"Wake. If you're lucky, that is morning's first task. Wake. Not rolling over onto your side, not recalling the thoughts that have stayed the night, like a tryst who cannot sense they're meant to leave before light breaks through on the pane. Leave that to phones - light breaking through, remembering everything. Wake - what a herculean task! To wake first, and not check your phone. Everything after that? A form of grace, if you believe in that sort of thing."
"You stopped believing in it when you were younger. Every morning, after waking, and likely after jacking off - which, when done promptly, can seem akin to sleepwalking - you stand out of bed and position your phone on the windowsill, camera open: your own portable and electrical mirror. Snap. A picture of your shirtless body, how tapered it looks in the morning. You don't believe - there's that word again - that the camera loves you so much as to lie."
"Last night was nightmareless, go figure. Time happens to you when you sleep. No dreams, no memory posing as dream. Time shifts you into passivity. Shifts 'me' to you. Your brain, a lake, frozen over, blue pangs thrusting in the ice of unconsciousness, the nausea of necessity rising up in you. Where's the prescribed pill? Nausea is not a question. Questions have no momentum. You fill yourself with them, as many as you want: why is he comfortable saying nigger around you?"
A person struggles to wake before checking their phone, treating waking as a difficult achievement. Mornings become a ritual of photographing a shirtless body in morning light, twisting and selecting angles to smooth imperfections, then deleting dozens of images until a desired view remains. The camera provides a seeming indisputable truth while also exposing self-surveillance and insecurity. Sleep removes agency and memory, producing passivity, nausea, and reliance on medication. Repetitive questions and anxieties surface alongside interpersonal unease and a pointed concern about someone feeling comfortable using a racial slur nearby.
Read at AnOther
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