Eine Kleine Nose Music
2005

Forget the Breathe Easy Strips. And don’t waste your precious thousands on sleep clinics, laser surgery, nasal sprays or mouth contraptions. If you want my non-medical, completely bias snoring advice, here it is. It’s not the snoring your spouse can’t stand. It’s you. Want a cure? Move out.

Is she complaining that the adorable fluffy cat snores? Probably not. Is he complaining his first-born infant son snores in bed next to him? I’m doubting it. But does every hideously annoying trait wash over them with each wheeze of their partner’s obnoxious back-of-the-throat snore? Yup. You better believe it. In my experience, how you feel about the snore is pretty much how you feel about the snorer.

Just think of Ben, my handyman and former flame. Snore-o-rama, let me tell you. Like a congested rhino. But in the beginning, when it was still coming up daisies and roses for the two of us, the snoring didn’t bother me a bit. Anyone relating to this, maybe a little? A million incorrect uses of the phrase “catcha on the flip side” later, the snoring became the bane of my nighttime existence. And here’s how I know Ben was the bane and not the snore itself:

My dog Scout used to lie on the bed next to Ben and me. She would snore like a buzz saw and not bother me a bit, while Ben’s snore somehow grated on my every nerve ending. The mere sound of it sent toothpicks into my spine. I would lie awake, like Kathy Bates in Misery, staring at him and getting more and more furious, aggravated, and downright repulsed with each successive snort-hiss-pop-sigh. I would get up close to him, stare at his nose, and wonder which nostril I could plug to make it stop. (Neither, so I concluded.) It seemed to come up from the back of his throat, from the bowels of his very soul, where the essence of his snoring lived among all his other annoying habits. Flashes of toilet seats left up, greasy wrenches being left on the cutting board on my kitchen counter, and muddy boots tracking dirt all over my freshly-shampooed rugs would flash in my head.

Sometimes I’d tape him with a mini-tape recorder. I would play him the lovely nose music the next morning, thinking he would be just as appalled as I was and would break into profuse apologies and offer to cut off his nose for me if it would only help a little. But somehow, the snoring never sounded quite as annoying to HIM on tape. “Whas the big deal, anyway?” he’d say. “I don’t think it sounds annoying at all. Scout snores much louder than I do, by the by, and I don’t see you pushing HER furry body onto the floor.”

“She doesn’t hum ‘Green Acres’ while she showers”, I’d retort. “She doesn’t clip her toenails on my bathroom floor. And furry as she may be, she doesn’t have nose hair.”

And at one time, I’ll admit, I loved his every toenail clipping. I worshipped them. It’s amazing how friggin’ loony romance can make us. When I first started dating Ben, I would’ve wanted to gather each toenail clipping into a scrapbook arranged with pressed and dried wild meadow flowers. And how I adored his pungent body odor and his lack of knowing how to speak in sentences. It was all so charming. He used to get cold sores on his mouth in the winter. I loved those cold sores. I thought they were so suave. I could’ve married each and every one, and bore children with them. But after a while, the over-the-top fondnesses all pretty much degenerated into loathing and annoyance.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just shallow. Or maybe I can’t sustain the verve. Maybe I’m destined to be single. Once the bloom was off the nose, so to speak, the cold sores seemed really gross, and I realized that those sweaty t-shirts really did stink to high heck. Stepping on the toenail clippings with my bare feet on the damp tiles of my bathroom would make me feel as if I could barf. And the snoring . . . eee, gads, the snoring. I used to climb the walls at night. Finally, one day, I had to have a talk with him. “Ben, sweetie, baby, I like you alot, darling. . . and you can come caulk my shower stall with your shirt off any time. But I think it’s time you . . . went and lived in the barn.”

He looked at me with those big wanton eyes, sighed, gathered his smelly t-shirts together and moved into the converted hayloft. “If you loved me”, he proclaimed, “The snoring wouldn’t bother you.” Nothing more needed be said. It was for the best.

Sending him out to live in the barn saved our friendship. Now I can gaze lovingly at his biceps, feel warm when he mumbles or uses the subjunctive tense incorrectly, and know that he’ll never interrupt my sessions of reading Esquire in bed with my big bowl of shredded wheat and milk ever again. I can gaze out my bedroom window, see Ben’s light on in the barn, and know that someday he’ll meet a nice sweet blushing gal who will love his toenails, his nose hair, his B.O., and his snore. It just won’t be me.