Okay, see…it’s about the snoring. Yes, “your snoring.” Who else’s snoring would I — well, actually, you do snore. Yeah, you do. Yeah…you do. No, see, trust me. You snore. All right, maybe you think you “would know” if you snored, but the thing is…all right, but someone is telling you that now, so now you do know. Because I just told you. That you snore. Because you do. Yes, you do. Yes, you do! Yes. You. Do. Too. Snore.

Look, it isn’t your fault. I don’t blame you. It’s not like you replaced your adenoids with a malfunctioning muffler on purpose, obviously. What? Okay, you’re right — that’s not accurate, and I apologize. It actually sounds more like a riding mower in overdrive with Joe McIntyre trapped in the fan belt. No, I wouldn’t call that “a ridiculous exaggeration,” if you want to know the tr– hey, don’t get mad at me. I seem to remember trying to spare your feelings. You asked why you got up to brush your teeth and found me asleep in the bathtub, and what did I say? What did I say? That’s right. I said I liked the cooling sensation of water dripping on my toes, but you couldn’t just leave it at that, could you, Snore-quemada? Ohhhh no, you had to know why I’d really spent the night cuddling up to a Costco bottle of Finesse conditioner, so, now you know. You snore. Okay? Happy now?

Oh, really? You “could do without the sarcasm”? Well, gosh, you know, I could do without the sleep deprivation, myself, but it’s not a perfect world we live in, is it — and by the way, that? Isn’t even sarcasm, my cacophonous friend. When I tell you how much I love lying awake for hours on end, repeatedly jerked back from the brink of sweet sweet slumber to marvel at the creativity of your sinuses in finding new and inventive ways to drive me stone crazy? That is sarcasm, David Snore-eanaz. The weary kind of sarcasm.

Exc– excuse me! Did I just hear a “pfft”? Did you just fold your arms, arch a Robert Scorpio eyebrow, and dare me with a “pfft” to give an example? Oh, no — gladly. Gladly. In fact, I have a number of examples, if it please the court, which I think it will, as the court has had a full night’s sleep. Unlike some people.

Fine. Exhibit A: the soughing. Quite faint, really, but I assure you, the longer it continues, the more thoroughly it frays the nerves, much like the presence of an overcaffeinated gnat in one’s bunk at summer camp. “Haaaaa. Eeeeee. Haaaaa. Eeeeee.” The soughing is usually supplemented by snuffling and lip-smacking. “Haaaaa. Eeeeee. Flmprt? Clkclkclkrrkk. Haaaaa. Eeeeee.” It’s the Total Darkness Theater production of “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

You know, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Where the woman goes bonkers because of the, er…you know what? Forget it. No, no, forget it. Let’s move on to Exhibit B: the crescendo snoring. “Sssss…kkkkk…sssss…kkkkk. Sssss…kkkkk. SSSSS…KKKKK…SSSSS…KKKKK…SSSSS…KKKKK. SSSSS! KKKKK! SSSSS! KKKKK! SSSSS! KKKKK! HAAAAHHHNK! GRRBBRRAAAACCHTTKK! FFFFRRRGGTTVBBB!” It starts out all quiet and unassuming, and then it just gets louder and louder and louder and LOUDER, and then the entire band of kazoo-playing chipmunks you stuffed up your nose when I got up to pee busts out a drunken encore of “The 1812 Overture.” Oh yeah? Well, take it up with Alvin. And tell him to lay off the Old Granddad, it’s affecting his vibrato.

Oh, I’ve got more. It’s not so much the crescendo snoring itself. It’s the depressing inevitability of the crescendo snoring. I lie there, debating with myself…should I go ahead and whap you? It’s really not that loud yet. It’s going to get loud, so I could whap you now and nip it in the bud, but then I would feel bad, because it’s not a “good collar” if it’s not loud, and you’ll wake up all “clock magenta fire on seventeen what what what?” and I’ll have to pretend it’s nothing and I flailed at you in my sleep. But if I wait until it is loud, it’ll get so annoying that by the time I finally do whap you, I’ll have gotten so pissed off that I’ll probably leave a bruise.

Oh, I did not. You got that at the party on Saturday. God, what a baby.

Yeah, you bet I can “do better than that,” Annika Snore-enstam, because the absolute worst is yet to come. I refer, of course, to the violent, unpredictable, and apocalyptically loud paroxysm of snoring known as The Snore-gasm. It goes a little something like this…

Silence. Silence. A very soft whistling in the nostrils that, like the panicked flight of birds before a storm, signals certain doom. More silence. The imperceptible shift of air pressure in the room. A barely audible ticking sound. And then, like a thunderclap composed of a hail of accordions fired out of a cannon…a snore. A window-rattling sonic boom of a snore: “SSSSKKKKKRRRRRRAAAARRROOHHHHHNRRRK.” It’s like living inside Gonzo’s trumpet flourish at the end of the Muppet Show theme. And so, naturally, I sit bolt upright and scream at the top of my lungs — not so much because I can’t take anymore, although I most certainly can’t, but because I am now completely deaf and no longer have any concept of how loud my voice is — “ROLL OVER ON YOUR GODDAMN SIDE RIGHT NOW BEFORE I SMOTHER YOU WITH A STANDARD POODLE.”

And would you like to know what really gets to me? Well, I will tell you. No no no, it’s my turn to talk, Snore-tia de Rossi, and this is what really gets to me. After I howl directly into your ear to turn over or die, you will do one of two things. You will murfle something incomprehensible about typewriters, roll over, and continue sleeping without a care in the goddamn world, giving me between thirty and sixty seconds to unclench my fight-or-flight muscles and attempt to fall asleep before the next encore of “Seventy-Six Trombones.” And that’s the best-case scenario, thank you very much. But more likely, you will try to claim, not at all believably, that you were most definitely not snoring, since you weren’t even asleep. You WEREN’T even ASLEEP? Ohhhh, GOOD ONE. Okay, FIRST of all, if you WEREN’T ASLEEP, you would have HEARD YOURSELF snoring, and if you HEARD YOURSELF, why on EARTH didn’t you STOP snoring? And second of all — yeah, TALKING HERE! SECOND of all, of COURSE you’re not asleep NOW. You jammed Fran Drescher up one nostril, kept her up there for a week on a diet of nothing but refried beans, and ejected her out the other nostril with the aid of a sousaphone made out of Pomeranians — NOBODY is asleep NOW. Even dead people have started calling the house: “Ohhh yeah, we’re up. By the way? Breathe-Right strips.” You woke YOURSELF up, Rip Van Snortle, so DON’T EVEN.

I could live with just the snoring, but the “better living through denial” routine has got to go. I don’t sleep on the couch because it’s so comfy. I sleep there because sticking my head into a sonic blender is not what I would call conducive to REM sleep. When you find me in the bathtub, it’s not because I’ve elected to re-enact Jim Morrison’s death scene in the middle of the night — although the “death” element is pretty damn tempting. It’s because, in the bathroom, I have an outside shot at not having a mushroom cloud of sound waves atomizing my eardrum.

Hello? Just admit it! Admit that you snore! It doesn’t make you a bad person! We can deal with it, but not until you acknowledge the problem! Oh my god, YES YOU DO T– okay, fine. No, fine. If I jammed four sticks of dynamite into each of your ears, lit them, nailed you inside an out-of-tune grand piano with Sam Kinison, Bill O’Reilly, and a pack of rabid coyotes, and dropped it off the roof of a skyscraper into a pool filled with hyperactive children clawing at blackboards with their fingernails, at least I would have the decency to fess up to it afterwards, but if you don’t think I have compelling proof, well, fine. I mean, I tried to get proof. See how my tape recorder is all melted on one side and there’s greenish smoke sort of trailing out of the little microphone part? Also, the kid next door has a bloody nose, but if you want to think that’s a coincidence, I guess I can’t change your mind.

Say the words! “I snore”! SAY IT!

“Maybe it’s the cats.” That’s…your answer. Fine. Get out. Yeah, well, you can pee in a Snapple bottle. The bathroom is for sleeping.

July 7, 2003

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