sleep.

Eventually I was back in my bed, where I did indeed sleep, sleep, sleep. Just not very well.