It’s not something I’m terribly proud of, the hot sleeping thing. I mean, I don’t just sleep warmly, or even heatedly. When I sleep I emit measurable amounts of toxic radiation, veritable fucking oodles of hot, hot hotness.
I’ve been a hot sleeper since childhood, and so I’ve never known how to sleep differently. How do you tell a hot sleeper to sleep coldly? A hot sleeper is nothing like a crooked walker. You can say to a crooked walker, “Crooked walker, walk in a straighter line, like this.” And you can show the crooked walker how to walk in a straighter line, and the crooked walker can make adjustments.
You can tell a loud yawner to shut the hell up, and she will yawn with more tonal precaution, taking her formerly loud yawn and turning it into a softer, more weightless expulsion of breath. Loud yawners can indeed shut the hell up.
But hot sleepers will always be hot sleepers. Hot sleepers are incapable of sleeping coldly. Our bodies aren’t equipped with cold sleeping tendencies. We sleep hotly or we don’t sleep at all.
I’ve come to terms with the hot sleeping thing, accepting sweat-soaked sheets as a nightly reminder that my sympathetic nervous system is indeed operational. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I could fry bacon on my belly every night at 2am and then mop up the gristle with the biscuits I’ve baked in my armpits.
I’m okay with my hot sleeping; I’m just worried about the moderate-to-warm sleeper who’s taken up residence beside me. I worry that I’m going to wake up one morning to find that I’ve burned the hair off of his entire body, leaving his once bushy brow a bald, sizzling sacrifice. I worry that I’ll slow roast him into a gigantic Scottish shish kabob with knobby knees.
Will my moderate-to-warm sleeper still love me when my hot sleeping kills the neighbor’s dog? Will he still love me when the CIA bottles me up and sells me to Iran in exchange for hostages? Can he learn to love my hot, hot sleeping?
