In the looks department, I’ve been compared to the dwarf from The Lord of the Rings with a big afro—not exactly George Clooney. Only adding to these charms is the fact that I have Crohn’s disease and a catalog of allergies. And yet, I am by far the luckiest man alive because I’m married to the most beautiful woman in the world. After five years of matrimony, my wife’s honey red hair and rosy Irish cheeks still have me whipped. If she ever leaves me, the lights will go out; there’s zero chance of my landing someone of her caliber again. Naturally, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make her happy. And so, earlier this year, when my wife was upset about turning thirty-three (she thought she was getting old), I set out to make her birthday extra special. I promised anything her heart desired.
“Stop snoring! Stop snoring!” she blurted out like a game-show contestant. This anger over my nocturnal emissions had apparently been building for some time.
I wasted no time in addressing her concerns. Within days I was sitting on my doctor’s table imploring him to help me cure my snoring. He peered down my throat and up my nostrils. “It’s a mess in there,” he said, snapping off his flashlight scope. “You’re probably suffering from sleep apnea, sinusitis, or allergies. I’m gonna have you spend the night in a sleep clinic.”
The back parking lot at Methodist Hospital was eerily deserted when I arrived, just weeks later, for my 9:00 p.m. appointment. I rode the elevator to the fourth floor. Stray wheelchairs littered the hallways; a security guard was slumped in a folding chair. I pressed a buzzer and, in so doing, summoned a bookish middle-aged white guy in scrubs who met me at the sleep clinic’s door.
Ken’s hand was limp and moist; he was creepy in a Jeremy Irons kind of way. I imagined he spent long hours sitting in his one-bedroom apartment, bare-chested in cut-off shorts, typing anti-government manifestos.
My dubious docent gave me a quick tour: The room in which I was to stay looked as if it had been plucked from a cheap motel. But instead of a stain on the pillow, there was an enormous machine at the headboard with allsorts of blinking lights and buzzing tubes. Next to the bed, there was a dresser with a Bible in it, which I imagined might come in handy later on as I warded off the ghost of Vincent Price.
Ken attached wires and pads to my scalp and explained how they would measure my eye movements and sleeping depth. Straps were applied to my torso that would monitor breathing, snoring, and heartbeat.
I told Ken I was at the sleep clinic because I wanted to stop snoring. He spun me around on the swivel stool so that we were nose to nose.
“The only way you’re going to stop snoring is if they pound it out of your face,” he said threateningly. For a second there, I thought he was going to clock me.
“Excuse me?”
“A doctor told me they can cut open your face and pound out the crap that’s clogging your sinuses using a special hammer and chisel. Then they put all the crap in a dish called ‘The Custard Cup.’ ”
“Yucky,” I replied.
Ken wished me sweet dreams and turned out the lights.
I missed my wife.
The nurses out in the hallway made microwave popcorn and the room filled with the aroma of buttery goodness. Buttons beeped and bells dinged like the arcade at Chuck E. Cheese’s. I tossed around for more than an hour, the wires on my scalp, neck, and face twisting around my throat. Clearly, this was never going to work. I clicked on the Minnesota Wild game. I love my wife, but my mistress is hockey, and she eventually seduced me into a few hours offitful rest.
The results of my sleep study showed the snoring was caused by a compacted sinus and massively swollen tonsils. I underwent a medieval sinus scraping and tonsillectomy shortly thereafter. The anesthesia from the surgery made me sick, so I was given a pill to control the nausea. Since I couldn’t swallow the thing, the pill had to be inserted up my backside. I asked my wife to do the honors, but she declined. Needless to say, if the tables were turned I would have happily obliged.
A few weeks after the surgery I was healed and no longer snoring.
My wife said I was the most romantic man she had ever known; going through the painful surgery showed her I was a person of serious conviction. For the first time in years we fell asleep together. Bliss reigned supreme in the home of Todd J. Smith—until one day, when I came home from work and scattered my muddy clothes all over the basement floor. As my wife walked by, she let out a frustrated sigh and quipped: “Is there a pick-your-shit-up clinic you can go to?”
Leave a Reply Cancel reply