I know this sounds unfair, making my wife Carrie and our dog Gretchen, a forty-pound Finnish Spitz, cram themselves on one-third of the bed while I splay myself on the other two-thirds, but this isn’t about me being a bed hog. This is about Carrie and Gretchen being protected from my flailing arms during my nightmares.
These
horrific dreams tend to focus on Burt Lahr in his role as the Cowardly Lion.
Since childhood, I have never been capable of looking at the Cowardly Lion
directly in the eyes. Framed with forlorn pouches beneath and crenellated brows
above, those eye slits are especially suggestive of Satan or some other
tormented demon. The bald pate and ruffled hair, tied in parts with ribbons to
mock the pampered grooming of a Shih-Tzu or some other cuddly lapdog, only add
to the terror. Then there are Bert Lahr’s growls, not the feral sounds of a
lion but of a soul writhing and languishing in hell.
When I
suffer my Cowardly Lion nightmares, Burt Lahr will chase me, getting closer and
closer, until I wake myself up with my own growls that sound, eerily, like his.
Carrie and Gretchen often endure my moving violently in bed while I growl,
louder and louder, until Carrie or the barking Gretchen wakes me from my night
terror.
Sometimes
these Cowardly Lion dreams are especially bad and after awakening I feel an
evil presence in the room and must turn the light on and watch TV for a while
until I sense that the evil presence has departed. I have another measure that
helps drown out the evil presence and this leads us to my next rule.
1. As a severe insomniac who has gone through way too many hospital stays to list, and frequently has to pop between 20-40mg of Ambien (sorry, that hippy-dippy melatonin crap is a nice placebo, but nothing else) before getting to sleep, I feel your pain and offer my condolences.
2. Be happy you got a king-size... My girlfriend has a short full-size so half of my calves + my feet dangle off the edge.
3. Every feminist in the world is about to beat down your door and smash your face.
Posted by: Jesse Menn | January 03, 2009 at 01:10 PM
I hope there are some good feminists out there who detect the ironic tone of the narrator and as a result don't really believe this narrator's nonsense or at least see that he's parodying an egotist and as such is championing a life that denounces egotisim in the context of marital politics. That was a mouthful.
I need some sleep.
Posted by: herculodge | January 03, 2009 at 02:48 PM
Wouldn't count on it.
Posted by: Jesse Menn | January 03, 2009 at 04:48 PM
A lack of humor is a sign of insanity. I hope you leave academia soon.
Posted by: herculodge | January 03, 2009 at 04:50 PM