Free Sleep Talkin' Man by Karen Slavick-Lennard Page B

doesn’t bring me my Xbox, he’s a dead fucking fat cunt!” Even if that is a sentiment a ten-year-old boy can get behind.
    Once I created the blog, it was no longer just friends and family who had access to the deep, dark inner musings of Adam’s subconscious, but potentially anyone with an Internet connection, and there have certainly been consequences to that. For example, the agency that Adam was working for was not at all comfortable when their account manager attained his fifteen minutes of Internet fame. In no uncertain terms, he was instructed never to reveal the name of the company in interviews about the blog, nor to reveal to anyone in the industry that he was Sleep Talkin’ Man. He was the Clark Kent of sleeperheroes! “What if a potential client sees the blog, doesn’t like it, and takes their business elsewhere because of it?” they reasoned. Personally, I think they missed a trick—Adam is in a creative industry (film advertising) and though I’m no expert, it seems just as likely that Sleep Talkin’ Man could have attracted clients, rather than repelled them. Nevertheless, Adam kept these two areas of his life distinctly separate as was requested.
    A few weeks later, purely by coincidence, Adam was headhunted to interview with another agency. He arrived, and soon found himself sitting across a conference room table from the director. “First things first,” Tony said. “Are you Sleep Talkin’ Man?” Given the directive from his current agency to maintain the secrecy of his alter ego, Adam wasn’t sure how to respond. But, he figured, might as well get the truth out there early. Adam’s cautious assent was met with great delight, followed by an announcement to the entire office. As it turned out, he had quite a fan club among the staff. Of course, they hired him for his qualifications, but their love of STM certainly didn’t hurt! And his alter ego has proved, after all, to be a great icebreaker with clients.

STM: MANAGER EXTRAORDINAIRE
    10 “Hey, don’t say anything. Why don’t you put it in an e-mail, then I can ignore it at my pleasure.”
    9 “Sure you’ve got a job here. If you wanna work somewhere where you’re NOT FUCKING WELCOME.”
    8 “Your job is to be ignored. Nobody’s to acknowledge you whatsoever. You should be good at that.”
    7 “Wow. If you really think that was a good idea, maybe your mum should rethink having YOU was a good idea.”
    6 “You call that work? I call that a fucking fatal accident. I’m a witness to your carnage!”
    5 “Can everybody come into the boardroom please! Not you, you don’t work here any more. Bye bye.”
    4 “I’m tired of looking for the solution to this problem. Look for someone to blame instead.”
    3 “Your blue sky thinking is blighted with dark clouds of piss-poor ideas.”
    2 “Don’t come in to work tomorrow. In fact, don’t come back at all. Basically, I don’t want you around, cause you’re — I’ll keep this simple — a cock. A small, pathetic, flaccid, looking-at-your-shoes-constantly kind of a cock. Okay, bye-bye!”
    1 “When it comes to being told what to do, I tell, you do. Got that, dickhead?”
    Letters to Sleep Talkin’ Man
    When I was in my late teens, my mother woke one night to a rhythmic banging. She quickly identified it as the sound of my headboard hitting my wall repeatedly. Figuring I was about to wake the rest of the house with my latest romantic conquest, she hot-footed it to my room to stop me in my tracks.
    What she saw when she opened my door was not what she expected. There I was, sitting on our new rowing machine, ON MY BED, covered in blankets, rowing for all I was worth. I only wish I had used it half as much when I was awake!
    Les P.
    Newcastle Upon Tyne, England
    Oh, tremors! Quick, under the table!
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