It was 10:33 p.m. on a Monday night in 2016. I had just received an email saying that my long-awaited queen-sized bed frame from Amazon had arrived and was waiting in the package delivery room directly above my basement-level East Village apartment. I was dead tired after only a few hours of sleep the previous night and about to go to bed when I read the notification but decided to grab the boxes to make sure nothing happened to my $130 investment. I would assemble the frame first thing in the morning.

Inside the dimly lit and musty room, I made my way past the row of mailboxes into the back area and searched through the mountain of packages and discarded furniture for anything with my name on it. I finally discovered the two boxes nestled in the pile. The product, advertised as minimalist, was heavier than I expected. 

It took two trips to carry the packages into my apartment. After setting the boxes against the wall of my bedroom, I checked my Fitbit: 10:47 p.m. Curious to see what the bed looked like, I fumbled through the drawers in my kitchen until I found a pair of scissors. Cutting through the tape, I pulled out the wooden slats, metal joining pieces, headboard, and footboard. My Fitbit read: 10:56 p.m. 

I could probably build this tonight, I thought to myself. If I hustle, it would take an hour at the most. I unwrapped the pamphlet of directions from the cellophane bag and quickly perused the ten-step manual. All the necessary tools were conveniently included with the instructions. Figuring the assembly would be mentally taxing, I reached for the orange plastic vial of Adderall on my desk, deciding to take only half a tablet so I’d still be able to fall asleep at a decent hour. 

My bedroom consisted of a computer desk, mattress, metal shelving unit for clothes, and a scent diffuser in the corner. Instead of expensive oils, I filled the small appliance every morning with cheap discounted cologne—mostly Nautica Voyage-—as part of a monk-like ritual. Putting on my wireless earbuds and opening my favorite Hype Machine playlist, I pressed play and got to work. 

I lifted my mattress from the middle of the room and set it against the back wall. The first instruction was to connect the footboard to the headboard. I fished through the baggie of flat-head screws and pulled out the threaded bolts and a mini-Allen wrench. After installing the support beams to the footboard, I checked my Fitbit: 11:28 p.m. 

It was getting late. If I hadn’t taken the Adderall, I would have just gone to bed. But I was now locked into the project and even if I went to bed, sleep wouldn’t come for a couple of hours. 

The amphetamine triggered an intense nicotine craving. I walked through the kitchenette, illuminated by the Philips Hue color-changing LED light strips, and into the small living room. My one-bedroom apartment was tucked away within the basement yet still felt highly connected to the city outside. Through the three elevated living room windows that looked out onto the sidewalk, I could clearly see and hear pedestrians and passing vehicles. I had installed a set of faux-wooden shades from Bed Bath & Beyond to provide some privacy, but they made little difference. 

Living in an East Village walk-down apartment right on the street was a much different New York experience than the 41st floor of the doorman-attended high-rise I had moved from. The new level of easy access to the world outside consistently enticed me into late-night adventures when I should have been asleep. These escapades mostly involved either Backpage escorts or manic missions for food, alcohol, or nicotine.

In fact, I was operating on very little sleep due to an adventure I’d had in East Harlem the previous night. I had been supposed to meet up at around 2 a.m. with an escort who had provided only the cross streets and promised she would text the exact address upon my arrival. But within minutes of arriving at the Harlem subway station, my phone died. I was left with only $80 cash for the rendezvous and had used up the remaining balance on my MetroCard on the trip uptown—and the subway station didn’t have a working machine.

Having lost all sense of direction, I quickly gave up on the date and tried to find a cab. After an hour of wandering around the neighborhood, I finally found an open convenience store and purchased a low-quality, overpriced phone charger, giving the owner an extra $20 to plug it into the outlet behind the counter. After reaching 10 percent battery, I hailed an Uber and, twenty minutes later, was safely inside the backseat of a Toyota Highlander. 

I needed nicotine and found my vape pen on the ottoman in front of my couch. It was completely out of juice. Fuck. It was late, but there was a nearby smoke shop open 24 hours. I lived on Stuyvesant Street (essentially 9^th street) and Third Avenue. Coasting down St. Marks Place, I passed throngs of college students and young professionals enjoying the summer night. Their vibrant and happy faces reinforced my original decision not to go to bed. Everyone else is out tonight, why not me? 

I was now standing inside the below-ground store, surrounded by shelves of glass pipes and engulfed in an overwhelming scent of cannabis, incense, and tobacco. The display of refillable e-liquids seemed to offer endless variations of fruit-flavored nicotine syrups. I located a small strawberry-guava bottle within my desired milligram range and pointed at it, handing the store clerk a ten-dollar bill and securing the small black plastic bag that held my two-ounce bottle of liquid gold. 

After opening my front door, I was greeted by my living room’s distinct mixture of hookah tobacco and Axe Anarchy body spray. I sat on the couch and used the street light from the windows to refill the vape pen. After re-screwing the metal-tipped mouthpiece, I checked my Fitbit: 1:27 a.m.

From the bedroom doorway, I surveyed my construction site. The frame was less than halfway finished, but it seemed there were only three steps left in the manual. Checking the pamphlet again, I discovered my mistake. What I had thought was the foreign language section of the instructions was actually thirteen additional steps of assembly.

Sitting on my bedroom floor, I contemplated my next move.  My Fitbit said it was 2:16 a.m. At this point I was committed—maybe even possessed—to finish the project. Disregarding my last shred of sanity that implored me to go to sleep and pick up the project in the morning, I grabbed the orange vial and took the second half of the Adderall. The next step was to attach the sideboards to the metal frame. This should have been a straightforward task, but it felt like I was wearing a weighted vest while moving in slow motion. Taking the prescription stimulant late at night was one thing, but doing it on little sleep from the previous night was a different story. I started to lose sense of time and found myself in one scene to the next without a continuous flow of movement.

I was now standing outside of my apartment, mid-conversation with my neighbor who was smoking a cigarette. Even though it was around 3:00 a.m., it seemed entirely normal that someone else was awake with no apparent intention of sleeping anytime soon. My neighbor lived at the end of the basement hallway with his girlfriend, who was enrolled at The New School. He was around my age, 24, and had dirty blond hair that fell just around his eyes. He had lean, sinewy arms that were covered in tattoos along with most of the upper half of his body. He was a professional skateboarder and traveled to competitions across the world for his sponsor, and on several occasions, he’d confided in me the shocking details of his coke-fueled trips.

I pulled out my vape pen and took a drag.

“Is that medical?” he asked with a hopeful inflection.

“No, just nicotine. You want to try it?”

“I’m good.”

He took a final pull from his American Spirit and flicked the cigarette butt onto the ground and extinguished it with his foot.

“I’ll catch you later” he said before disappearing into the gated door at the bottom of the small staircase.

I was now back inside my bedroom and finally connected the sideboards. It was 3:48 a.m. The next step in the manual was to assemble and install the support beam. At this point, I was in a daze and needed to consult the manual several times before getting a solid grasp on the directions. This was the most complicated piece of the five-hour puzzle and had been conveniently reserved for the penultimate step of the manual. 

I realized this was basically the final instruction, and yet I was not filled with any sense of relief.  Sitting on my living room couch, staring out the windows, I could feel the time as if it were a physical sensation. Catching a glimpse of myself in the reflection of my television, I could see that I looked strung out. The sounds and silhouettes of the adjacent New York sidewalk that previously evoked a sense of excitement had, over the course of the night, evolved into a deeply vexing presence. 

I was too afraid to look at my Fitbit and leaned back onto the couch before staring at the exposed metal pipe across the ceiling. A large black centipede scurried along the length of the metal structure and disappeared. I was now back in the bedroom, and the charge on my wireless earbuds had finally run out, leaving me with only the droning hum of the window AC unit. The mattress leaning against the wall cast a looming peripheral image of a merciless foreman at a manufacturing plant—and I was his lowly subject, building knockoff Ikea beds for minimum wage. 

The overhead light in the ceiling, clouded by years of never being properly cleaned, illuminated the construction scene in a time-obscuring dimness. There was also the rotating chromatic range of colors emanating from the light strips in the kitchen. I had apparently finished the project and just needed to unroll the wooden slats onto the assembled frame. I did so and then placed the mattress onto the bed. I checked my Fitbit: 5:02 a.m.

***

Nick Farina is an aspiring author who recently completed the Writers in New York summer program at NYU. He is currently applying to graduate creative writing programs for the 2026 fall semester.