So, for the first time in my life, I could breathe in sleep for more than a few minutes without quitting. The air felt cool, liquid, and I had the sensation that I was drinking it. Life would be good from now on. I would be more alert, more intelligent, I would write more, I would be thinner, I wouldn’t need to sleep much.

At first I slept only four hours a night that way, and felt fresher than after sleeping nine hours left alone to my devices. But, putting the mask cup over my nose, strapping it across my face to the back of my head, was uncomfortable, especially when I traveled. I needed an extra laptop suitcase for the machine, and at every border crossing, the police would puzzle over what this was. In the morning, I would have lines cutting across my face where the strap had been, and my forehead skin would be scrunched up.

Now, I have found out that nearly everybody has his medical hazards and that these are a great cause for fraternizing.

Another problem was that with the sound the machine made, I scared my little children, son and daughter, who were about seven and three. With the tube hooked up to my face over a mask, I looked like a space alien. My wife didn’t like the look and the sound of it either, and they liked it even less when I occasionally got drunk and slept without the machine, snoring and snorting like a monster, even worse than previous to using my machine, and so I was kicked out of the house to sleep on my own in my studio.

Now, I have found out that nearly everybody has his medical hazards and that these are a great cause for fraternizing. I have made friends with a writer, Bob, through discovering that he had sleep apnea, too. We were having breakfast in St. Petersburg, Russia, and I saw lines running across his cheeks. He looked like a football player, with a big rib cage, a frequent adaptive technique the body comes up with to fight with oxygen insufficiency — the body builds you extra large lungs. So, seeing the lines, I said, You have apnea, don’t you? Soon we were exchanging anecdotes about sleep and sleeplessness. He occasionally stopped breathing for two minutes at a time, and he couldn’t be without the machine.

For me, the effect of using the machine wore off. I didn’t like all that strapping. I thought I would learn how to sleep on my belly if necessary, but no monstrous machines for me. After two years of using it, I quit. Apparently, that’s the most usual course of using the machine.

You could also have a dental device placed into your mouth, to make your lower jaw protrude forward, which would create more space in your throat. I tried that — it was so tight that it felt like it was crunching my teeth. Actually, it did crack one of my teeth and its bed in the maxillary bone which had to be rebuilt after a surgery. Although I was already an American citizen, I didn’t sue the dentist. I realize that’s not very patriotic of me. For revenge, I simply imagine that the dentist has accumulated enough bad karma.