Sleeping Pills

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• July 21, 2015

A couple weeks ago, I started having trouble falling and staying asleep.  Not getting enough rest can quickly deteriorate mental health.  I started taking sleeping pills.  These sleeping pills gave me vivid (and often violent) dreams…

Night 1:

I pull up in front of my parents house.  It’s nighttime.  I see couple of cop cars with their lights on.  I get out of my car, and the cops are screaming at me to get back in my car.  I start yelling back, “this is my house!”  My dad is in the driveway, and there’s a skinny, balding, middle-aged man pointing a gun at my dad’s face.  This man is yelling at my dad.  My dad is calm, trying to talk him down.  My mom is on the porch, crying, and my brother is yelling at her to go inside.

It’s chaos.  Neighbors are gathering.  It’s loud.  So many people are yelling.  Naturally, I join in.  I start to yell at the gunman to “get the fuck away from my father.”  The gunman turns to me, and starts firing at me, immediately.  I turn to run.  He shoots me in my left shoulder.  I get in my car, with plans to run him over.  But my car won’t go.  He continues to shoot my car, and now I’m really pissed because I love my car.  Then, the psycho is right next to me, with a gun to my head.  He’s looking over his shoulder, yelling at my dad, “I’m going to kill your daughter.  You’re going to watch me kill your daughter.”

Because he’s not looking at me, I grab his hand with the gun, and face it upwards.  He starts shooting rounds into the sky.  “Shoot him,” I yell to the cops, “fucking shoot him!”  The guy pulls out a second pistol with his other hand from his back.  He puts that gun to my temple.  Then, my dad shoots him dead from behind.  “That’s what happens when you threaten my daughter,” my dad says, which is so fucking bad ass.  The useless cops come over, and tape off the scene.  The whole neighborhood is gathering.  I asked my dad what was going on.  Apparently, my dad had borrowed some money from this guy 30 years ago when he originally bought the house, and now that he was selling, this junky wanted some of the money, and when my dad said no, it escalated quickly.

The ambulance comes and they are going to remove the bullet from my shoulder.  I wake up.  My shoulder is sore, and I immediately grab my arm.  My arms were sore from surfing the day before.

Night 2:

Me, and three of my friends are exploring ancient ruins in a jungle (I assume South America).  It’s quite stunning.  Old pyramids, covered in vines and wild life.  We’re having a blast.  Then, we come across a dinosaur: a Euoplocephalus (I had to look up the name in the morning).

We’re stoked.  I mean we just found a fucking dinosaur.  So we start taking pictures and videos with our phones.  The dinosaur seems oddly comfortable with us, so we keep getting closer, until we spook it, and it starts chasing us.  We’re running from the dinosaur, and I start to climb a tree.  My friends are still running away.  I call to them, “climb the trees!  Climb the trees!”  They’re out of my sight, when I hear something rustling above me.  I look up, and there’s at least a dozen baboons showing off their fangs.

Oh fuck.  I decide to take my chances with the dinosaur, and I leap from the tree and start to run again.  I run in zig-zags, figuring the dinosaur has stubby legs (like an alligator or crocodile) and won’t be able to keep up.  I escape the dinosaur.  I hear my friends screaming in the distance, but I have no idea where they are.  I have no idea where I am.  Nothing looks familiar.  It’s all jungle.  I make my way towards a creek.  I think I can follow to the creek to someplace safe.  But when I get there, there’s three young black panthers growling at me.  The young panthers could tear me to shreds alone, and I definitely don’t want to be around when their mom shows up.  So, I start running again.  Why is everything in this jungle trying to kill me?  The sun is going down, and I’m certain I’m going to die here, alone.  I don’t know where my friends are, but I’m also certain they’re dead.  I hear a noise behind me, and I try to turn but I trip instead, and I wake up in my bed.

Night 3:

I leave a gig where I opened for Colin Quinn (which I had that night, so my dream basically picked up from where I left off in reality).  I headed to another gig I wasn’t on, but some of my friends were.  I get there, and it’s really bright.  Crazy bright.  The whole venue is a pristine shining white.  I go to the bar and promptly order a Guinness.  I’m annoyed because the bartender serves the Guinness in a tall thin glass.  Was this her first day on earth?  This is no way to drink a Guinness.

I’m seated next to a forty-something year old, attractive woman.  She starts talking to me, and upon learning I’m a comic, she becomes extremely flirtatious.  She keeps grabbing my arm, and legs, and stroking my hair.  She orders us rounds of drinks.  The woman and I start making out at this bar.  While this is happening, a young man steals my laptop out of my backpack.  I jump out of my seat, run after him, and snatch my laptop back.  I punch him in the jaw, but I don’t get a good shot because he’s at least a foot taller than me.  I berate him, and call him a series of names.  I tell the security guard and they throw him out.

The show has started at this point, but they’ve done nothing about the lights.  The whole room is super bright, and no one is paying attention.  I go backstage to try to find a way to remedy the situation.  Backstage leads to this beautiful library.  It’s all white, and quite modern looking.  It’s equipped with desks, and funky chairs.  I find myself enchanted by it.  It was so quiet.  No one was there.  As a nerd and lover of books, I fantasized about reading and writing there.

I return to the main room, and the show is a disaster.  No on is paying attention.  The whole place is bugging me out, so I step outside.  I’m on the street, somewhere in the city. It’s bustling, with lots of cars and people, but I can’t hear anything.  I almost start to panic.  Have I gone deaf?  But something is not right.  It’s just as bright out here.  Everything is shining.  The sky is white.  Reality is distorted.  I figure one of two things is happening: I’m on drugs or I’m dreaming.  I concentrate.  I try to listen.  And I do hear something.  A tapping. Tap. Tap. Tap.  What is that sound?  I realize, it’s rain. But here, it’s all too bright and sunny.  I wake up to sound of rain tapping at my window.

Night 4:

I’m in a theater, watching some sort of live Muppet performance with my family.  I’m quite thrilled to be there.  The show was great.  We were in Europe, or somewhere, that wasn’t America.

Anyway, after the show, my cousin and I decide to backpack to another country.  In order to get to desired location, we had to travel through a sketchy area that terrorists had been known to “hide out.”  Some people said they would never back pack through there, while others who had done it said it was completely fine.

I had my reservations about it, but my cousin was excited about the excursion.  We begin our trek through said sketchy area which was very desert like and red, sort of like Mars.  We’re hiking, when we come across giant storage containers in the middle of this desert.  We get closer and there’s tons of them, forming some sort of a maze.  I suggest we turn back.  I’m worried.  My cousin insists we move forward.  So we enter this maze of storage containers, and we hear gun fire.  We turn around and run.  Terrorists start chasing us, and my cousin is falling behind.  She gets shot.  I turn around, but she is quickly captured by the terrorists.  They continue to shoot at me with their automatic weapons, so I run away again.

I wake up.

Night 5:

I’m at an audition.  I’m reading lines in front of a female casting director, and two other guys.  I read my lines, and the woman says, “that’s great, Lori, but can you read it again, and this time be more like Amy Schumer.”

“Okay,” I say, fumbling with the sides, “um… I’m not… I’m not exactly sure what that means.”

“Just be less like you and more like Amy Schumer.”

“Okay, no problem,” I try to channel Amy Schumer, but instead, I seem to be channeling Richard from Silicon Valley, as I’m terribly awkward.  I do the lines again, but it’s not good.  I know it.  They know it.  I’ve bombed this audition.

I leave the audition, discouraged, when two of my cousins (different cousins) suggest we go to Fire Island.  Surely, this will make me feel better.  This guy drives us to the ferry dock, and we’re waiting for the next ferry.  Then, a killer whale jumps out of the water.  Followed by a second killer whale.  They continue to do this, and we’re floored.  It was like watching our own private show.  The whales where jumping up and down, singing their whale songs.  Sometimes, they would come up to the dock, and we would pet their noses.  It was spectacular.

I woke up, refreshed, having had the best (and longest) nights sleep I’ve had in weeks.