Sleep (Copyright 2000, 2002 Phil Bordelon)

I yawn, and whether the tears that come are from sadness or exhaustion, I cannot tell. The quiet drone of the ceiling fan does nothing to comfort me. Even the bed seems hard and impersonal, as if it resents my presence on top of it.

Eyes open. The complete darkness changes slowly into nearly such, with only the spasmodic glow from the unset VCR clock lighting the room with a slow strobe. The harsh blue does nothing to banish the dark. It just makes it that much more palpable.

Stumbling to the computer. Turning it on. Now the on-off-on-off is joined by the steady black glow of the blank screen for a second before the machine realizes its task. I stare intently at screens that haven't changed for years, hoping for some deep meaning hidden behind the RAM check or the number of ATAPI devices hooked up. None.

Cheery blue clouds. The computer churns, and I with it. I see my face reflected in the monitor--sunken, frowning, poorly lit. Appropriate, that. The status meter at the bottom moves in fits and starts, and I watch it as intently as I did the rest of the sequence.

Funny. It never tells me anything new either.

Typing. The first in a long series of passwords, each unique. Some are interminably long. People ask me why everything is so locked down on my machine. I'm the only person that uses it. I tell them that I'm paranoid. True. It's also the wrong answer. Everything is password protected because I hope that one day I'll forget the semi-random strings of letters and numbers and be able to bid good-bye to that which has been a part of my world for as long as I recall.

They come as easily as always. The crowning touch--over a hundred characters, three parts--flows out of my hands, into my fingers, and onto the screen as a marching line of asterisks without conscious thought. Who the fuck am I fooling? The day my body forgets these passwords is the day I die. Perhaps it is paranoia. That one day I may truly understand myself.

Another few instinctual clicks and key presses away. The familiar bong- pinging of a modem singing its digital lullaby over the phone line tries to compete with the dying internal fan in my computer. The modem wins, temporarily, and then falls silent as its arduous handshake completes. The whole of the Internet and I become as one, for a moment.

Click, type another password. Three hundred e-Mail in three days. None of them are for me, despite the From: addresses. Mailing lists on topics I care enough to read about but not enough to write about. Reading, deleting. No matter how much mail I get, I don't get any. Why bother?

Surprised. One is actually for me. From an old high school friend. She's wondering how I'm doing. Picking up some games the other day reminded her of me. I get that a lot.

What do I say? I used to be in love with her. I never told her. She told me, however--on multiple occasions--that not a single dateable male existed at our school. That necessarily included me. And the last time I saw her, she was with a 'friend' that took my every glance away as an excuse to make out. I don't blame her. I wouldn't go out with me either.

Typing. Yeah, things're fine, how're they going your way? School's a bitch. Work is too. Did I ever tell you that I loved you? That last one never quite leaves my head. Better that way. Pause, click. Sent. And I wonder why people never send me mail. My responses are as vacuous as most of the people I went to high school with.

I saw one of them the other day. It seems that the further along I get in college, the less I see my old schoolmates. I'm sure it makes them happy. I'm not sure what it makes me. She still looked as good as she did then. When I first saw her out of the corner of my eye, standing at the bus stop and talking to other people I vaguely recognized, I knew it was her and tried to avert my eyes. Too late. I managed to get away with a half-wave and a faster walk. Hard to be friendly to people you know got their kicks out of mocking you behind your back. But that's probably giving myself too much credit. She forgot she even saw me by the time she stepped on that bus.

Click, scroll. The World Wide Web's vastness holds nothing new. Once, I thought it had limitless resources, inexhaustible depths of knowledge that one could drink from forever and not deplete. Bullshit. Millions of sites. Half are pornography. Nothing there interests me. I've read the other half over the years, and there's little that interests me there either. Click on a few sites out of habit. Click. The window disappears.

Click, another password. My first encounter with the venerable telnet protocol coincided with my first encounter of the Internet, back in middle school. One of my friends managed to get a hacked account on the local college system. Then, the idea of playing games with and talking to people from around the world in real-time flabbergasted me. Now I help run the same computer system on the same campus. It's still around. He's still around too. I see him every once in a while, walking around on campus. No use. We may as well not know each other.

The MUDs and talkers are no more interesting than the boot-up sequence, but I hunt for meaning just the same. For all I know, the people on the other end--as if they all sat around one computer, typing things for my sole titillation--could be deranged lunatics looking for an escape. Wish I were that lucky. Click. The windows disappear.

Click, click. My once-vast collection of pornography dwindled to a few drawings. I deleted half of it somewhat accidentally. I deleted the other half with relish. Two years of downloading, sorting, cleaning, cataloging, and describing destroyed with a few clicks and keys. It would be nice if that worked elsewhere. The pictures do nothing more than remind me that my last relationship ended a year ago. No more. Sometimes I wish I cared.

It had been furtive. He wasn't sure. I was. Neither of us had done anything serious before. It ended before it got there. It should have never started. Never get into a relationship with your best friend. It just fucks things up. Scratch that 'with your best friend' bit. Yeah.

Click, click. The machine churns, trying to shut down. Something hangs. Click. The screen flickers, and then politely informs me that I can turn the system off. Click. The room is dark and nearly silent now. My eyes adjust. The harsh blue strobe is back. The black glow of the monitor subsides.

Open door. My father's drunken snores get louder, along with the TV he left on. Into his room, turn it down, close the door. I wish it were all his fault. Another door. The den is dark now that my mother's on a power-saving kick. Move to the armchair she normally sits in and slam my shin into it. First physical injury of the day. Better than usual.

I sit and rock. Monotony is the only thing that I've found that successfully staves off the thoughts I'm having. I clean my room rarely. When I do, it has nothing to do with it needing to be clean. I clean because if I don't, I'll spend the night with my face buried in the pillows of my bed. Crying or screaming. Never given myself the chance to find out.

Rock, rock. Rock, rock. Seconds pass. The dog barks outside. Not going to work tonight.

Two doors, the blinking blue. I see the stacks of games reflecting the dim hall light. Video. Board. Computer. Stacks of puzzle magazines on one shelf. DVDs on top of the cabinet. Behind me, a closet about to break from the books stacked to the ceiling.

It finally dawns on me. Escape. Everything that I consider mine is some form of it. I turn the light over my bed on and look at the walls. A poster of Stonehenge. One from a few years ago detailing an upcoming talk on aliens. A poster about condom awareness done Army-recruiting style. So obvious now.

What? What is it that I'm trying to escape? Never been abused. Never been poor. Sure, Dad's a drunk, but just a loud one.

Why do I even ask? I know the answer, knew it before I asked.

Me.

Once I created a persona. She frequented places on the Internet that I did. She may has well have been another person inside of me. She even wrote a journal entry, back when I cared enough to keep one. I killed her. I envied her.

Why? Because of my desires, my passions? No stranger than most. Because of things I've done? Sometimes I regret my past. Sometimes not. Why, then? Because I'm me. And I'm too fucking lazy to change it, so I hide in books and movies and games and school and work, hoping to lose myself.

Back under the sheets. As unyielding as before, but now the feeling's mutual. At least, for a second. Fuck it all. Sleep makes everything seem better. When I wake up, I probably won't even remember all of this. Until the next time I get to thinking. But I'll sleep then, too.

Funny, that.