How to Sleep Without Air Conditioning

12:00am - Strip

Remove blanket, shirt, underwear. Attempt to hover above the sheets so no fabric touches you. When levitation fails, try ripping off your flesh, leaving you a dripping mass of exposed muscle. But do it without moving an inch. Sweat.

You should be checking the alarm clock every three to five minutes, each time focusing on how the night is quickly slipping away. Say something to yourself like "If I feel asleep right now I'd get seven hours of sleep" and then, like, five minutes later say, "if I feel asleep right now I'd get six hours and fifty five minutes of sleep." Sigh each time. Sweat.

If you fall asleep with the fan this close to your head there is an 80% chance your hair will be sucked into the blades, twisted into the motor until eventually being ripped from your scalp. There will be a 90% chance of hearing loss from your inefficient box fan's "High" setting blasting Jet Turbine During Emergency Landing levels of noise into your ear. There will be a 100% chance of you waking up with a sore throat and volcanic crust encircling your eyes as your body resorts to profound (and slightly amphibian) mucous usage to keep you even slightly hydrated. Despite these risks, move fan closer. Sweat.

Sweating is the bed and butter of your misery, a constant go-to source of discomfort and frustration. But, by three in the morning, the sheets should be reaching maximum saturation. Your bed should have that Fresh Out of the Hot Tub moisture that makes every movement miserable. Your sheets should cling to your damp legs like a shower curtain. Stew in your own salty brine. Sweat.

Feel time slip through your hair follicles. Taste the air molecules as global warming upticks, fluctuating the temperature around your bed from 92 degrees to 92.0000023 degrees. Predict every drop of sweat seeping from your flesh. Do not let a single detail of the world go unnoticed. And, as you're able to crunch variables on the magnitude of a super computer, use this new skill just to analyze how miserable you are. You aren't entirely sure there is a hell, but based on your calculations you must be close. Sweat.

The only chance to sleep occurs in a small window of time between 5:27 and 5:39. This is the midway point between last night's simmer and next morning's boil. Unfortunately, you miss the opening because you attempt to drink water without lifting your head, and while the thought is valiant, the results are you waterboarding yourself in the dark. Let the new moisture mingle with your sweat puddle. You did this to yourself. Sweat.

Roll three times to the right, four to the left. Roll around like there is some unknown combination of damp body/soaking sheets/dead air that result in a position anywhere near comfortable. Spin, sigh, spin, sigh, spin. You should be picking up enough friction at this point to ignite, your dehydrated body kindling beneath your ceaseless barrel rolling. Sweat.

Decide that it isn't going to happen, that there is no way you're going to fall asleep. Then fall asleep. Enjoy the last fifteen minutes of the night before the alarm goes off.

– Ian "Salmon Season" Golding (@iggolding)