often wake up in the middle of the night. This has happened since I was a teenager. More specifically, it has happened since I started drinking. Three drinks or more, and a wire is tripped in my brain almost exactly four hours after I fall asleep, so that my eyes pop open at 5am (or 10am, depending on the night) and I am held captive by consciousness, too fuzzy to do much of anything. I used to take long, hot baths, no light save a candle, letting the steam work its way into my system, soaking until I became drowsy, and in this way, I sometimes fell back to sleep. But I don’t have a bathtub anymore. Stupid New York.

So anyway, my friend Victoria was in town. The night before, we had this total rock-star time at a bar in the East Village called the Beauty Bar, and we got our manicures done by this lovely woman named Eladia, and we bought wigs at the shop next door, and somehow this evening ends with me performing Britney Spears in the subway station for two men across the rails (while wearing a pink wig, mind you) and Victoria has all of this on her cell phone video, and if I am very nice to her, she will never show it to anyone. We ate some kick-ass pizza, stumbled home, and passed out. Then, I woke up at 5am and wrote a story for Nerve.

I don’t think “write” is the proper word. I kind of opened my brain and poured it out. Honestly, I didn’t even spellcheck. The result is the fiction piece in Nerve today, “Erotic Dreams About Film Critics,” which brings together a current curiosity with erotica and a childhood spent reading and wondering about movie reviewers. It’s possible this piece was written by a troll in my brain.

Now, if you are related to me or dating me, you probably do not want to read things written by the trolls in my brain. The trolls say crazy things. They say things that I would never, ever say, not even when drunkenly serenading strangers in a subway. If you are under 18--even if you are a rebellious Mormon--it is possible that the trolls in my brain are spinning out material that is far too blue for your sensibilities.

Consider yourself warned. The trolls apologize.