Wherein I discuss the Monkeys on my Bathroom Ceiling

My beloved is no junkie. She has trouble sleeping from time to time and has been known to try various solutions: yoga, melatonin, valerian root, tylenol pm, weeping, and very recently she had a coupon for a free week of Lunesta. For her, a perfect drug. She slept as though there was a toggle switch on the back of her neck you could switch to sleep and immediately her head would hang, slack jawed and tongue lolling.

Lunesta ain't cheap, kids! Even if you want to go doctor-shopping online, you're looking at two dollars a pill. Which is much too much for our prescription drug budget so I look online and I find that Ambien has a generic. Ambien! Zolpidem Titrate! The words inspired confidence. I'd seen Ambien commercials. She marched into her general practitioner and barely had to sit down before he'd written her a script for the generic stuff! Huzzah!

Later that evening:

There's an owl in your nose.

What?

There's an owl in your nose. I can see him.

She's lying in bed. She has to be awake in five hours and at work in six. She's rolled on her side so she can stare at me and she has that look I have seen so many times in college. Her mind is blown. There are owls in my nose and patterns on the ceiling and while the drug might be inducing her to sleep the enticements of wakeful hallucination are just so... enticing. Aaaaaaaaaaaand she's freaking me out. There is something unsettling to being stared at in bed by someone with large pupils. My mind races to tattered memories of people sleep-stabbing on Ambien, of hypno-sedative-fueled rampages that the murderous insomniac scarcely remembers. My sleepy tripping girl takes my discomfort hard. The evening disintegrates into tears. My frustration sounds like meanness to my girl who is chemically fragile. Ambien is officially off her list of sedatives.

But not mine.

I take it the following night. It makes me sleepy. And I sleep. No sense in throwing away $13 dollars worth of prescription meds just because it makes her hallucinate. Was I secretly disappointed by a lack of hallucination on my part? I'm going to say no. I was prepared for a mystical journey but I didn't expect one. And since my habit is to imbibe much too deeply in caffeine much too late in the afternoon, I was delighted to know that I had a corrective in my hot little hands and could enjoy my late afternoon coffee buzz without fear of seeing 3am. Or 4am.

Earlier this week, I popped one of those tiny pills without a thought and drifted off to sleep.

zzzzzzzzzzzzsssssssssssick! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzssssssssssick!

This noise. A couple times. Someone...trying...to...get...in....my....house.

I live on the first floor. My apartment will be burgaled if I stay there long enough. There's always a chance. Tonight's the night. I sit bolt upright. Deanna looks at my Ambienized eyes, the eyes now brimming with fear and drugs. She gasps.

What's wrong?

I heard something.

Zzzzzzzzssssssssssssssick! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzssssssssssssick!

Deanna's out of bed before I think of the idea. She turns the corner in the foyer without turning on the light. She lets out a breathy and terrifying

Oh my god!

I'm gripped by fear. I'm in its thrall. I'm fear's collared bitch. Deanna waves me into the foyer. There's water on the bathroom floor. There's water running in the apartment above us. A shower, from the sounds of things.

A leak! There's a leak! We're saved! Death has not come for us tonight! A warm endorphin-shower is taking place in my brain as I look over the situation. Water streams from the pipe in the corner of the bathroom, gathering in a pool in the corner of the small room. Deedee gets a bucket. Towels are placed on the floor. I look at the pipe considering my next move. The water is coming from the corner where it clings briefly to the ceiling before slinking down the pipe in a thick column about a half inch wide.

And then there are the monkeys. At the top of the pipe I can see them. Two monkeys each about an inch and a half tall. They have a cartoonish aspect: wide faces, wide eyes, brown fur, big big smiles. They each have a bucket from which the water that cascading down the pipe is coming. I watch the monkeys for a long while. Deanna observes my petit mal fit and asks if I'm okay.

Yeah, there's just monkeys on the ceiling.

She looks at me with unironic understanding.

I know.

I leave the monkeys be and turn around to where I see the shower curtain breathing. I'm awake and dreaming and the water continues to flow into my bathroom. A crack begins to spread across the middle of my bathroom's ceiling.

Deanna and I function in a completely adult manner. We handle this as though with a military efficiency. We put on pants. We triage the bathroom and then look outside to see if any lights are on in the upstairs apartment. There are none. She and I walk up the stairs and at 1:30 in the morning ring the bell. And again. And again. We can hear the water continue to run from their apartment and into ours. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. It's been three minutes of ringing. Maybe they are making love in the shower? We've never heard them make love in three years of being at this apartment. Snore? Yes. Screw? No. Maybe it's something worse though? Maybe they were strangled in the bathtub to make evidence tougher to get for the forensics guys? Maybe this is a crime scene? I mean how else do you explain...

I knock on the door, kind of hard. The door just fucking opens. Yawns open. Creaks open. Slowly opens to reveal their apartment with no lights on. Deanna and I do not have to speak as we walk away from the door very slowly and quietly. I get the superintendent. I did not intend to wake him at 1:30 in the morning but I'm not getting into a crime drama.

Poor Eastern European Superintendent. I never see him with good news. I ring his bell. I explain what's going on. And I go to my apartment. I look in the bathroom. I put another towel on the floor. The crack in the ceiling has widened. The ceilings going to need to be redone before the mildew blooms.





Pray For Mojo.


The monkeys are gone. I don't see how they ever could have even appeared to have been there. There's no room for the monkeys. My brain photoshopped the whole scene to let the monkeys in and now the monkeys are gone. But maybe not forever. I've still got 26 pills.