Oblivion_ stories - By David Foster Wallace Page 0,103

deep vexation or even hostility in her voice, as if this were an issue which had been silently aggravating her for years and she had finally come to the end of her ‘rope’ or ‘last straw’ with it—produces in myself a set of natural, physiological ‘stress’ responses which, subsequently, make it nearly impossible for me to fall asleep, sometimes for hours or even more.

In the past, particularly during head colds, or in some calendar years’ Summer months when the ‘pollen count’ is high and my hay fever is active or severe (I suffer from hay fever, and as a boy, in Wilkes Barre, my sister [whose allergies were even more severe than my own, as well as suffering from congenital asthma] and myself had to be brought by our mother twice a week to the local pediatrician for allergy shots for several years), I have, admittedly, suffered occasional bouts of snoring which have disturbed or awakened Hope in the course of our marriage. But these past bouts or episodes had always been easily resolved by her gently suggesting that I roll on to my side, which I always, immediately and without objection, did, often resolving the problem without either of us even coming fully awake—the whole exchange was friendly, and so unexceptionable that Hope could often compel me to roll over without awakening me or getting either of us ‘worked up’ or aggravated.

Thus it was not, I had originally planned to aver either during the ‘back’ nine or in the 19th Hole, that I claimed, as do some husbands, never to ‘snore,’ nor that I am unwilling to roll to one side or the other or to take reasonable steps to accommodate Hope when something has caused me every once in a great while to rasp, cough, gurgle, wheeze or breathe in any way obstructedly in sleep. Rather, that the true, more vexing or ‘paradoxical’ source of the present marital conflict is that I, in reality, am not yet truly even asleep at the times my wife cries out suddenly now about my ‘snoring’ and disturbing her nearly every night since our Audrey’s departure from home. It is very nearly always within no more than roughly an hour of our retiring (after reading in our beds for approximately one half hour, which is something of a marital ‘ritual’ or custom), at which time I am still lying in bed on my back with my arms arranged and my eyes either closed or relaxedly watching the walls’ and ceiling’s angles and distending exterior lights through the blinds, continuing to be aware of every sound but slowly relaxing and ‘unwinding’ and descending gradually towards falling asleep, but not yet in fact asleep. When she now cries out.

The real issue, in other words, is that it is Hope (who is well known for falling asleep the moment she has closed her current ‘livre de chevet,’ replaced it on her night-stand and struck the light in the brushed steel sconce above her bed—as opposed to myself, who have been a difficult and somewhat, as it were, ‘fragile’ or ‘delicate’ sleeper from childhood onwards) who is, in point of fact, asleep at these junctures, and dreaming, said dreams evidently consisting, at least in part, of the somewhat paradoxical belief and perception that I myself am asleep and am ‘snoring’ loudly enough to—as she puts it—‘wake the dead.’

I do, of course, have my personal faults, as do all or most husbands; but ‘snoring’ during the year’s cold weather months (like most, my hay fever is seasonal or, more technically, an ‘Auto-immune system’ response to certain classes of pollen) is not one of them. Not, of course, that it would even necessarily constitute an actual ‘fault’ as such, as it would not be an action which I was performing ‘consciously’ or had any voluntary control over. But I do not. Nor am I in the habit of being incorrect or confused about whether I myself am asleep or not—and it is an established fact in our marriage that it takes me far longer to truly fall asleep than it does Hope or my erstwhile first wife (we had joked about it together many times), as well as longer to fully awaken. Hope, in particular, moves quickly and easily between states of consciousness which, for me, are—due, perhaps, to professional stress—somewhat of a struggle. One could point to, for instance, the fact that it is nearly always myself who drives when driving any appreciable distance as a couple,