saint-louise's Diaryland Diary
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It's saliva. Not acid. Get over it.
I know he didn't deserve it, and I'm sorry about my actions to this day. That one moment when I let my guard down will forever be a regret of mine.
I'm not talking about the guy I was dating who I grew tired of and subsequently ignored until he gave up and moved to Hawaii, taking a bag of my unwashed laundry with him.
No. I'm speaking of Arthur. And the infamous Saliva Incident of 1992.
Gather 'round as I finally unfold the tale that I've held deep in my black, black heart for over ten years.
It was a summer night. Arthur and I were snuggled together in my bed. I was excruciatingly tired from my day at work. And I hadn't had a decent sleep in over a fortnight, because of my aforementioned bed partner's tendency to emit a nightly snoring sound wave that had been known to shatter windows and provoke animals to eat their young as far away as Toronto. By this time, I was so overwhelmed with fatigue that I had barely rested my head on Artie's chest to cuddle before I was unconscious in the deadest, weightiest, most deeply-unaware-of-anyone-and-anything manner possible.
I don't even remember hearing him begin to snore. Considering that I was in close enough proximity for that shattering sound to cause spontaneous sterility, that's saying a lot.
In the wee hours of the morning, I came to, and realized that neither of us had moved very far from the positions we'd fallen asleep in, although the pillow that Artie had been lying on had fallen off of the bed sometime during the night. I blinked a couple of times, in that slightly confused way associated with being suddenly awakened from a profound sleep, or with encountering a leprechaun after indulging in a particularly bad batch of laced weed. Not that I'd know. Or…anything.
I became even more bewildered when blinking my eyes made me realize that my eyelashes were a tad moist. I moved my jaw slightly, and found that it was also damp. Ever so slowly, it dawned on me that the entire right side of my head, the side resting on Arthur's chest, was sopping wet.
Arthur continued to snore. I pondered my discovery with blindingly fast mental capabilities similar to that of bile.
And then I lifted my head. The action was accompanied by a loud "SHHHLOOOOORRRP" sound. When I looked down at my peacefully sleeping partner, I realized what had happened.
During the course of the night, sleeping on Artie's chest, I had gone slack-jawed in my state of obliviousness. I had drooled on him. And not just a little bit either.
Remember the "SHHHLOOOORRP"?
Oh, horrible. Oh, horrible. Most horrible.
I stared, horror-struck, my face dripping with the remnants of my own saliva, when Arthur's snore began to falter and lose its emphatic, grinding edge. It sounded like an air compressor winding down.
He was beginning to wake up.
Panic. Adrenaline. Complete abandonment of rational senses. Wild-eyed, I looked around for something to try to remove the evidence of my dreadful act. The bedspread? No, we'd kicked it off during the night because it was so hot. His shirt? Yes! NO! Damn you, woman! Think! THINK!
Just as he began to stir, my eyes fell on Artie's pillow lying on the floor. I snatched it up.
And the first thing he must have seen upon waking was me, slobber-faced and intent upon my task, scrubbing at his chest with a pillow, then flinging it across the room. I looked back and saw that his eyes were open.
We looked at each other for a few agonizingly-long seconds before I jumped out of bed, muttering something about a nightmare involving leprechauns and pillows. I fled into the bathroom just as he asked, "Why is your face spitty?"
Did he realize what had occurred? We didn't speak of it.
Was the emotional damage I inflicted on him long-lasting? At this point, I guess I'll never know.
Why the hell can't I sleep without drooling like an open sluice in the Hoover Dam?
That's the question that plagues me to this day.
8:22 a.m. - 2003-03-13
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