Free My American Unhappiness by Dean Bakopoulos Page A

for him, more unpleasantness for me."
    "What is wrong?" I ask. "What do they think it is?"
    "I'm sure it's my asthma. They did a scan of my lungs today. I'll know more by the end of the week."
    "They probably suggested you stop smoking," I say.
    "Imagine that," she says. "They did."
    "Will you?"
    "I can try."
    "I hope you will," I say.
    "Tell me about work. What's happening there? Anything from Lara? Did you buy her flowers for her desk today? I think you should buy her flowers."
    "Funny you should bring her up," I say. "She looked beautiful today. But you know who ended up eating dinner with me and the girls?"
    "Who?" my mother asks. I know the twins will tell her about Minn anyway, as soon as they have a chance, so I figure I face fewer questions from my mother if I control the conversation about Minn from the outset.
    "The woman from the coffee shop whom I like," I say. "Minn."
    "Oh, the barista," my mother says.
    "Exactly," I say, pleased that my mother has used the term.
    "I'll have to find out how the girls like her."
    "They seemed to love her," I say.
    "How wonderful!"
    "But don't get your hopes up, Mom. She might be engaged. I'm pretty sure there's an engagement ring on her left hand."
    "Maybe she just likes rings?"
    "Maybe," I say, "maybe. Can I make you some dinner?"
    "No," she says. "Maybe a drink? Can you make us a couple of drinks?"
    "A drink?" I ask. "A real one?"
    "Life's too short," she says.

    I drink a few gin and tonics with my mother that night and then get the girls to bed. Finally, after lying in my bed for an hour or more without falling asleep, I rise and go into my study and, half-drunk, sip tea and return to my work. I often wonder how it would feel to be an insomniac if you did not have some sort of intellectual pursuit to turn to in the wee hours. What if you worked at McDonald's or some warehouse, and you could not work from your home office at two in the morning? Could you just show up at the graveyard shift and say, like so many of my poet and painter and professor friends say when they e-mail me at 3:12 A.M. : "I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd get some work done"? Can you imagine how your colleagues at, say, Dunkin' Donuts might react to that?
    I imagine you could read or watch television, but somehow, to me, insomnia does not seem so bad when the sleeplessness is productive in some way, and, as insomnia has been a continuing battle for me these past few years, I immediately fall back into some of the work I have been doing in the middle of the night, transcribing and analyzing my unhappiness interviews in the late hours. It's amazing to me how often people answer right away. They do not stop to think, or second-guess, or resist when I ask, "Why are you so unhappy?" They just answer.
    Tonight, I scroll through a sampling of these responses on my laptop, in hopes that the collective malaise detailed there might make me feel a little better. My mood has slipped into the top layer of despair, and I need a lift out of it.
Marvin H., 26, adjunct lecturer in economics, Montgomery, AL:
I suppose what really has tormented me—no, that's too strong a word—what has challenged my happiness, has been growth. I do not necessarily see growth as a good thing. For instance, when they built a new Cracker Barrel out by the highway—my mom was thrilled, she loves Cracker Barrel, I swear, it's the only reason she takes vacations. I wasn't. I mean who needs another Cracker Barrel, right? Who needs any of the shit they've been building on that edge of town? Seriously, nothing is fueled by need anymore. Everything new they come up with is an extra. They have to spend a lot of money convincing you that they need it. There's a sporting goods store the size of the Pentagon. It's crazy. I don't like it. It used to be, hey, this town needs a dry goods store or a butcher shop, so somebody opened one up and that was that. Now, now, forget about it. Oh, also, I have an old high school friend and he and his wife had a