Overnight Success

The sleep is incantory, our dreams are spells. They think we are joking at first. That we’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. Paid someone too much to read our palms.

We let them believe this. We go the course alone, us two, spelunking in sleep. Tunneling in our dreams. We contort like underwater gymnasts. We are suddenly zoologists, go caving, feed fruit bats sugarwater from miniature syringes. Turn the sugarwater into expert formulated skincare. We grow extremely fertile. We are super wombs. We conjure orgasm on command. We menstruate painlessly and our blood is glitter and heals cuts and scabs. We no longer have underbites, no longer require Invisalign. We eat candy with no caloric effect. Our cowlicks correct, our loose ligaments tune like guitar strings. Our enemies grow large zits on their wedding days and the boys that teased us in middle school come down with hand foot and mouth disease as full grown adults. Our cheekbones perform and our skin is so dewy. Our bloodwork is perfect. We are medical marvels! We sing opera. We sell digital products on Etsy and we start businesses and side hustles and side-side hustles of our side businesses, for which we do our own accounting. Our skin self produces sunscreen. We are protected as we photosynthesize. We are solar powered with balanced solar plexuses. Our throat chakras unblock. We read poetry aloud as people weep.

The more we sleep, the more we gain special skills, all of which monetize without lifting a finger. In our sleep, skills flow to us like water. I soon have the credentials to teach at-home animal butchery, bee-keeping, and clarinet theory and I have not once experienced imposter syndrome in doing so. No pausing, no doubting. No blinking, just my eyes moving bilaterally. Just our spellbound REM. 

Soon they seek our secret sauce. How have our crows’ feet disappeared? How have we mastered such influxes of cash? How have we not lifted a finger? How are we so multifaceted? How are we jacks of all trades and masters of all? 

We tried to tell you, we say. We really did. We are nothing if not generous with our gifts. We explain our situation as facts, though they are heard like proverbs you could believe in or not. They, decidedly, do not. 

We fall asleep so beautifully. We fall asleep from every angle. We sleep upside down and sideways and on park benches, on plush and goose down feathers. The location doesn’t matter, really. We try to explain this. We are cultivating it anywhere. We are sorcerers of sleep. 

We are asked to give lectures. People want to connect, want to have dinner. They want our financial literacy tips, our astrological chart readings, our Jupiter in retrograde predictions, our manifestation techniques, our Law of Attraction-ing best practices, our favorite teas for debloating. How are we never bloated? How are we making so much money literally overnight? With absolutely no effort? How have we garnered millions of followers on social media? How are we so abundant? How do our teeth look so white? How are even our darkest thoughts so linguistically beautiful? How have we monetized our hobbies so seamlessly? 

How to pass on the magic? It is a slippery kind, it evades all questioning. They ask Is this the moment I’ve fallen asleep? How do we know it’s begun? To which we say, if you are asking the question, you have not. They are not satisfied. This is new to me, I want to say.

We continue in our sleep. We teach courses on reproductive freedom and earthquake safety and Japanese plot structure and literary scenes of yore. We flip-turn, somersault, lay brick. We hand blow glass and crochet and re-wire lamps. We swing from monkeybars, we bodybuild. We measure space and time and chart constellations and become masters of the smokey-eye and monetize that too, we are make-up artists for intergalactic screenplays and we start an in-print fashion magazine and we pen perfectly plotted mysteries and memoirs and garner such attention that we win every award and then we win awards for being the most decorated award winners that the planet has ever seen. 

They are interviewing us in wakefulness today about our success we have while sleeping, filming for prime airtime with a live audience. Literal Overnight Success, they love to say. Taking “Making Money While You Sleep” To A Whole New Level! They love our smokey eyes, though I’ve stopped meeting mine in the mirror.

Can you try to explain to us mere mortals? How is this all happening literally in your sleep? Way to make us all feel like underachievers! What do you do with your hours of the day?

We are silent for a long time. I trace my palm’s lifeline. I’m not sure I understand your question. I paint a smile. As though my days are threadbare. As though his days burst at the seams.

Well, when it’s all done, he says, what do you feel then? Are you ever bored or sad during the day? 

I look to my companion in sleep magic and she has closed her eyes. She has fled to dream. 

Well, no problems with insomnia here! No problems at all, it seems! 

I look at the crowd. The hollowness of words, how incapable they are of holding something like this. I meet the eyes that are on me, the helm, all the wide-eyed girls, I will them to suck spare bits of magic from the air, so there’s nothing left for him. This is the moment you are falling asleep, I think, that little twitch, the tumble of unconsciousness, ringing in our ears. While he clips his fingernails over the toilet, we will be doing what he could never dream of. While he’s thinking of hard work and pay off and why why why why you, it will never be him. It will only be us. I feel it, the collective phantom slip on ice, the alpha waves.. I open my eyes, and one by one, each member of the audience slumps, a ripple of bodies in the crowd, joining us. 

Yes, no problems here, I nod, bubbling over, nearly levitating, just as he subtly points to the camera crew to adjust me, reposition my eyeshadow, fix me with brushes as I have started to cry.