Sleepwalk With Me

by Mike Birbiglia

  Then Dr. Del Vecchio picked up a rod about four feet long and said, “This has a camera on the end of it and we stick it through your urethra to look at your bladder.” I thought, urethra, urethra, I know I’ve heard of that part. I glanced quickly to the wall of the giant diagram of the male anatomy and I was reminded that the urethra is a miniscule tube through which I had always peed. It did not seem to have adequate room to house camera equipment or a four-foot rod. And I just nodded and I thought, “I feel like you glossed over a few details in the initial description. I feel like there was too much emphasis on the muffin and not enough mention of the fishing rod you’re sticking into my number three body part on E’s ‘Top One Hundred Sexiest Body Parts.’”

  So I woke up the next morning and I felt like I couldn’t breathe and my mom drove me to the hospital and the nurse put in the IV. For a while she couldn’t find a vein, and that’s always fun. It’s just a stranger poking you with a needle and you just have to take it.

  You’re like, “Ow!”

  Okay.

  “Ow!”

  Okay.

  Eventually she found a vein. Apparently I have one.

  While I was under, they found something in my bladder. You know, an item. So they decided to put me under deeper so that they could take it out. So they put me on the hospital equivalent of horse tranqs. When I woke up in the recovery room, I was sky-high with my mom—which was not the first time in my life I’d been high with my mom. But it was the first time she knew. I don’t handle drugs very well. If you’ve ever been in a group of people smoking pot, I’m the guy who says, “Do you guys hate me? Why does my heart hurt? Is that rickets?” I’m not proud of it. It’s just what I am. So I woke up in the recovery room but in my mind I was in a dance club. I shouted, “This place is awesome! We should come here all the time! Dad’s always here!”

  And my mom was like, “Shhh!” And I was like, “Do you hate me?”

  So after I came down from the drugs, they discharged me from the hospital. And I still didn’t know what had happened, and on the car ride home my mother said, “The doctor found something in your bladder.” Whenever they tell you that, it’s never anything good, like, “We found something in your bladder . . . and it’s season tickets to the Yankees!”

  Talk about highs and lows. I was literally the highest I’ve ever been in my life and then I was told I might die. Which is like being handed a pizza and then being shot in the face. So I started crying, and because I was crying, my mother started crying, because crying is like throwing up. It’s a chain reaction.

  For a week I had to wait for the results of the biopsy of the item they had found in my bladder. So for a week in my life I thought I might die—which is an incredible experience, if you ever have the chance to try it. You’ll start talking to God even if you’re not sure there’s a God. You’ll talk to anyone who might have more power than you, because you really want to cover your bases. You’re like, God? Allah? The elephant thing from Hinduism? L. Ron Hubbard? Harry Potter? I’m brand-loyal to Jesus, but I’m not stubborn. If someone has a plan, I’ll hear ’em out.

  A week later, the biopsy came back. I was fortunate because while it was a malignant tumor, they had caught it early enough. I wouldn’t have to take any further action except that every six months as a precaution I’d have to come in for a cystoscopy. The only difference was that, during the procedure, I would have to be awake. But it was okay because afterward, I could eat a muffin. So I did that . . . for a while.

  • • •

  In 2003 I started to get concerned about my sleep. I wasn’t falling asleep until three or four in the morning, and I was waking up around six or seven. On top of all this, I started having these episodes where I would get out of my bed. There wasn’t a lot of rest going on. I remember thinking, Maybe I should see a doctor. And then I thought, Maybe I’ll eat dinner. And I went with dinner. For years.

  THE PROMISE OF SLEEP

  So I was having trouble sleeping and occasionally even getting out of my bed in my sleep. And I thought about seeing a doctor. And I didn’t, but I did buy a book. It was called The Promise of Sleep.

  I tried to read the book, but I ran into a little snag: I’m not great at reading. I have a small case of ADD. I have trouble focusing and my brain tends to wander. I remember when I was a kid, we’d read books in school:

  There was Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter . . .

  I’d have to stop right there. All I could think was, If you’re gonna name your rabbit Flopsy, are you really gonna name the second one Mopsy? Do you want everyone to hate them? And Peter is the only one who made it out okay in the naming process. Peter’s like an investment banker now with a vacation home in the Hamptons. He’s like, “I don’t know those other rabbits!” And everyone asks him, “Aren’t you Peter Rabbit?” and he’s like, “No, no, no. I’m Peter McHuman.” But really he is Peter Rabbit and he’s just tucking his ears into a baseball cap.

  Anyway, while I was thinking about all that, the other kids READ THE BOOK.

  I never got very good at reading, because when I would voice my deficiency to my dad, he’d say, “Hush!” and I thought, Okay, got it. Hush. I’m sure this problem will work itself out.

  Twenty years later, I picked up a much longer book called The Promise of Sleep. Well, that’s a very elusive title, I thought. I mean, it is a promise, so that’s good. But then again, the book isn’t actually promising sleep. It’s just putting it out there: the promise. Like, here’s the promise that one could make. I’m not making it, but by all means feel free to make it to yourself, to your friends or whatever. If this book was sold in the cartoon world, you’d open it up and there’d be a big wooden mallet on a spring that would conk you on the head and you’d see little birds chirping around your head while you passed out. In some ways The Promise is more alluring than the famous self-help book The Secret, because the Secret could be anything. You could open that book up and it says, “The secret is you’re a loser.” I’m a loser? I spent twenty-seven dollars on that? By now you may be wondering, is that the Secret? How does Mike know so much about the Secret? Did someone tell him the Secret? Don’t worry. They didn’t. I promise.

  The Promise of Sleep was written by a guy named Dr. Dement, which is a very unfortunate name for a man trying to instill calm in his readers. I think he could have opted for a pseudonym like Dr. Happy Sleep or Dr. Chamomile Tea. I’m Dr. Chamomile Tea and I promise you’ll sleep! Thanks, Dr. C. Tea. I already have a nickname for you. My name is Mike but you can call me Tinkles.

  Dr. Dement has four basic tips for healthier sleep. A few hours before bed, he says, turn off your phone, turn off the news, don’t surf the Internet, and don’t eat big meals—which just so happen to be my four favorite activities before I go to bed. You might even say that I’m addicted to these activities.

  I check my phone messages and email about forty-five times a day. I don’t even know what I’m expecting to get in these messages. Maybe Visa will call and say, “We just realized that we owe you money!” or I’ll get an email from a high school classmate that says, “We’ve reconsidered and we’ve decided you were cool after all.”

  Whatever the case, I’m completely addicted to my phone. And I’m not the only one. I was at a movie recently and the guy next to me answered his phone in the middle of the movie and he answered it by saying, and I quote, he said, “Who dis?” Which means not only was he willing to talk to someone during the movie, he was willing to talk to anyone during the movie. I’m not sure what the past tense of dis is, but he did not care who it dus.

  I actually bought a new phone recently. And my brother Joe wanted me to upgrade to the iPhone.

  He was like, “You gotta get the iPhone.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s, you know, it’s the fourth generation. It’s got two cameras. You gotta get it.”

  “I still don’t understand the reason.”

  “Don’t you take pictures?”

  “I thought
you were talking about a phone.”

  (Pause) “It’s both. You gotta get it.”

  I didn’t get it. And don’t get me wrong: I love cameras and I love phones, but I also love pizza and ice cream and I’ve never seen them smashed together into one superfood.

  When you go to buy anything these days, the guy’s always like, “You know, it’s also a camera.” And it’s a slippery slope. Like one day I’ll go to the store to buy something and they’ll be like, “It’s also a camera.”

  “I just wanted a grapefruit.”

  “It’s a camera-grapefruit. You take pictures of yourself eating the grapefruit, then you poop the pictures.”

  “That is the opposite of what I wanted.”

  I’m a purist when it comes to phones. I’m a serious phone talker. I don’t need these distractions. Like crappy cameras and a calendar of events. The iPhone intimidates me because it forces you to multitask. And I’m not good at single-tasking. I can’t walk and hold a drink at the same time. Is there an app for that? Some kind of cup holder that pulls out and stabilizes based on how awkward a conversation is? It senses I’m about to expound on my personal theory of bisexuality and it vibrates out of control. I’d buy that app.

  I asked the guy at the store for the simplest phone they had. I said, “Can I have just the ‘phone’ phone?”

  And he was so confused. He was like, “Um . . . This one is a dot-matrix printer.”

  I was like, “No . . . just the ‘phone’ phone.”

  He was like, “This one makes Jolly Rancher Minis.”

  I said, “No, just the ‘phone’ phone.”

  I ended up getting the simplest phone they have. But it still does nine things I don’t understand. Nine. Maybe I’m a control freak, but that makes me nervous. I get worried: What if there’s something in the phone I don’t know about? What if there are bullets in the phone? Just hypothetically, what if I’m dialing a number and some passerby on the street is like, “You shot me!”

  And I’m like, “Oh man, I was on the wrong screen. I thought that was a to-do list. I didn’t know it was actual bullets.”

  And then he’s like, “You gotta get a doctor!”

  And I’m like, “Good idea, where is that—under Tools?”

  Phones have gotten way too complicated. They’ve got all these ringtones to choose from and I’m not really a ringtone guy. I’m purely a vibrations man. I don’t even understand why people have rings on their phones. We don’t need an electronic version of the Miami Vice soundtrack poisoning the peaceful silence we’re all enjoying. A vibration is loud enough if you think about it. It’s not as if a vibration is soundless. By definition vibration is sound. Besides, it feels nice when it vibrates, kind of a mini-massage, a little tingle to remind you you’re alive.

  I love that little vibration. I’m addicted to that vibration. My phone vibrating in my pocket feels like being woken up as a kid on Christmas morning. Wake up, Mike, you’ve got a telephone call! It could be anyone.

  Growing up, cable television was a luxury that only a few people we knew could afford. Not us—our family had the giant rotating antenna mounted on our garage, with that spinning dial which would make it turn to pick up the best signal. When our TV wasn’t working, my sisters would just send Joe behind the set with a butter knife for a screwdriver, some electrical tape, and some simple instructions, “Make it work.” Joe became the best seven-year-old TV repairman in Shrewsbury.

  My neighbor Leslie had cable. It was fantastic. Our favorite show was You Can’t Do That on Television, but it seemed to me you could do anything on cable television. You could be flipping through the seemingly endless channels and at any moment you might hear the s-word or stumble across some exposed breasts. Whatever this new television service cost, it was worth it.

  I asked my mom if we could get it and she said, “Like fun are we getting cable. That stuff is junk.” She talked about cable TV like it was porn. I think she was right.

  I have cable TV in my apartment now and it’s sucking my life away. Because it makes me think things that are unimportant are really important. I’m like, I have to know about the sexiest music videos from the eighties. What would happen if I didn’t know about the sexiest music videos from the eighties? Would that mean I’m not sexy? E! answers questions that you were never going to ask, like, “I wonder how the show Full House was made?” Oh, in a studio with sets designed to look like the inside of a house? Fascinating!

  What’s perhaps more scary is cable news, because, while dealing in minutiae just as meaningless, they claim to be important. One trick is they use these flashy graphics and laser sound effects like “Pachoo!” or “Brrrr-Bing!” And they treat every story with the same level of importance. They’ll be like, “Pachoo! Are your kids having sex at the mall?” I don’t even have kids, but I’m like, Are they? I gotta make sure they’re not having sex at the mall. Like fun are they having sex at the mall! And then the next story will be like, “Pachoo! Terrorists blow up bus.” And I’m like, Wow, that really puts the mall sex in perspective. That is much worse.

  Cable news has another trusty trick, which is that they hook you in with questions you couldn’t possibly know the answers to. They’ll be like, “Pachoo! Do you know what’s in your soup?”

  I’m like, Oh my God. I guess I don’t know what’s in my soup. I gotta stick around. I thought maybe broth but I wasn’t 100 percent . . . What is this, a commercial for Toyota? Okay, I’ll watch this, just as long as you tell me what’s in my soup.

  And then they’ll be like, “Pachoo! It’s broth.”

  I’m like, I knew it! I knew it was broth, but I wasn’t 100 percent. I’m glad I stuck it out.

  And then they’ll be like, “Pachoo! Do you know what’s in your broth?”

  I can’t believe this! How long do I have to watch to find out all the answers? But they never tell you the answers because they know if you knew the answers you’d change the channel or turn off the television. But I don’t turn off the television.

  I watch it at airports, in hotels, in my apartment. I can’t do a four-minute treadmill run without checking in on Headline News, which is really the perfect network for the micro workout. You flip it on and the guys says, “Earth still spinning, wars still going on, planet still headed toward total death and destruction. Those are your headlines!” But at a certain point I realized that I needed more than this. I needed to do something at the same time. Which is why I started spending more time on the Internet.

  The Internet, much like cable TV, is an infinite well of nothingness. And when you’re there, you’re convinced that it’s something. It’s like getting drunk. You’re like, I’m gonna go over here. And over there . . . and over here! And after four hours, you’re like, I don’t even know what happened. I gotta clear my history.

  I always have these grand ambitions for the next time I’m going to be online. Like, The next time I’m on the Internet, I’m going to look up healthy recipes and gyms in my neighborhood. And then I go online and I’m like, I’m gonna Google myself again. And I don’t even Google myself anymore. I’m at the next level. I get Google alerts. Last year someone wrote on their blog that they had come to my show and that they enjoyed it, but that I was “pudgy and awkward.” I got that as a Google alert.

  It was like, “Pachoo! You’re p’awkward!”

  Thanks for the heads-up, Google. Not feeling great about myself to begin with, but perhaps I did need a reminder.

  Well, with a laptop on my crotch and the news pumped up to a volume level of thirty-four, I can effectively take in a huge amount of nothing. I can multitask nothingness to an extent that the writers of The Matrix wouldn’t even understand. And while that’s all going on, I can grab my phone in case I need some pizza.

  The last item on Dr. Dement’s list of things to avoid before bed is big meals. This is especially tough for me.

  Whenever I tell people I’m trying to lose weight, they say, “You don’t need to lose weight . . . that much
.” And it’s true, I don’t have a weight problem, but I am the guy who could really put the brakes on an orgy. Everyone would be like, “Was he invited? Why is he eating a stuffed crust pizza? That is not sexy at all.”

  I come from a family of bingers. The Birbiglia family is Italian, but we’re not real Italian, we’re Olive Garden Italian. We don’t eat capellini primavera. We eat unlimited salad and breadsticks and drink a mean white zinfandel.

  When I was in high school, my father took our family on a trip to Italy. My brother Joe was spending a semester in Florence and my dad thought it would be the perfect opportunity to visit the motherland. Our whole lives, my dad had espoused the virtues of Italy. How Italians treat each other. How cultured Italians are. And most of all, how they eat. We’ve been regulars at the Olive Garden since its proliferation in the early nineties. And when we go, my dad attempts to order food with an authentic accent. He’ll be like, “I’ll have the pasta fa-jool.” I’m like, “We’re sitting in a strip mall in Hyannis, Massachusetts, between a Build-A-Bear and a Spencer Gifts. You’ll have the pasta fag-eee-oh-lee like everybody else.” So there we were, the Birbiglia family, educated at the Olive Garden, and now we were ready to go to the source. Joe made arrangements for us to eat at one of the finest restaurants in Florence. We looked at the menu put together by a world-class chef, a menu thoughtfully designed for hours and time-tested through years of serving discerning customers, and my dad looked at the waiter who didn’t speak English and said, “I’d like a spaghetti with tomato sauce and one meatball and one sausage.” Joe jumped in and explained to my dad that the waiter didn’t speak English and that it would be better to choose something on the menu since we didn’t want to offend the artistry of the chef.

  My dad looked at Joe sternly and said, “Tell him one”—my dad slowed down as though now Joe no longer spoke English either—“meatball . . . and one sausage.” We had traveled four thousand miles and he was ordering his Olive Garden favorite. Joe spoke to the waiter in Italian and, without offending, cobbled together some combination of two dishes that we shoveled onto one plate. I didn’t blame my dad. He’s like me. He doesn’t like interesting food. He likes comfort food. And he likes it now.