Me Problemo

It’s astonishingly clear. I’m a drooler. I’m currently sitting on the couch that I absconded from my grandparents’ old home. At their place, once, I was awoken from a nap on this very couch. My grandmother, the culprit, woke me while shimmying a towel under my chin. At the time I thought; must be an expensive couch. Now I think; nobody wants spit on their couch.

The alarm sounds on mornings and sometimes startles me. I come to and sense the soppiness. I think; I’m a drooler. Next I think; must have been a good sleep. Finally I think; I now correlate a good drool with a good sleep. Then I shower and get on with my day.

Intermittently I’ll toss from left to right and right to left. I play a strange game falling asleep. Start on one side until I’m damn near asleep. Then react to the overwhelming urge and roll onto the other. As I roll, I wipe the corner of my mouth. I wipe not to remove drool. I wipe to remind myself that I drool.

Quite often I fall hard asleep immediately. It’s probably the forty-five best minutes of sleep I get on most nights. Consistently, I’m thrown awake by some REM-fueled happening. As I gather myself, I readjust my pillow to offer a new corner for fouling. Fresh turf.

It’s not an epiphany. I didn’t just realize. I’ve simply accepted the challenge at this point in my life. I fall asleep nightly with my mouth shut, breathing through my nose. No prob. I awaken nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand with my mouth closed. I lack a good seal, clearly. And it’s not every night. That’s as far as the analysis has gone and as far as the analysis has gone is probably as far as it can go since I’m asleep the while. I focus on not drool during the times I don’t drool. I drool when I can’t control my focus. A conundrum.

Have I ever drooled while sleeping on someone else’s bed or couch? Sure as shit I have. Have I ever done it while sharing the very pillow I’m pumping full of my unique brand of saliva? You bet your balls I have.

I realize that nobody cares if I drool. I’m well aware that it’s not as dramatic as wetting the bed. I understand it’s the least imposing of all the bodily fluids. Still, leaving a trail of spittle like the oil trail left behind a ghetto jalopy isn’t something I want as my calling card.

The curiosity is not on the mornings when I turn my pillow into a down puddle. It’s on the mornings when I awake on a pillow as dry as the Martian surface. It’s when I wipe my chin dry and my chin needs no wiping. It’s when I wake, mid-morning, to flip that soaking corner I’ve covered with spit. Only, there isn’t any need to flip.

Is it position? Is amount of time asleep? Does it occur during different times of the week? Is there any consistency to the seepage?

I wrestle with this problem like a dog wrestles with a bone. I chew on it for a while, then I forget about it. But when I see it, or feel it, I remember it’s there and chew on it some more. There are worse problems in the world. I have a few of them. So, I probably shouldn’t dwell too long my drool problem. Not when I could dwell on my egregiously small penis.

It’s the teeniest.