I won!... and so did my charity 7 Stages Theater! Here's the victorious story.
AWAKE
Until a few days ago, I thought insomniacs
were a bunch of hypochondriacs… baggy-eyed, worriers and fear-fiends who just need
a sufficient screw and a chill pill.
However, last Saturday I laid in bed all night without a whiff of rest
and felt their pain. I tried
everything. I counted sheep.
But I kept thinking, why
sheep? Couldn’t I count jumping
mushrooms or flying turds. I could count
cherubs who fart speech bubbles that bark affirmations as they silently stink
by. I could count b-boy beavers doing the centipede across my ceiling, each
turning to me like (beaver face) “yo what’s up baby.” I could count literally anything. What I couldn’t do is figure out how practicing
counting through creative visualization would do anything but laugh me awake at
the infinitely silly possibilities. And
so I quickly abandoned this foolishness altogether.
Next I tried concentrating on the
inside of my eyelids. The purple swirl
mesmerized me for a few seconds until I started seeing Rorschach expressions,
shadowed eyes, animals snarling at me from inside my own eyelids. I saw supernovas pulsing closer and closer,
until bursting in a rainbow strobe. I
felt my eyelids fighting to fold back, quivering against my will. Whose body is this anyway? I let the bastard eyelids have their way and
they popped open Carrie style.
So then I tried chanting om and
felt vibration massage my chest and spill down into my roots. It split at my legs and hummed down to the
balls of my feet. It felt goooood. I visualized the atoms of my mass percolating
like twerking trannies, grinding against each other like dry-humping pre-teens. I remembered myself at 14 crouched behind Lolita,
digging deep into my quads to get low enough to feel the plush curl of her
bottom against my swelling crotch. I
felt a rousing tingle down there and took a break from trying to sleep. The rest of this attempt, I spent in ways I
may describe to one or a few of you over a drink some other day.
I tried deep breathing. I tried 100 pushups. I tried singing hush little baby. I even prayed. And then it hit me. I’m a writer right. So write!
I’m going to write a dream onto my consciousness, a deliberate dream so
heavy that it pulls me down into the subconscious world of actual dreaming a la
Inception. I’m going to imagine an every-day scenario
that takes some twisted turn into the surreal… with slightly familiar
strangers, people I know I know but I can’t recognize. I’ll be on a bus. A purple, green and white oval bus… on
hydraulics… bumping sly and the family stone If You Want Me to Stay. The
bus will have a story and a soul. Her
name will be Rita, St. Rita, the patron of lost causes and she will ride through
New Orleans with a gold-toothed driver and an old woman named Tee Anne who
propositions me. And I will accept. There will be an old man whose voice is
black, visibly black behind decrepit teeth.
And we will rhyme every word we speak.
I’ll be at the bus stop waiting in the oppressive heat of August New Orleans
like…
This damn heat
is hoover dam heavy. Every pore of my
body is clogged with sweaty ooze.
I’m in the shade and still baking, still
waiting for Rita: the patron saint of
lost causes. She stays busy in this city
that care forgot. I should probably
forget her but I cannot.
A slow yawn stretches out my mouth and into
the sun-seared syrup of the atmosphere.
My skin glistens, soaked in the steam rising from the cracked concrete
beneath my feet. Above, blue bits of sky
leak between low hung clouds; grey white caps crested atop a sea of heat
waves.
I am bathed in August New Orleans, waiting
for the Regional Transit Authority bus, Saint R(I)TA, my ride home.
Have you seen
her? She is a rolling porch from which
we perch and witness the Central Business District to the city limits, Ghost
Town to Bayou Sauvage. She rolls
white with purple, green and gold stripes like a Mardi Gras float. Ain’t no better way to see the city unless
the street’s flooded and you got a boat.
And, thank the lord, here she goes, coming
grumbling, farting smoke. She hobbles
and throttles to a stop with a choke.
Her hands, long and thin, fold open with a hiss. Black rubber steps lead up to bliss; a
heavenly cool. I ascend and drop in a
doubloon.
I moved to the back, drenched in the funk of
the days fever. There was plenty space
between passengers and thank God for that.
Imagine being packed in like some booty on a pirate ship or piled on top
each other like some hot coals in a barbeque pit. Oh hell no.
If there is space, we gon take it.
Saint Rita ran through a burst of rain on
Piety and stopped in the sun at Independence.
Big Easy weather is unfettered by logic or common sense.
Then a baby roach broke my focus on nature’s
impetuosity as it scurried across the bottom of the window next to me. Now that’s too nasty, I leaned to the side to
let his little body pass me.
I thought on the subject and wrote messily
and though my script was shaken by Saint Rita’s vibration, I kept my dictation
steadily. I envy their industry, their
limitless energy and intrinsic simplicity these four winged, eight legged,
thousand-eyed creepy crawlies. I loathe
their bodies, terrified that their whispered touch hides a sting. And so I massacre these little things. Kill without conscience. And so I fear their vengeance for their many
slain brethren and crushed babies. I
fear they will swarm me with a ravenous insect army. Yes these little monsters intimidate me
because despite the market or the weather, whether in war or in peace, in
trouble and in the rubble left behind, the little things remain, still. They must be in God’s grace or just goddamned
hard to kill.
And then I thought, that’s not half
bad. Then I thought, I’m still awake.
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