Does it ever happen to you that you wake up in the middle of the night, and you realize that you've found the answer to some question that's been nagging at you for a while? I don't know about you, but it seems to be my principal decision- making apparatus.

This isn't always a good thing. It's happened before now that the ideas that seemed perfectly rational in the middle of the night appear completely ludicrous once I'm up out of bed in the morning. I suppose this too is common, or how else would the term "the cold light of day" originate?

One particularly strange example of night-time decision making that I remember, occured many years ago, during my first couple of years in the United States. I'd only just recently come out of the closet, and my then best friend, Stephen, was coming to visit me. We planned to rent a car and travel round the East Coast. What Stephen didn't know was that I'd decided to come out to him while he was here - I hadn't the nerve to do it before his flight (an ignoble decision, I know). As I expected, however, he came to terms with it fairly easily, and we set off on our travels on good terms.

Although I'd started the coming out process recently, I was still a complete virgin. I hadn't even so much as touched another guy, let alone been to bed with one. My body was just aching for the male touch, and I remember being unbearbly horny as we traveled from hotel to hotel. One night in Ottawa, I lay in bed in the middle of the night, unable to sleep for the images in my mind of a guy touching me. I think my visions extended no further than imagining a guy running his hands over my chest, but just the thought of it, and an ignorance of how to go about realizing my dreams, was enough to fill my whole mind for that long night.

I suddenly thought to myself, why not get Stephen to touch me? For some reason, in the middle of the night, it all seemed like a reasonable idea. Stephen was completely and resolutely heterosexual, but I couldn't imagine that he'd object, as a friend, to helping me through this burning stage of desire. I finally fell asleep thinking that I would ask him in the morning. Needless to say, that thought never got verbalised - in the morning, I sat there aghast that I could even think something so strange.

Around dawn yesterday morning, I woke up and realized immediately that I had some answers to things that had been in my mind for several weeks. The downside of such nocturnal decision making is that it's hard to get back to sleep afterwards, since your mind is firing on all the new ideas. So I opened the curtains and lay back watching the grey dawn creeping over the bay, continuing to think.

It's odd how the mind works. I'm sure that the reason I'd been able to spare myself half a night of sleep was the complete lack of tension I was feeling. The day before, I'd sat through a full day of the jury selection process. The process hadn't concluded at that point, but it had gone sufficiently far to make me sure that I'd passed the point where I was likely to be dismissed. I was resigned to the knowledge that I'd be on that jury for another two months, so the remainder of the jury selection process would be something I could snooze through. I guess my subconscious mind received the information that mental alertness would not be required on Friday hence it triggered the state wherein I could make some important decisions during Thursday night. Or something :)

Thursday, on the other hand, had been a day of tension. I, like most of my fellow jury panelists, desperately wanted to get out of jury duty. My company still pays our salaries even if we're on jury duty, so it wasn't that so much, as the fear of weeks of utter boredom while corporate officers and expert witnesses offered fine detail on industrial processes and their effects (it was a workplace personal-injury case).

The way the jury selection process works in San Francisco is that once you're on a jury panel (along with 23 others), the court goes through a multiple-stage winnowing process wherein the prospective jurors are questioned at length to determine if they can be fair in this case. You can also be let go by one of a finite number of peremptory dismissals from the lawyers of either side. It was interesting to see this process in action, for the first few hours, but I knew that my only chance of dismissal would be a peremptory challenge from the plaintiffs' lawyer. I held my breath as the challenge process got under way - each side took their turn in dismissing juror panelists. On the third turn for the plaintiffs' lawyer (a cute, young, possibly gay San Franciscan), he paused at length, looking through his notes, and said, "I'm satisfied with the panel as currently constituted, your Honor." That was when my hopes of dismissal died.

The next day, since the jury panel was now reduced to just 11 who'd survived this process, more panelists were enrolled so that the remaining 7 jurors and alternates could be selected by the same process. But my day had come and gone, or so I thought. Mid-morning, while I sat almost dozing in my chair, the second round of the challenge process got underway, and I heard the plaintiff's lawyer say that he'd like to dismiss me! I was completely taken by surprise and almost laughed out loud! I could have hugged the lawyer!

Down in the jury assembly room, I joined a few other recent panelists who'd just been dismissed, and we exulted together. Since I'd been in jury-seat no 2 from the outset, I'd been questioned more than most in the court, and everybody knew my views on such matters as ambulance-chasing lawsuits, and greedy corporate lawyers, and they said that they were surprised I hadn't been booted from the jury earlier.

So Friday afternoon, I returned to work - and more boredom. I still have nothing to do! I don't think it will last long, though, now I'm free from the prospect of jury service.