Life of A Sleepwalker: "Sometimes, I leave myself useful signs and symbols. Mostly, I am the ghost haunting my own house."
I've been a sleepwalker for as long as anyone in my family can remember. I talk in my sleep, sometimes at length, and usually in a sort of slow-motion narrative or series of questions posited to a sleepy bed-mate who'd almost certainly rather not be up, answering stupid questions, at three in the morning. My old window unit air conditioner used to make a little buzzing sound, so subtle you'd almost miss it, but in my sleep, I'd hear it and get up, get out my toolbox, clear a space, and carefully dismantle the unit, laying out the pieces one by one as I dug down into the guts of the machine. "Joe, come back to bed." "I need to get this opened up. There's another bird caught in the air conditioner." "There's not another bird in the air conditioner, Joe." "Yeah, there is. Don't you hear it? I don't want it to get hurt." "I think I heard it fly back out again. Come back to bed." "Are you sure?" "Yes." "That's good. I don't want that bird to get hurt." That air conditioner finally wore out after twenty years of interrupted service. By the end, it was all held together with duct tape and drywall screws, where the original parts had fallen apart from being unscrewed and screwed back in. The new one is nice, and does not have a bird in it, as far as I can tell. I've left this one alone for two years now. I spent years, in the nineties, back when I had my last ongoing serious relationship, waking up, shaking my partner awake, and telling him my pet ground squirrel, Alice, was in bed with us, running around in the bed linens, and that I had to get her out so we wouldn't roll over and crush her. He'd sigh and follow the drill, climbing out of bed with a pillow, to watch me while I meticulously unfurled each sheet and blanket, shaking them out and smoothing them over with my hands. At some time in this process, Alice would always look over, sitting in her tank, and would then start running on her wheel, which made a long, whining squeak that never failed to alert me to her true status. "Alice isn't even in the bed. She's in her cage." "Yes, Joe, I know." "Was she in there all along?" "Yes, Joe. She is always in there." "Really? That's a hell of a thing. Well, at least the bed's all tidy now." "Get back in bed, please." Most of what happens is sort of standard obsessive-compulsive cleaning, tidying, and preparation, but sometimes, I get up and assemble things into strange tableaus—spice jars in circles and little pyramids in the kitchen, the shower curtain folded into inexplicable origami. Sometimes, I leave myself useful signs and symbols. Mostly, I am the ghost haunting my own house. I've been lucky, I guess, in that the Sleeper is benign and helpful, albeit in odd ways. Back in college, I'd get stressed out over tests, studying until the wee hours and keeling over, surrounded by books and papers, sideways on the bed, and then I'd wake up to find that I'd tidied up, packed my knapsack for the morning, showered, shaved, and dressed. As satisfying as the time savings were back then, I could not help but feel somewhat alarmed that I could stand in a shower and not wake myself up. You wonder, I suppose, about what could happen. It's like the fear I used to have about going on school field trips to Washington, D.C., where we'd all get off the bus and pile onto the Metro. I'd stand there at the platform, looking down at the third rail, and worry that I'd get some wild, uncontrollable impulse, just as the train was coming in, and jump onto the tracks. I've since learned that that's a pretty common fear, and has a name, which escapes me at the moment, but you wonder about those things, about if you have the capacity of doing something sudden and destructive for no obvious reason. I think, in a way, I'm lucky in that my Sleeper has had a patient series of trainers, from my family to my two ex-partners, all of whom, once over the obnoxious novelty of finding me wandering around at night, managed to respond in ways that cultivated more self-regulation and introspection. It's all conjecture, of course—I barely know the guy, even though he's bathed me and made me breakfast and made sure all my squirrels and birds are okay—but I suspect we have a good working relationship. If the Sleeper represents some sort of inner aspiration or ambition, I have to be glad that my secret desire is to have OCD and take care of animals and spice jars and not go on a bloodcurdling hacking spree or something worse. The doubt, though, is why I so often follow the old gay seventies motto—in bed by midnight, home by two. It's just easier than explaining to some strange person, or to someone I'd dated a time or two, exactly why I'm taking their air conditioner apart in the middle of the night. "Did you hear a bird in there?" "Holy shit! GET OUT!"
posted by sonascope at 12:53 on June 26, 2010