A tale of beauty rest

BY PETUNIA PAP SMEAR

The road to a good night’s sleep is fraught with danger and excitement.

For many years, being able to get a good night’s rest has eluded me. During my college years, in the latter part of the Cretaceous Period, I remember being woken up from a deep sleep at three o’clock in the morning by my roommate who stated that the police were at the door, maintaining that the neighbors had called in a noise complaint asking that we discontinue using loud power tools.

This was my first indication that I might have a slight issue with snoring. Being the rotundus-humungous size queen that I am, (and by that statement, I mean the shadow of my silhouette can rival that of a blue whale and has been known to cause several unscheduled eclipses of the sun apparently}, I’m prone to have breathing problems manifested by snoring vibracious enough to register on the Richter scale.

A few years later, near the middle of the Paleozoic Era, my group of friends would go on camp outs. They would go camping, and I would go “glamping.” My tent had a chandelier and Persian carpets. Every queen needs luxury, even in the woods.

The group would organize all of their tents in a nice little compact village, and they would ever so gently suggest that I pitch my tent a mile away so that they could sleep. I argued that my snoring would be a natural bear (the animal, not the manly man bear) deterrent. For their mutual safety and my comfort, we would eventually settle on a compromise of a 100-yard buffer zone.

Back at home, in the middle of the night, I’d find myself sitting on the edge of the bed, clearing my breathing passages, eventually falling asleep in the sitting position, and inevitably falling forward, crashing into my shelf full of breasticles. To avoid a broken neck or getting my eye poked out, I moved a reclining chair into the bedroom and sleeping in it.

Sleeping in the chair worked for several years. However, over the course of time and the accumulation of many servings of potatoes and gravy around my waist, my girdle became ever more snugly fit and I began to re-experience difficulty sleeping again.

I would fall asleep in the chair and then wake up lying on the floor. I would climb up off the floor and back into the chair. This scenario would repeat between 10 and 15 times a night. I was seriously missing out on desperately needed beauty rest, and there is not enough Maybelline in the world to cover those dark eye circles and let my natural beauty shine through. Time to take action!

So, I went to the hospital for an overnight sleep study.

After checking in, I was escorted into a home-style bedroom and told to wear shorts and a loose open top, and that my nurse would be in shortly. So, I got changed and lay on the bed, feeling a little vulnerable and exposed. My nurse, Tom, entered the room smiling at me and Oh My God, he was beautiful! I could have sworn that Tom was in the last porno that I had seen and was the dreamboat of many a bedroom fantasy. And here I was in a bed alone with him. My mind began to plan our honeymoon in Tahiti as he began to tenderly place wires all over my chest, all the while chatting cheerily about his dog.

As he was leaning over me, I could smell his musky cologne and a hint of manly perspiration. My head began to swirl. While he was placing probes on my forehead, I got a good long look into his eyes. Holy shit he had the biggest dreamiest bedroom eyes I have ever seen. I couldn’t breathe and I was wide awake. Now it was time for Tom to place probes on my legs. My heart started pounding as if to escape from behind my breasticles. It was all I could do to not throw my legs up in the air and say, “Take me, I’m yours,” but my princess finishing school trained me not to appear too eager or it would be whore-ish.

Now that I was all wired up (not that uncommon of feeling for me due to the electric breasticles) Tom said that he would be just outside the room watching me on video. Now how in the hell am I supposed to sleep knowing that? After much tossing and turning and dreaming about Tom feeding me breakfast in bed, I must have fallen asleep.

In the morning, I awoke from my dream state gazing longingly into Tom’s eyes as he gently shook me awake. After he had removed all the wires, he told me that I have sleep apnea and that I woke up 123 times per hour to breathe. Holy crap! No wonder I was tired.

Henceforth, I must wear a C-pap breathing machine to sleep. Getting ready for bed is like suiting up for a spacewalk. But I will tolerate this indignity for Tom.

This story leaves us with several important questions:

1. Should I develop a line of glitter makeup and call it Glitter-Be-Gone Bruise Concealer?

2. Was the real reason they wanted my tent far away because they were jealous of my luxurious fashionista glamping tent?

3. Is wiring up your bed partner a sexual fetish?

4. Do my electrical breasticles count as participating in the fetish?

5. What color hanky would that be?

6. Was the reason I woke up 123 times an hour because of sleep apnea or because I was dreaming of Tom?

7. Did Tom not feed me breakfast in bed because he thought I was too fat?

These and other eternal questions will be answered in future chapters of The Perils of Petunia Pap Smear.