Gimme Shelter: Night and day

I get up early.

I mean early. Early enough to hear roosters announcing the morning as I unlock the back door of the Reporter’s office, with Orion striding across the black sky above me. Sometimes there’s moonlight so bright you can read by it, and other times I’m cursing in the dark, fumbling to find the right key.

Getting up early means I go to sleep early, because one of the few things I’m good at is sleeping, so I want to log eight hours in the sack.

There are a lot of people going to sleep early these days and waking before cockcrow. This happens when the calendar turns to February, according to research collected in a large British study.

One reason for cashing it in early this month, researchers have found, is that during the low tide of the year, less daylight means the hormone melatonin is increased, triggering a chemical reaction telling us it’s a school night every night of the week.

Less energy, less light and over-heated rooms are other February factors creating a month-long sleeping potion.

Cursing or praising the hour before dawn, I sometimes remember that once at this time of morning I was just finishing a night of work, and sleep was an adventure of when, where and how. Even the simplest things, not just sleeping, but eating or being with the one I loved, required discipline and strategy, and when I was younger, those two virtues were often scarce.

On the Island in February, the only night shifts are done by police officers, who take tours from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. and 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. The Fire Department answers the call no matter the hour, but no volunteer is stationed at the firehouses, and the Highway Department will be out in pre-dawn hours when it’s storming. Other than that, the Island sleeps in.

For most, the graveyard shift — perfect phrase — is unhealthy, and in some cases fatal. People who work at night disrupt the circadian rhythm, or the body’s inner clock. The negative effects include eating and sleep disorders, diabetes and high blood pressure, plus psychological problems stemming from isolation.

A friend of mine who tended bar for years said working nights is especially bizarre in February. “You never see the sun. You get up in the afternoon, take a shower, eat and go to work, and it’s already dark,” he said. “It’s like living in [expletive] Norway.”

What’s more frightening: The International Agency for Research on Cancer has characterized night shift work as a “probable carcinogen” because hormone development, which suppresses tumors, is disrupted and the immune system is weakened by haywire circadian rhythms.

Another guy I knew, a radio DJ — who didn’t want his name used — worked the overnight shift out of a studio in Central Suffolk, but wasn’t in the slightest worried about his health.

“I could get hit by a bus if I walked out of here now,” he told me when I visited him once in the wee hours. Although at 3:30 a.m. a bus wouldn’t have hit him, because the street outside was deserted except for sporadic squad cars flashing down DWIs.

He spent his shift playing music — with bass lines felt as well as heard — and was something of an expert on the sleepless in Suffolk. Listeners called in and were put on the air, one a stripper who had just finished her shift and was calling to dedicate a song to her daughter.

My friend complied, and stared at me, shaking his head at sadness that is always deeper at 4 a.m.

There’s also a separation between the two worlds of work. One morning, knocking off after a night in the city, friends and I went to a bar, which had opened at 8 a.m. There were five of us along with several poor wrecks who had awakened and thought the first thing to do was order a shot and a beer from a half-asleep bartender.

Coming in off the rush hour street was a young woman, dressed for work in an office. She asked the bartender for the ladies room, and when she came back out she gave us a look that still, in my memory, freezes me — pity mixed with disgust, that healthy young men were drinking at 8:15 a.m.

I wanted to run after her and say, “No, you’ve got it wrong. We’ve been working all night, this is our 6 p.m.” But then she probably would have yelled for a cop.

Three in 10 Americans suffer from insomnia, according to The National Institutes of Health, and 1 in 10 have trouble during the day with relationships and work because they’ve suffered a bad night’s sleep.

That was me when I was younger, but now, like I said, I’m an accomplished sleeper. I do tend to act like I’m sprinting from something when I’m zonked out, pumping my legs now and then, I’m told, but … I don’t want to talk about it.

These winter mornings, alone in the office, the roosters give way to the quarrelling of turkeys. After awhile, out my window darkness is melting and fragile light finds its way into the tops of trees on North Ferry Road.

Another day.