Sleepy (yeah i know...bad title)

Take pants off, throw shirt towards pile. Pull covers back, climb into bed…Move around…get the positioning right. Put that pillow here, this pillow there. Head down. Close eyes…oh, I need to remember to do that tomorrow. I should write that down so I don’t forget, but I’ll lose momentum, just…remember to do that, remember to do that…but if I forget, then it’ll screw all that up, and that will take forever to fix…remember to do that…well that might screw me but I’m not getting up. By thinking about it this much I’ll surely remember. Stop thinking. Stop worrying…sleep. Okay…empty my brain, just don’t think about anything…um…now I am thinking about not thinking about anything. Let me just go wherever I will go, it’s not really thinking, it’s beginning to dream. I wonder where that distinction lies. There has to be a point where the dazing off becomes unconsciousness. There is that time right before falling asleep, like this, that you never remember. If I try to remember thinking about this later, I’ll just remember whether I fell asleep fast or not. Just don’t think about anything…hot…put that pillow there…turn over….pillow is hot, other side of the pillow…don’t think about anything…turn over…pull my knees up closer to chest…never remember dreams…I don’t, surely some of them were good…like something that they could make a movie out of, or just a great adventure I went on, cause dreams are just so real, it is like living it, wake up scared or happy or whatever. But you never remember them, it’s like a double life…hot…pull the cover back, leg out in the open, cool me down…Come on, fall asleep. Okay, stop thinking, just…clear your mind… … …turn over… … I’m hot…maybe if I took a cold shower I could cool down and then, when I get in bed I’ll just want to be warm…why is that different? I guess it lowers internal temperature, and then you want to be warmer, but now I am just holding in heat and raising internal temperature, so now, I want to be cold, so that putting one leg out, that feels good. Why don’t they just figure out the perfect temp and make a bed that keeps it constant…okay, clear your mind… … hot… … stop thinking… this isn’t working. Okay, start a dream…think about something that will take itself somewhere without you having to think…Sex. Okay, just give me something sexy…okay…me and a girl…a girlfriend? A wife…a stranger?...hmmm…setting…depends on the person…brunette, redhead and so on…what do I want. Just pick a person…a celebrity or someone I know…it’s just weird to think about someone I know like that…just weird…unless this girl happened to be my girlfriend, a position which is currently vacant…well…could use HER…yeah. I shouldn’t, she isn’t my girlfriend, it’s just kinda wrong. I should ask her out…I could do it tomorrow…I think she would say yes…probably…of course I may have completely mis-read everything about her…it has happened before…remember HER…yeah, that went REALLL well…mis-reading her was, well, she admits to being hard to read, so maybe not my fault, but still. SHE and I get along well, I have gone through this too many times already. I should have just asked her out when I had the chance…chances…but I of course did not, I skated around the issue, I suck at these things, we talked around the subject, giving me plenty of chances to jump inside the topic and get it out there…but I didn’t…a snail on the edge of a razor… I should just do it tomorrow. Why do I make things impossible for me to do? Like it’s so hard to just say “do you want to go out” or whatever…With HER I spent god knows how much time trying to think of the perfect line or way of asking her…that’s stupid…it doesn’t matter how you say it, it is the thought…it doesn’t matter if you do it the way…Richard Gere would or the way…Michael Jackson would, it’s the thought, not what you say…if she likes you, you’re in, if she doesn’t you are F-ed…How would Michael Jackson proposition a woman? Probably would include millions of dollars…Billie Jean…is not my lover…she’s just a girl…whhhhmhmmhm…man…when did that come out…80’s sometime…makes me think of that trip to Miami…what? 12 years ago, I was sixteen…must have heard that song a dozen times on the radio…Chris…and Kyle…and Jeremy…man, never see those guys anymore…seems so strange to not hang out with them all the time anymore…and so it goes…what was I thinking about?...oh yeah, HER…just ask her tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow…I know I wont do it tomorrow…I’ve just told myself I would do it today, everyday for three weeks, still hasn’t happened. Usually I just do it when I have to, when I am under a deadline. It’s coming up on summer break…god, I have to grade that damn project for all of the kids…that’s going to be tons of fun…that’ll take some time…due on Thursday…then that…then I have that…OH!...crap…she is leaving early…this is like, my second to last chance…well, I am under a deadline now…might be a good thing. Just don’t F it up and let that mess with everything else, such as my career…could be bad. Wish I didn’t have to do all this crap…I could have kept on with graduate school…even get a doctorate…could have been a professor, or a consultant somewhere…done something better…make more money…more confidence…and then less women problems… In America, first you get the money, when you get the money, then you get the power, when you get the power, then you get the women… I probably butchered that…jeez, ’83…back then I could have recited most of the movie without a problem…funny how priorities change ever so slightly as you get older…so eager to be older, to be a real person, and all that…just want to do what you want, when you want…it isn’t what I thought it would be…I remember when there were kids and adults, and there was no middle ground, they were two separate groups, you couldn’t see the kid the adult came from …now, well that’s life, becoming an adult, when you are young you just don’t understand those changes, not until they happen to you, then you get it…so strange to think about that. It’s just odd, I guess anytime your perspective changes it is weird. All your opinions are formed when you are young, and then when you get older they change, and then there you are debating which newspaper you want to read. Wallstreet Journal, or the Times…or USA Today. Which color car to buy, not just which color I like, but the heat factor, the cleanliness factor, and the statements a color makes…can’t make a big statement, so that rules out the bright orange and yellow…and anything that seems flamboyant is definitely out…and then why does color affect the insurance rate…and best I can figure is that color reflects personality type and the reds are the ones that drive terribly. So I bet they studied and figured that one out…and then I realize that I spent thirty minutes trying to pick a color, and asking where the kid in me is that would blurt out the first thing to come to mind…it isn’t a realization, or an epiphany…just a note to self: inner child is dead…Now I have a little bit of sculpting power…all those kids…Looking back on it now, I understand teachers I have had…how, why, what they were trying to do…it is different when you are the student, just trying to understand, and now I see methods and the person of the teacher coming out, it’s just a completely different perspective…I could influence these kids…at least a little bit. But should I? should I put my personal politics in there? Is that right?...I probably do it subconsciously anyway…I don’t think I should though…maybe I should…they need different influences…I mean, there is church, that…I disagree with that. Parents make their kids go to church, and kids take these things as fact, and these things…they aren’t things you run into later in life and make new perceptions of, like your teachers or responsibility or whatever…communism is one, it was always that evil, and then one day you start thinking…and that isn’t a bad idea…sharing…that’s why the hippies were commies…it works as an abstract, just not in real life…religion is an abstract…so you have all those opinions and perceptions formed before you can really make a good perception of anything…they are really just forced on you…I guess I am probably overstating it, I mean, plenty of people do reconsider these things and decide one way or another…but only when they somehow run into the abstract…like in dealing with death or love or life or something…like facing death…the idea of having nothing left of you…that when I die…and I will die…that I, my body, I will be turned back into various organic materials, rotting in the ground, then just bones, and eventually, just nothing at all that resembles what I am now…the only thing left behind, to prove I existed is the impact, the effect I have on other people…like painters leave paintings, writers leave writing, leaders leave the empire, parents leave children and grandchildren…so I suppose I leave an impact on kids I teach, hopefully a positive one, and maybe someday kids, and then grandkids, and great-grand kids…from me, all the way down…I would be proud of making those people…but you know…I would care about all of my descendents, except, I don’t care about those above me…so…does that idea really work?...sort of…the idea of part of you surviving…and there it is…this feeling right here…of nothingness…this is where religion comes from…this emptiness…it can be filled, and it is filled by the afterlife…the idea of an eternal happiness, of perfection, of all those loved ones, of everyone and everything, waiting just beyond the realm of death, of a soul, of a divine plan, of life having a profound meaning…that idea fills that emptiness, and does it exceedingly well. I wish I could just believe that, it would be easier, I might be happier…but that isn’t me…I can’t think of it any other way…I just CANNOT believe that…there is no soul…So……what?...influence kids against that idea?...depressing…So…the next thing besides that emptiness, something else to fill that hole…Love…that is much more real, and in my opinion, greater. That I can do. I think…SHE could be the one…I just have to try and find out…but you know…having that glimmer of hope that she could be the one is better than being rejected…that is probably why I can’t ever ask her…I am resigned to accepting the glimmer of hope over the chance of rejection…even though that glimmer is just a glimpse of what the real thing could be if she said yes…I still hold out on the hope…Why can’t they ever ask me?...is that so much to ask?...You know…all that about success and leaving a legacy, an impact, a positive change…it doesn’t really matter…that is just another one of those things…something to fill one of those holes in you somewhere that isn’t easily occupied…something that probably served some purpose in the caveman days, but in modern times has just become an enigma, something that all the world revolves around in some way…you know…F all that…I just don’t want to be alone…you know…I don’t need love, I don’t need it now…just sometime…I don’t want to just never find it and die old and alone…or young and alone…I guess I just decided the meaning of life…find something you are good at, better than most, and refine that skill, a skill that is productive, useful, positive, somehow bettering something or someone, and do that better than most people…So you find that thing that you can do well, that is good, and do it to the best of your ability, and try to make an impact…and if you fail, you tried, and if you happen to find love and happiness along the way, then you did well, and luck may have been on your side…And if you pursue other things first, try to be happy, go after that momentary gratification, be it drugs, sex, danger, whatever, and not try to do something productive, then you wasted your life, and you have no real legacy, and when your breath has barely escaped you, humanity will already have forgotten you, except perhaps for those that suffered because of you. And the negative impact of things you have done, and the negative impact of the affect on other people, and then it affects more people, on and on down through the generations…so I suppose very few are ever truly forgotten by the world…but both constructive and destructive effects live on…hot…roll over…how did I get to thinking about this?...I should work out…stomach isn’t as flat as it used to be…could do sit-ups every morning…or night…and pushups or something…but…I wont…I could tell myself to, but I wont…just deal with it…I guess I already have…perhaps that would go with the whole confidence thing, and the lack of which leads to the working under a deadline, which leads to poor decision making, and a degraded prospect of success, which furthers the blow to confidence and ends up with me telling myself for the fourteenth day in a row, “I will ask HER out today.” …she has to know that I like her…that day, way we talked…she brought up relationships somehow…and then I just told her that I was terrible in those situations…absolutely terrible, and hinted at how this was an example of such a thing…of the flirting, pre-dating process…and I think she got the message…and I should have asked her then…but I didn’t… …put that pillow here, hug these two pillows…the pillows are my faceless lover…it’s kinda sad that I pretend to hug a woman…imagining sex is one thing, but what if I just imagine sleeping with her…that isn’t as bad…it is comforting…but…still strange…I think I would just feel creepy afterwards…I probably won’t remember anyway…you know, she might ask me…why don’t girls ever ask?...I guess they have less confidence in a ‘yes’, because if the guy hasn’t asked, and it has been a while, then he’s just not that into you…except that isn’t true…at least not with me…and I know she isn’t all that confident in herself…she thinks she has little sister looks, that guys see right past her, just ignore her, and she might think I think that about her…I tried to tell her that I didn’t see her like that…that I liked her…but I probably didn’t get that across…at least not very well…I guess I have a shot…just ask her…just ask her…














Jeff Pollard