It’s really late and I can’t sleep. Too many of life’s logistics buzzing around in my head.  I’ve been trying everything from watching reality TV to doing yoga.  Nothing’s working.  It occurs to me that every time a have an orgasm I get really tired so I  start a prerecorded Survivor episode.  It’s day 15 of the competition and a few of the women haven’t yet devolved into that unattractive emaciated state. Catch them day 30 and you’d think you’re watching a holocaust documentary on public television.  I try to get into it but we live in a New York apartment so I can’t help thinking about my proximity to the family.  Totally kills it. So much for the Al Bundy strategy.  I look in the pantry for some kind of herbal tea but we only have the ones that wake you up.  I go into the girl’s room to make sure they’re covered up.  Thing 2 is completely under the polka dot blanket.  I peel it back from over her head.  She opens her eyes and screams, “Bees, there’s bees in here.” Then she pulls the cover back and goes to sleep.  This wakes Thing 1 up momentarily, “Daddy, are we going to grandpa’s house now?”.   “No, I can’t sleep.” I’m halfway hopping to spark up a conversation to keep me company.   She also returns to sleep.  Alone again.  I wander back into the living room.  I check my email.  Only email newsletters that I haven’t figured out how to unsubscribe from.  I decide to call my old Australian buddy Lachie.  It should be early afternoon in Sydney about now.  He’s answers but I wake him up because he’s in London with a bunch of other Aussie broadcasters inspecting the Olympic preparations.  He does managed to tell me how drunk he got the night before at the Claridge’s hotel bar where he met Roger Waters of the Moody Blues.  Waters is bringing back “The Wall” which is presently the biggest grossing tour out there.  Lachie says Waters is still trying to look cool at 68 in his strategically distressed jeans and tight black tee shirt. I think that sounds a lot like Lachie but I don’t say anything.  He’s much younger and still has an ass, so that wouldn’t be fair.  Why is it that men in their sixties suffer from disappearing ass syndrome? There should be research done and maybe a benefit to raise money for it.  Waters should donate his tour funds to it.  Tragic condition.  I let Lachie go back to sleep and I Google, “best butt exercises”.  I find one called the “Michael Douglas”.   It seems that around the time of the movie Basic Instinct, an exercise was developed to counteract the gluteal sagging Michael suffered on-screen during one of his love making scenes with Sharon Stone.  I do as many as I can before getting a cramp.

Lachie’s story reminds me of a business trip I took to Dublin once where I also got really drunk and passed out in my bed very late before an early morning flight.  I got completed undressed and laid my cloths out on the floor to save time when the wake-up  call came.  I couldn’t have been asleep more than an hour or two when I heard someone entering the room.  I thought it was the cleaning lady and I quickly asked her to come back later but the footsteps kept getting closer in the darkness.  I yelled out again but only heard a grunting sound in reply.  Now I was getting concerned.  I turned on the side table light and was horrified by the unsettling sight of  a 250 pound, sweating, drunk, incoherent, naked, Irishman standing at the foot of my bed holding an ice bucket (that’s 113 kilos for all you metric system readers).  I shouted at him to get the F$#ck out but he only shouted back at me, “Alice, where’s Alice?!”,  I told him I didn’t know where Alice was and to once again, “ GET THE F#$@K OUT OF MY ROOM!”  He wouldn’t budge and was getting increasingly agitated.  I clearly needed to confront  him from a position of strength, not lying down under my covers.  I rose to get out but at that moment I realized that for the first time in over a decade I had gone to bed naked.  I was at an inflection point.  Either I was going take the flight to him or he was going to crawl into my bed and do whatever he and Alice customarily do.  I wasn’t going to tolerate a spooning session with this drunk bastard so I popped up, stood high above him on my bed and roared out succinct directions to the exit, much like the bitchy male flight attendants on the New York to Chicago shuttle flight I often take. I think I even firmly planted one fist on my hip like a capeless Superman.  It must have made an impression because he stopped yelling and made a slight motion for the door.  That was my opening and I leaped off the bed and starting pushing him towards the exit, all the while trying to maintain as much distance as possible between our exposed nether regions.   It must have looked like a cross between a Jackass movie and a cage flight at a nudist colony. I quietly thanked god there were no spectators.  I finally got him out into the hallway and shut the door behind. I would have yelled, “don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out”, but that would have been too disrespectful to the door.   I looked out the fish eye peep hole at him.  He look bewildered and started calling  for Alice again.  I felt slightly sorry for him.  He was alone, confused and carrying on like Marlin Brando calling out for Stella, and what was I doing besides cowering behind my locked door?  I quickly got over those sentiments and called the front deck to report him as serious security threat.   This was only months after 9/11 so I can’t say  I was surprised by the speed and force he was removed from the premises by the cops.  Later,  in a more lucid movement, I managed to piece it all together.  As best I could tell,  he had been staying with his girlfriend in the room next door and went out for ice…naked.  Upon returning he must have mistakenly entered my room because I’d apparently left the door ajar from when I came home toasted the night before.  Even in his stupor, he must have come to the logical conclusion he was entering the right room.

Remembering all this gives me an idea.  I take off all my cloths and walk into our bedroom and gently call out, “Honey, are you asleep?” She looks up all groggy and says, “GET YOUR CLOTHS BACK ON OR GET THE F#@CK OUT OF THIS ROOM!”  Lets just say I’m not un-sympathetic.