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Steve T. was a narcoleptic,
he could fall into a deep hypnagogic sleep in the moment that separates two words.
The steps he climbed into a walking talking day would suddenly collapse and his mind
would pitch back into night. A clownish sandman pull of the lever and he
was knocked out, just like that!
It was three years before the doctors pulled him from a crumpled blue Volkswagon and poked around for a diagnosis of his affliction. In a land of car people, the narcoleptics are discovered after they fall asleep and drive off the road. Up until the time of the accident, Steve was just a nonplussing in our adolescent reckoning, his mysterious seizures the transmissions of an otherworldly beauty. We were the dwarfs of teen emotion to his Snow White of the broken aerial. Our tests began simply. We found that we could pick up his body and carry it elsewhere, a closet or bathtub. Usually we couldn't go too far because his sleep only lasted ten or fifteen minutes, as quick and improbable as a sun shower. Also, his limbs and torso were limp and heavy with the density that comes of dreaming. One time he didn't wake up right away and we kept moving him farther and farther until we reached a boat house, there loosing him oarless on the lake in a green rowboat. Watching a drifting Steve we discovered the dwarf of slow wonder. Another time, it must have been halloween season, we hit upon the idea of dolling Steve in a wig and dress. Because of the brevity of his spells, this required a levitic preparation so we collected all the trans-vestments and rehearsed our roles, lipstick boy with his Kiss-of-Passion and foggy mirror, and leg boy with his fishnets and adhesive tape. The photographs showed Steve with a large bottle in his hand, labeled 'Sleeping Beauty Potion'. That was the day when we discovered the dwarf of indecent charm. The dwarf of burning fuse horror appeared when we put lit cigarettes in the scissor spaces of Steven's fingers and toes. The dwarf of reckless friendship came when we covered for him the one or two occasions he nodded off in school assembly. There were other dwarfs, many more than the official seven though they stopped coming after the accident. Steve sustained only a few light bruises, but he was put on medication for the treatment of his sleeping spells. Something changed in him, a personal reckoning that was less a side effect of the medicine and more the distancing that comes from crossing over into adulthood. We went our separate ways, waved off by the dwarf, remembering loss. |
| 7/14/00 | oil on linen | 24"w X 25"h |
