One night, a few weeks back, I was bored. Going through some nekkid lady pictures on a porn site on my phone, while some boring Science Channel repeat I’d seen about 30 times droned on. I have no life.

Reclining on the sofa, I was blinking and battling sleep. I fight sleep because of the nightmares. They’ve always been so relentless and pervasive. Sometimes I wonder why I bother, why I keep myself alive, when in more lucid moments I fear going into a permanent nightmare if I kill myself.

But old assholes like me, we don’t fight well anymore. With a sleep disorder and a fear of the demons in my dreams, I eventually succumb and fall asleep no matter how hard I fight. I just crash. And even a beautiful model doesn’t stop that kind of inevitability.

I heard a voice. It laughed and said, “Time to wake up ” and from the trenches of sleep I barely heard it. It repeated the words. There was a pause. More laughter this time. The voice, clearer now. An Asian woman. She laughed again. Like an angel laughing. A beautiful, entertained laugh.

I snapped awake.

Oh, no.

I realized my single moment of clear wakefulness was already fading into a numbness and sleep was coming back no matter what. There were seconds left to act. I grabbed the phone, sitting unheld on my chest; my arms had dropped away. I pushed and held down the key to power down, and dropped back into deep sleep. And a couple of hours later, I awoke, clear-headed enough to, at a small morning hour, make a cup of Colombian coffee in my $8.00, 4-cup Walmart coffee maker. I flailed gently toward a cabinet. I didn’t need anything in there. I turned to one to my left, opened it. Stared, vacantly while the coffee brewed and the machine made suggestive sucking sounds. “Mike, you got a sick mind,” I said. I focused inside the cabinet, got a coffee cup.

I sat the cup on the counter. I put only enough coffee and water in for one cup. My housemate and best friend was in his room asleep and has a Keurig anyway. On a four cup carafe, the line for 3 cups gives you one full cup of coffee. I have no clue why it has a “3” there, often wondered, never googled it. One of those things I don’t need to know, and should never raise the question in my mind, but does anyway.

No fuckin life, old man. The world don’t know or care. It got weirder as you grew old, and you’re just now noticing it? Dumbass.

I managed to get the half and half, Splenda and a spoon into the cup as the coffee maker made sounds that mocked me. Electric raspberries. Nothing I don’t deserve, really. I always feel I should get mocked by everybody and everything. I…am a loser.

As I sat drinking coffee, I remembered the voice. I got up and came back with my phone. Sometimes turning it back on will render the last page I was on. My heart sank. Truly painful embarrassment rushed through me as I realized I had somehow connected to live, open mic chat with someone on one of those sites where professional models…do things…and she had heard only snoring. Lots of it, and loud, too. I snore like a 1960 Caterpillar bulldozer.

I’m glad she was amused. I drank my coffee and went outside to smoke. Maybe I had made her day, somewhere on the other side of the world. Maybe she’d had so many crude and abusive men visit her space that this was a hilarious break for her. For the record, I might look at bikini models in pictures, but I don’t exploit or use sex workers. Even assholes have lines they don’t cross; it’s what keeps us separated from dicks.

I shouldn’t do none of it. I finally figured out that there’s no arousal involved. It’s an addiction. Engaging one’s addictions, indulging and feeding them, sends serotonin and dopamine rushing to get soaked up by specialized receptors the brain can’t otherwise feed. And usually a slight euphoria or total dissipation of anxiety occurs, and I fall asleep.

And except for briefly being awakened by her laughter, I did not have any nightmares, at least nothing that haunted me on waking.

And I’ll take what help I can get. Because I’m an asshole. Because I’m too far gone and too sick to fight anymore.

I wonder who she is. I wonder where she is and I hope she never forgets the night I snored over her speakers. I hope her laughter never fades as she remembers. I hope that by sheer accident, I brightened her life. Even if just a little bit.