Editor’s Note: The below story includes hyperlinks to Cameos the author ordered from the perspective of the protagonist. In order to fully enjoy the story, we encourage you to click through when they appear.
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Once upon a time, there was a mild insomniac named Nancy whose insomnia was becoming less mild. Nancy hadn’t slept more than four hours in weeks. The past few nights she wasn’t sure she had slept at all. So, as the sun came up on what she suspected was her 48th straight waking hour, she grabbed her phone from the foot of her bed and typed in a website she’d seen a friend tweet about, “Cameo”—a marketplace where one could order personalized video messages from celebrities.
Nancy clicked “Browse Talent.” The names were sorted by price, high to low. Caitlyn Jenner, the most expensive, was $2,500. Chris Angel, the famous magician, was $1,000. Montana Brown, a reality TV star, was $900. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was $500. Wesley Snipes was $500. Norm Macdonald was $375. Nancy hovered over Norm for a moment, thinking $375 was a pretty good deal, but kept scrolling.
As the prices became more reasonable, closer to what she could afford, the names grew more obscure. Here the profiles were mostly YouTube personalities, Comic-Con figures, and professional wrestlers she’d never heard of. But then, a little farther down, Nancy saw someone she did recognize: Bam Margera. When Nancy was a teenager, she and her younger brother used to lock themselves in their family’s TV room and watch Bam pull stunts on MTV’s Jackass, including barging into the bathroom when his father was on the toilet, and frantically slapping him and punching him and ripping the newspaper out of his hand and ripping the shirt off his back, then running away. Nancy’s brother used to cover his eyes as Bam’s co-conspirator friend lingered behind with the camcorder to capture a bamboozled Mr. Margera finishing his scatological business, half-naked, shaking his head in unfakeable disbelief.
Nancy opened Bam’s profile. In the “Instructions for Bam Margera” field, she typed, “Tell me a bedtime story.” She entered her cell phone number. She entered her credit card information. She clicked the button, “BOOK NOW FOR $65.”
An hour later, still tossing and turning, Nancy’s phone buzzed. She sat up, clicked the link embedded in the text message, and on her screen was Bam’s face, a little sweaty, pimply, and puffy.
When the video ended, Nancy was confused, unsure if Bam had read her instructions at all. She watched it again, and again, and again, and deduced that he wasn’t simply hungover but having some kind of breakdown and was on the verge of entering rehab or, possibly, a mental health facility. Dr. Phil seemed to be involved. Nancy googled “Bam Margera Dr. Phil,” and TMZ confirmed that all of her assumptions were correct.
She watched the video once more and this time listened carefully to the way Bam said, “What up, Nancy. This is Bam Margera here,” as if he was introducing his audience of one to a brand new Jackass skit, as if maybe he was about to ruin another one of his father’s leisurely morning defecations just for her. And then, when Bam was signing off with a chuckle that exposed a single silver tooth, Nancy felt her head slowly fall back into her pillow. Her phone slipped from her hand and fell onto the pillow next to hers. Her eyes closed involuntarily for the first time since she was put under for a routine appendectomy a few years ago. Her brain conjured a nonsensical hypnagogic thought about toast soggy with saliva. And then sleep descended upon her like a spirit.
She woke up a full day later, so relieved she couldn’t stop laughing.
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Nancy’s sleep cycle normalized. Every night she would get into bed around the time most people get into bed, turn off the lights, and watch Bam’s video for a bit. Seven or eight hours later, she would regain consciousness feeling restored and refreshed, and begin her day around the time most people begin their day. She didn’t believe Bam’s video was a magically effective sleep aid—movies, podcasts, or media of any sort, even on a hefty dose of Ambien, had never helped. Instead, she saw her nightly viewing session, usually about five minutes, as a kind of arbitrary rite or ritual, soothing precisely because of its perfunctory nature. Bam’s video wasn’t inherently special. It was simply Nancy’s sleep good luck charm.
After two weeks of restful sleep, at a dinner to celebrate her brother’s 25th birthday, Nancy’s father pulled her aside to “check in,” to see if she was still having a “hard time,” if she’d found a new job yet, if she needed some money, if she was still seeing her partner. Nancy smiled, feeling a mix of pity and appreciation for her genuinely caring father, and said, “no, nope, no, and definitely not.” He nodded, and then eyed her quizzically, the way the best friend in a romantic comedy eyes the protagonist when the protagonist looks “different,” when “something is up” and they are beginning to suspect that “something” is love. Nancy’s father told her she looked “different.” He told her she looked “healthy.’ He said, “Something is up.” Nancy assured him the “something” was nothing, just a few good night’s sleep, that’s all.
Later, when Nancy was back under her covers, watching Bam and waiting for sleep to arrive, she noticed she no longer heard Bam’s little speech as a short sequence of meaningful words but as a long string of meaningless sounds. She noticed that she now had to pay close attention to his mouth just to make sense of what he was saying. She wondered if she had watched the video so many times its language was now disintegrating, abstractifying by some large-scale process of semantic satiation.
After replaying the video for longer than usual and still not feeling any of the early warning signs that sleep was on its way, Nancy plugged her phone into its charger and placed it on her nightstand. She closed her eyes and rotated through a few possible sleep positions, eventually choosing classic fetal, knees up, arms crossed. She began counting her breaths. By the 87th exhalation, with the engine of her mind still whirring at high gear, she gave up, laid on her back, and stared at the ceiling for a while. Staring at the ceiling for a while, in silence and darkness, felt dramatic and silly, but it also felt like the kind of dramatic and silly action that would precede the kind of turning point that would precede sleep.
Nancy kicked off her blanket, grabbed her phone, and opened Cameo. She went to the “Actors” section this time, and sorted the names by “Response Time (fastest to slowest).” Gilbert Godfried was $150 and had an average response time of one hour. Andy Dick was $99 and had an average response time of two hours. Richard Karn, who played Tim Allen’s best friend in the sitcom Home Improvement, was $80 and had an average response time of three hours. Nancy hoped, if Richard had an average response time of three hours, that meant he often turned Cameos around much quicker than that, like, in minutes.
She was about to click through to Richard’s profile, but then saw Mindy Sterling, an actress she didn’t know by name, but whose face she immediately recognized as Frau, Doctor Evil’s love interest in Austin Powers. Mindy was $50 and had an average response time of 4 hours. Nancy clicked Mindy’s profile and thought, “She seems nice,” then realized she’d said the words out loud. She filled out the request form, once again typing, “Tell me a bedtime story” in the “Instructions for Mindy Sterling” field, and clicked “BOOK NOW FOR $50.” She closed the browser. It was 1:00 AM. Maybe Mindy lived in Los Angeles where most people would still be awake. Maybe Mindy, like Nancy, lived on the East Coast but was a night owl.
Nancy put her phone back on the nightstand, took some Melatonin, and resumed trying various sleep exercises she’d read about on insomniac forums. At 3:30 AM, in the middle of imagining a giant eraser slowly erasing her body, head to toe, toe to head, her phone buzzed. She grabbed it, clicked the link, and there was Mindy’s face, caked in some kind of skincare mask.
Nancy was asleep before Mindy wished her goodnight.
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While Bam’s video successfully rocked Nancy to sleep for two weeks, it took only one week for Mindy’s video to lose its effectiveness, its uncanny ability to pacify, its hypnotic properties. But this time, when Nancy found herself back in the purgatorial state of tossing and turning, she immediately opened Cameo to search for another video. The craving for a new bedtime Cameo from just the right celebrity felt a little like hunger, something that could only be satiated by conscious ingestion then unconscious digestion. Nancy’s stomach growled as she opened the “Politics” page and sorted the names by the “Recommended” option.
The first profile to appear was Ken Bone. Unsure who he was, Nancy clicked his profile. It read, “Hi! I’m Ken Bone. You know. Ken Bone? The dude in the sweater from the debate? Yeah, that guy. I’m really looking forward to connecting with fans. Even though I shouldn’t have fans.” Ken was $20. It was an attractive price, but Nancy hadn’t watched the debate that made Ken famous. She closed his profile.
After Ken, Cameo’s algorithm recommended conservative political commentator, Tomi Lahren. Tomi was $60. Nancy, raised by liberal family in a liberal suburb, saw Tomi’s opinions as anathema to her own, and yet, ever since a recent birthday, when Nancy was browsing FamousBirthdays.com and found out that she and Tomi were born on the same day of the same year, Nancy felt an unshakable connection to her. It wasn’t cosmic or astrological. Every time she saw Tomi’s talking head appear on a screen, Nancy couldn’t help but imagine the two of them as young girls in the same elementary school, their teacher telling them to blow out the candles on a shared birthday cake in unison.
Nancy filled out the request form and clicked “BOOK NOW FOR $60.” She got out of bed and walked to the kitchen in her underwear. With the fridge open, she wrapped a pickle in a slice of cheese and ate it while looking out the window at the condos across the street. Many people still had their lights on, though she didn’t see anyone walking around the apartments. There was one unit that had a green couch facing their window, and Nancy stared at it, trying to will whatever couple was sleeping in the next room to wake up and start having very passionate sex on it.
When she finished the pickle wrapped in cheese, the couple still hadn’t appeared, so Nancy closed the fridge and walked back to her bedroom, planning to look into credible examples of telekinesis in history. When she grabbed her phone, a text was waiting. Tomi had responded in under fifteen minutes. Nancy clicked the link.
She watched the video three times, and, with each viewing, felt a little more guilty for helping fund Tomi’s very existence, for contributing even a single dollar to this woman’s conservative crusade. But as guilty as she felt, as angry as she was with Tomi for being so predictably herself, she also felt her toes uncurl and her buttocks unclench. Her torso sank a little farther into the mattress. Her breathing deepened and slowed. Here it comes, she thought. Trying not to get too excited because excitement might delay sleep’s arrival, Nancy focused on Tomi’s sign off, the words still echoing in her head: “God bless…Take care…” God bless…Take care…” God bless…Take care…”
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It went on like this for several months. Nancy would order a bedtime Cameo, it would induce sleep for a while, and then, at some point, it would lose its soporific potency. Eventually, what began as a biweekly treat became a nightly necessity—if Nancy didn’t have a new Cameo when she got into bed, sleep never came. So, she began stockpiling. Having already worked her way through all the celebrities who promised to respond quickly, she was forced to plan ahead, to order in bulk. Every Sunday night, she spent a few minutes making her Cameo schedule for the coming week, much like people with jobs plan their outfits or pack lunches. She grew to love Sunday nights.
And whenever Nancy found herself questioning or criticizing her strange sleeptime habit, she tried to practice a little self-love. An old therapist used to point out how judgmental she was, how she had arbitrary standards of what was good and normal, and would cognitively self-flagellate if she caught herself betraying those standards. The Cameos weren’t prescribed by a doctor, but they worked. Sometimes, while watching a video, she even felt a little proud of herself, as everyone is a unique person with unique needs, and it seemed a sign of maturity to accept and meet those needs. Some people meditate every day. Some people take antidepressants. Nancy watched Cameos.
She started applying for jobs. She went to yoga twice a week. She attended a ceramics class at a local art studio. She re-downloaded dating apps and even went on a few OK dates. Her life began to more closely resemble her idea of her life. As her chronic fatigue disappeared, so did an underlying, nagging offness. When she looked in the mirror, she felt, for the first time in a long time, unsurprised.
Then, one day, an email arrived alerting her that she’d been granted an interview for a job that was, essentially, her dream job. She had applied on a whim, assuming her lack of experience would immediately disqualify her from consideration but, after rereading the email, it was clear that it was, in fact, intentionally addressed to her, Nancy. There had not been some kind of mistake. So, with trembling hands, she typed a carefully worded response, confirming that she was still interested and available to come in at the end of the week. After she clicked send, she hopped into bed, turned off the light, and opened the evening’s Cameo from actor Larry Thomas, most famous for playing the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld. Nancy got comfortable and clicked the link.
When the video ended, she plugged her phone in and turned onto her stomach, thinking that she was in such a good mood, a single viewing might be enough tonight. A half-hour later, still very much awake, she grabbed her phone and watched Larry’s video a few more times. Her eyes began to feel heavy, she plugged her phone back in, and pulled her covers to her chin. A half-hour later, she noticed she was being kept awake by her own heartbeat. The pulsing organ’s rhythm was as annoying as a dripping faucet. In the second between beats, she would begin to settle into the silence and stillness of the room, and when the beat finally thumped, she would be jarred awake and sent back to square one.
Frustrated, she grabbed her phone again and opened a Cameo she was scheduled to watch the following day from D-Roc, a member of the rap duo The Ying Yang Twins. She clicked the link, singing under her breath, “To the window…to the wall…‘til sweat drop down my balls.”
By morning, Nancy had watched all of her on-hand Cameos. She got out of bed without having slept a wink and ate more pickles wrapped in cheese when most people eat breakfast.
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The day before her job interview, Nancy asked her father to meet her for lunch. She knew she had broken her previous record of 48 straight waking hours, but she was no longer keeping track. There was a layer of thin, clear plastic between her and the world, as though her entire body had been encased by a vacuum sealer. Inside her skull, her brain matter transformed from warm and squishy to cold and hard. Sometimes she was able to admire the strangeness of the sensation. Mostly, she felt she was dying.
She missed her stop riding the bus to the restaurant her father chose, a well-known Italian establishment downtown that was famous for its chicken parmigiana. She got back on the bus going the other direction and almost missed her stop again, barely managing to slip out the doors before they closed. Walking into a dining room bustling with a business lunch crowd, she would have normally experienced a flash of self-consciousness, the sort that would have caused her to straighten her posture or adjust her hair. But today she felt nothing. The unexpected emptiness of this moment brought her the first wave of relief she’d felt in days.
Her father was seated, talking on the phone. When he saw her, he hung up without ending his conversation. She was impressed by the way his face, over the course of five or ten seconds, contorted from not-worried to slightly-worried to really-worried to really-really-worried. If an actor would have managed this incremental transformation in an acting class exercise, he’d have gotten applause. Nancy sat down and inspected the menu.
While she pretended to scan the many types of pasta that could serve as a good glutinous bed for a chicken cutlet the size of an adult sandal, she rehearsed her speech in her head. Earlier that morning, she’d typed up everything she would say to her father, knowing that in a loud, crowded restaurant, having not slept in days, it might be difficult to speak honestly and articulately. What came out was a long paragraph that explained everything, a potentially cathartic unburdening that she hoped would, for the first time since she was a child, leave her father equipped to be her father, to help him help her. When she was satisfied with what she’d written, she texted it to herself.
They closed their menus, and a waiter came over immediately. He took their orders, listening intently while they spoke, making a show of the fact that he was memorizing their appetizers, entrees, and drinks rather than furiously scribbling it all down on a notepad. When finished, he offered an obsequious bow and left Nancy and her father to begin, to have a meaningful conversation that was a long time coming.
Under the table, Nancy took a final peek at her phone to remind herself what her first line was, how she planned to get the ball rolling. Then she took a deep breath, looked up at her father, and noticed, over his shoulder, at the next table, there was some kind of commotion. A man who seemed to be the restaurant owner was asking the diners to change tables. In a frantic half-whisper, he was apologizing profusely after every sentence, saying something about free dessert, free wine, free parking. The couple, confused or annoyed or both, accepted his offer, and a swarm of busboys began clearing their plates before they even were out of their chairs.
Nancy’s father turned around to see what was going on, to see what she was looking at. A triple-decker tray of fresh seafood was placed on the table. Candles were lit. A bottle of champagne appeared, popped, and put on ice. The owner began barking something at a waiter in a language Nancy didn’t recognize, but then stopped mid-sentence, and walked quickly toward the front door.
The sound of the restaurant, a thick buzz of a hundred people talking over each other with an afternoon cocktail in their system, hushed slightly as every diner with a view of the front door whispered to their tablemates, “I think Caitlyn Jenner just walked in.” The hush extended long enough for those without a view of the front door to turn inconspicuously toward the front door and confirm that it was, in fact, Caitlyn Jenner.
Caitlyn, who had arrived alone, was escorted to her table by the owner, and when she sat down, the restaurant returned to its previous volume. Nancy’s father turned back toward Nancy to raise his eyebrows at her, to confirm that they were on the same page about who had just walked into the restaurant and bond over this exciting development, but Nancy wasn’t in her chair anymore. She was standing, folding her napkin, and placing it gently on her bread plate. With slow, careful steps, she walked toward Caitlyn’s table, where the owner had his hands clasped before him, as if in prayer, asking if he could have a picture with Caitlyn.
Caitlyn gave him a gracious but hesitant look. The owner responded by explaining that the photo wasn’t for him, but for his wall, and gestured to a wall near the bar full of framed pictures of him with his arm around various celebrities who had visited the restaurant over the years. Nancy saw the smiling faces of George Lopez, Barbara Walters, Missy Elliot, and others.
Caitlyn scanned the wall, laughed, and said she was friendly with Missy. She stood up and said, jokingly, “Let’s get this over with.”
The owner laughed, took out his phone, and quickly handed it to the person standing behind him, a person he didn’t realize was not one of his waiters until he was already arm-in-arm with Caitlyn, ready for the photo. Nancy turned on the flash, as it was a little dark in the room, and heard her vocal cords vibrate, and her tongue and lips do the work required to form the words, “Say cheese.”
She got a few horizontals. She got a few verticals. And they all lived happily ever after.