Luke Ford

I have a hard time sleeping with someone. I feel like it is against the Torah. I feel like I am not living up to my highest ideals. I feel like my dad might walk in any minute and say, “Son, what are you doing?”

So I normally like to kick my ladies to the bottom of the bed and have them sleep at my feet. Then in the morning, when I’m awake, I bring them up for a quick cuddle before I shower and say my prayers.

But there was this one woman who wouldn’t be kicked away so easily.

She was taking Ambien. And she was a very snuggly cuddly girl.

And we’d snuggle and cuddle until I got sleepy — our sex lives had ended weeks before (love of chess extended our relationship by about six months) — and then I push her towards the bottom of the bed.

She didn’t get the hint.

So I grabbed her little feet and dragged her to her rightful place and gave her a comforter and a pillow and told her to rejoice in her lot.

Was she happy with this? No sirreee. She’d just clamber back into my arms and purr, “I just want to be close to you.”

I had to drag her away a few times before she got the hint and collapsed into a drug-induced sleep.

So relationships and intimacy can be a real pain, particularly when you’re a real deep thinker like myself, always liking to be blogging and watching TV and reading lofty books and surfing the internet.

On the other hand, solitude can really suck when you’re sick.

So Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010, was going well. I was preparing to set off for Temple Beth Am that evening to take in a stimulating debate between Dennis Prager and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on why men cheat. I figured there’d be lots of girls there and lots of glorious opportunities for me to cheat.

I took a long hot shower. I used my best dandruff shampoo (on my hair and beard). Then I followed up with some silky conditioner (on my hair and beard).

I came out feeling like a lie-down. So I did some semi-supine with two of my books on American Jewish Journalism under my fat head.

And as I lay there lengthening and widening, I felt nauseated and made a dash for the toilet and started heaving up my large late lunch (three pieces of raisin bread toast slathered in peanut butter, four eggs (whites only) and four big sticks of celery).

Then I washed off, got rid of the chunks of vomit in my beard, wiped round the toilet lid and the floor, and looked forward to running into Orit Arfa in just three hours time.

At 6pm, I did a phone interview with Steve Fainaru, author of Big Boy Rules, but 15 minutes in, before we could talk about sex in a time of terror, I felt the violent need to upchuck.

I bade Steve a hasty farewell, and delivered another technicolor yawn into my toilet, just huge gross bits of peanut butter and undigested raisin bread mixing with celery. It was awful.

I had a bit of a lie-down after that, feeling quite shagged out from my prolonged squawk. I started pining for the fjords. You’d have to nail my hands and feet to a cross to prevent me from seeing Dennis Prager that night.

Well, that was a bit dramatic. One more hearty bout of upchucking and I decided to stay home.

Now I was feeling quite shaky. An hour after calling for support, I took my phone off the hook at 7:10 pm. I could not bear to lift the receiver. I could not bear to hear a sound. I just wanted to lie quietly. I felt crook.

I drank a Diet Coke to settle my stomach but an hour later, I was vomiting again.

I had a few mouthfuls of water to cleanse my palate and took a clonazepam, but shortly after midnight, I had my final purge.

I opened up my Blackberry and Googled “vomiting dehydration” and decided if I couldn’t keep down any liquid in the morning, I’d get to the hospital.

Stomach empty, I got a decent night’s sleep. In next morning, I was able to keep down some water. By the afternoon, I was able to listen to Dennis Prager’s radio show and a couple of days later, I watched his debate with Shmuley on JewishJournal.com.

Help arrived Thursday and Friday evening with some soup and crackers and Pepto Bismol.

I spent the weekend alone. The Cowboys got clobbered Sunday morning.

I only missed Thursday morning’s Alexander Technique teacher training.

I’m feeling drained but the worst is behind me. About every four years, I get these stomach bugs where I vomit and vomit and can’t keep anything down for about ten hours. Then I slowly bounce back.