I will never murder anyone. This is probably for the best, seeing as how murder is wrong and all, not to mention the possibility that I might be arrested, and it would cost me a fortune to hire a good lawyer to get me off. Besides, I no longer know anyone worth killing. I mean, when I was young and in love, I often thought about killing my girlfriend’s boyfriend, because every time he came home on leave, I had to do without for a while. I’m glad I didn’t, because she really wasn’t worth it. But the main reason for my not murdering anyone is that more than sex, more than money, and more than power, I like to sleep. Fortunately, I had to read Macbeth when I was in high school:
MACBETH: Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep’, the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast,—
Well, I didn’t want to lose out on all that! It’s bad enough losing an hour once a year on account of daylight saving time.
Of course, I actually triumphed over daylight saving time seven years ago when I retired. Since then, instead of losing an hour’s sleep on Monday morning, I simply start going to bed at twelve o’clock instead of eleven, and reversing back to eleven every autumn when they change it back to standard time. But this morning, while I was burrowing into the covers, wondering whether I had actually slept nine hours or whether my clock had advanced automatically, and finally deciding it had, and then went back to sleep for another thirty minutes, after which I burrowed some more, I began to reflect on the nature of sleep in general.
When I was young, I was told that the average person needed eight hours of sleep, and so I set my alarm clock accordingly. And I must admit that I do all right on eight hours. But then I discovered that if I got eight and a half, I became downright spiritual, all Zen-like. If I had known about this when I was in college, and had gotten eight and a half, I would never have had such wicked thoughts about my girlfriend’s boyfriend. Besides, as Macbeth pointed out, if you murder someone, then you can’t get the good sleep you need to ease the pangs of a guilty conscience, so just when you really need it, you can’t have it. Catch-22.
It is fortunate that eight and a half hours makes me go all Zen, because I am definitely at a disadvantage when it comes to people who don’t need much sleep, and without the eight and a half I would probably feel bad about that. I am never up early enough to watch Morning Joe, but thanks to my DVR, I can catch it at a later time. So while I am sitting there, waiting for my caffeine fix to kick in, I sometimes hear them talking about how little sleep they get, as in three hours a night. I am in denial. They simply cannot get by on three hours of sleep. I tell myself that they must at least be getting four, and they are simply exaggerating. But even four hours strains my imagination. In an emergency, I can get by on little sleep, but don’t expect me to do so two nights in a row.
I have read that people who regularly get a good night’s sleep live longer. Well, I should hope so. According to my calculations, a person who gets four hours of sleep every night and lives to be sixty-four has the same number of waking hours as a person who gets eight hours of sleep every night and lives to be eighty. And since I sleep eight and a half hours, I would have to live two or three years longer than that just to come out even.
In any event, as I say, I have always been at a disadvantage when competing against short sleepers. Every day, they have a four-hour head start on me. And it is worse than that, because it always seems that these short sleepers have twice as much energy. They hop out of bed raring to go, and when I arise four and a half hours later, I have to drag around waiting for my brain to become fully functional. I sometimes wonder: Are these the same people who say they can read a book a day? I never read a book in one day in my life, not even when I was off on summer vacation reading light fiction.
In fact, everything about me is slow. After work one day, two of my coworkers and I reached our cars, which were parked on the street, at the same time. Before I even closed my door, the guy in front of me had started his car and was already heading on down the road. Then, while I was inserting the key in the ignition, the one behind me got tired of waiting for me to get going, so he pulled out around me and was four blocks away before I finally put the car in drive. No, I don’t smoke marijuana. I don’t think I need to.
I once met a woman who told me that in addition to her day job, she taught motivation seminars in the evening, and that she got only four hours of sleep at night. Now, she was good looking, and I might have scored, but I was so bothered by all that talk about motivation and four hours of sleep that I just could not stand to be around her. Besides, there was a practical consideration. Whenever I have sex with a woman, I always allow her to spend the night, as a courtesy. It’s the least I can do. But a woman who needs only four hours of sleep will be up and about early in the morning, disturbing my sweet repose. And she would not have been happy with me anyway, because she probably would have thought me lacking in motivation, which I was.
In fact, I once actually had a girlfriend who got only five hours of sleep a night, but she was very considerate and made no noise until I arose some hours later. Unbeknownst to me, however, my slow, lazy, unmotivated manner had started getting on her nerves. One night, we had a date to go see a movie, and I could see she was in a bad mood. Now, some men would say, “Honey, is there anything wrong?” or something to that effect, thinking it is best to talk things out. But not me. I am of the philosophy that as long as you don’t talk about it, it is not real yet. In other words, there was a good chance that the bad mood would pass, and if nothing was ever put into words, there would be no evidence that it had ever existed, because emotions and feelings quickly fade from memory. On the other hand, if we were to discuss what was bothering her, the words she spoke would fix the bad mood in her mind permanently, and I might never be forgiven.
Therefore, I said nothing. But I was worried. “My baby doesn’t love me anymore,” I thought to myself, “and she has found another man she likes better.” I was distraught at the idea of losing her love. But I did not let on. When the movie was over, I acted as though I was totally oblivious to her pout, while talking about how much I enjoyed the show. When we got back to my apartment, we made love as usual, and then we went to sleep. She must have fumed for a few hours waiting for me to get up, because when I finally arose, performed my morning toilet, and helped myself to a hot cup of coffee, she finally unloaded.
There was no other man, as I had feared (we men always think the problem is another man). Instead, the problem was me. She was very ambitious and, as is typical of a short sleeper, she was full of energy, wanted to succeed in her career, and to make a lot of money, and so naturally she thought I should want the same things. Instead, she pointed out, I was lazy, had no ambition, and was content to waste the morning sleeping, when I could be up accomplishing something. “You have plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead,” she declared.
I liked the low-paying job that I had, because my boss was as lazy as I was. He never realized I wasn’t working very hard, because he worked even less. We had a thirty-eight hour workweek, no overtime. But my girlfriend thought I should (a) go in and demand a raise, (b) get another job paying more money, (c) go into business for myself, or (d) go back to school and get a career where I could amount to something. All of that sounded like hard work to me, and I knew I didn’t want anything to do with that. But, owing to the fact that I had had eight and a half hours of sleep, and the sex the night before had been pretty good (for me, at least), I was in the Zen zone. Whereas before I had been on the verge of tears, thinking she was going to leave me for another man, now I started laughing at her silly notions about my sleeping less and working more. Suddenly, I was completely immune to her charms, and had she broken up with me right then, I would have parted with her in the best of spirits. I never let a woman get between me and a good night’s sleep. I still loved her, of course, but after that it was never the same, and when she finally did leave me, I simply accepted it as the inevitable result of our incompatibility on this matter.
Death is often compared to sleep, as Shakespeare did through the mouth of Macbeth, and as my girlfriend did when she said I could get plenty of sleep when I was dead. It is a comforting thought. I can think of no better afterlife than a deep, endless sleep.