If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon (5 page)

Do you know what it means when you have a man
lying in bed next to you moaning and gasping?
It means you didn’t hold the pillow down long enough.

• JOKE SO OLD MY DINOSAUR TOLD IT TO ME THE FIRST TIME •

 

 

If I were an Eskimo and the Huffington Post were selling ice, I’d still buy it by the igloofull. I can’t help it; I’m a sucker for headlines like GWYNETH PALTROW ENLISTS PERSONAL TRAINER TO FIX HER SAGGING ASS and TIGER’S PENIS ISSUES REBUTTAL. I mean, honestly. If you can resist getting sucked in by stories like those, you’re a stronger woman than I am. So anyway, I was lurking around over there a few weeks back trolling for my daily fix, and because I am writing a book about marriage, you can imagine how excited I was to see this: THE SECRET TO A HAPPY MARRIAGE: SEPARATE BEDS? I DOUBT IT. The skepticism at the end was the part that hooked me, because frankly I’ve given the separate-beds idea a lot of thought and I’m pretty sure it could be the answer to domestic bliss, at least between the hours of ten P.M. and six A.M.

The author of this particular piece, Dr. Michael J. Breus—also known as the Sleep Doctor, according to his byline—began by enumerating the countless terrifying ways that sharing a bed with a particularly disruptive partner actually can be hazardous to your health. Then he went on to list the many and compelling reasons to ignore the
potentially deadly risks
and go for it anyway. In addition to the obvious benefits of co-sleeping (sex and spooning, essentially), he holds up the results of a study out of Australia that found—and I am not making this up—that “men sleep better when they are sleeping next to someone else.” Which simultaneously infuriates (what about
me
, dude?) and mystifies me. Because I find it hard to believe that my husband is getting a restful night’s sleep when I am punching him every ten minutes and hissing at him to
roll the fuck over
. And if we’re being honest here, I’d be sort of annoyed if he were.

The thing is, Joe snores. Not occasionally or delicately, either, I’m afraid. He’s so damned contrite about it that I’ve even stopped believing that he’s doing it intentionally just to piss me off. He’s tried every single remedy I’ve angrily hurtled at him: nose strips, throat sprays, homeopathic remedies, palate guards, ergonomic pillows. The man willingly paid close to a monthly mortgage payment to spend a miserable night in a sleep clinic, where the doctors—upon vigilant observation—were able to rule out several life-threatening conditions including UARS (Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome) and OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea). After much humiliating poking and prodding his heart was deemed robust, his septum arrowstraight. Eventually he was sent home with a diagnosis of MWCSBMSS (My Wife Can’t Sleep Because of My Snoring Syndrome), otherwise known as NRMP (Not Really My Problem). Two weeks later I had a nice $150 pair of custom earplugs to help me deal with “my condition.”

My husband has to shake his leg or foot to fall asleep, every night. It makes it impossible to read in bed without feeling nauseous.

KRISTA

 

 

If only Joe’s snoring was the singular thing preventing me from getting a solid stretch of rest. No, even on the rare silent night, trying to come to any sort of compromise regarding our bedroom’s atmospheric conditions is harder than drowning a tractor-size helium balloon in a two-inch puddle. You’d think I was one of those anorexic, hairless cats and Joe was a fifteenhundred-pound polar bear by the irreconcilable differences in our core body temperatures.

“Your internal thermostat is totally fucked up,” Joe will insist. Why? Because I can’t feel my extremities and it’s a balmy fifty-five degrees in here? If you set up a hidden video camera in our bedroom, here’s a glimpse of what you might see on any given evening:

Me, quickly slipping into my sexy camo sweatpants, thermal long-sleeve tee, and triple-ply chenille knee socks. I begin the elaborate process of removing and stacking the bed’s dozen-or-so decorative throw pillows neatly on the window seat, hopping and performing mini jumping jacks in an effort to prevent my blood from freezing right there in my veins.

Joe, entering the room fully dressed. Ignoring my warm-up routine entirely, he proceeds to open all of the windows and
turn on the ceiling fan
. When he is finished, he artfully raises a single eyebrow at me (translation: “That’s right, bitch. I want it nice and frigid in here when I come back in two hours.”) before leaving the room to go watch TV.

I roll my eyes and shut the door, sticking my tongue out at him from behind the hinged slab of wood that separates us. Then I quickly and quietly close the windows and turn off the ceiling fan before bounding into the bed, where I frantically tug one sheet, two blankets, and the duvet-wrapped Permabaffle eiderdown comforter up to my quivering chin.

Joe returns minutes later under the guise of “getting his slippers,” but of course he is there for one reason: to make sure
the windows are still open and the fan is still on
. They are neither.

“Really?” he demands, flipping the fan switch by the door.

“Really,” I reply, daring to dart an arm out of the velvety warmth of my blanket mountain to flip the switch by the bed.

“Put on some clothes!” he barks.
Flip.

“I’m wearing half of my pajama drawer and you’re
not even in here
!” I bellow back, my teeth chattering audibly.
Flip.

Joe, giving me the stink-eye:
Flip.

Me, flashing a look of mock shock and flipping him a mental bird:
Flip.

Joe, both brows raised, torso puffed up like a pissed-off gorilla:
Flip.

Me, all Central Park crazy lady (the one with hot-pink lipstick smeared around the vicinity of her mouth who mutters to herself constantly):
Flip, flip, eff you, flip, fuckity, flip, flip, FLIP.

“You have a serious problem,” Joe grumbles, stalking back out of the room.

“Yeah,
you
,” I mutter in perfect crazy-lady fashion. When he’s gone I sigh in exasperated relief, tuck my head under the covers, and say a quick prayer to the slumber gods that I will be deep in my first REM cycle before he returns and flips the dreaded switch again.

I’ll admit that being married to a human furnace occasionally has its advantages. When I underdress for an occasion—which you probably won’t be surprised to hear happens frequently—Joe never,
ever
complains about relinquishing his jacket. In movie theaters (where
what in the name of the Holy Mother
is up with the arctic freeze? It’s not like they’re selling winter coats or even hot panini sandwiches at the ridiculously overpriced concession stand, even though I’d be inclined to buy both), he’s been known to cavalierly wrap an index finger around the tip of my frozen nose. On ski lifts, he’ll graciously offer the toasty pocket of his nearest armpit for me to thaw out at least a few fingers. And in the rare instances when we crawl into bed at the same time, he invites me to press my icy ass cheeks into his sweltering thighs and wriggle my wintry feet between his toasty calves—a sensory thrill that lasts approximately thirty seconds before I feel like I’m suffocating in a Nigerian sauna. I know; the
irony
. Naturally he’s hurt and angry when I pull away from him.

“I thought you were
freezing
,” he says incredulously, with mock-whiny emphasis on the last offensive word.

“I was before, but now I’m not,” I huff, shuffling around the bed looking for a sliver of coolness on the mattress, any tiny patch where his body heat hasn’t penetrated the eighteeninch foam and spread like, well, wildfire. I usually fall asleep on the tippy-edge of my side of the bed, where accidental bodily contact isn’t likely. Sometimes Joe will absentmindedly search for my form across the vast expanse of mattress between us in the middle of the night, tossing a huge, heavy, feverish hand (I call it the “hot paw”) protectively across my midsection when he locates me. It’s so sweet when he does this that I try to sound really tender and loving when I squirm away pleading with him to
get his fucking hot paw off me
.

My salvation is our bedmate, Sheldon. No, we’re not that kind of kinky. Sheldon isn’t a Siamese or a Shih-Tzu, either; Sheldon is a deliciously lofty six-foot bag of feathers. You know, a body pillow. Sheldon is the perfect sleeping partner as he is climatically stable, totally malleable, and blissfully silent. He also has never once “accidentally” poked me in the backside with his boner, a courtesy I appreciate more than mere words can express. Joe, as you might imagine, is not a big fan of Sheldon. In fact, he gets downright jealous when he tries to snuggle up to me and finds me swaddling Sheldon like a slab of prosciutto wrapped around a tiger shrimp. Which is why I named him Sheldon.

Turns out Shakespeare pretty much nailed it, because a body pillow by any other name—even Sheldon—still breeds massive marital resentment. But it
does
help block the occasional hot paw, so at least there’s that.

My husband wears socks to bed, but in the middle of the night, he slips them off. They usually stay in the bed until they either travel to my side of the bed, at which time I kick them back to his side, or they fall on the floor. I refuse to pick them up. When he’s out of socks, he’s out of socks.

ROBERTA

 

 

Apparently Joe and I are not the only couple out there with “pillow issues.” I am not particularly proud of this, but my husband and I each still sleep with the (head) pillow we had when we got married. Since they were never living things, carbon dating isn’t an option, but I will tell you that when we met,
Married . . . with Children
was still in prime time. In other words, they are well loved and extremely distinctive, so getting them mixed up is not a problem. My sister Laurie, however, regales me with tales of how even though she recently bought brand-spanking-new,
identical
pillows for herself and her husband, a certain one of these twin slabs of foam is distinctively hers. How does she know? Evidently
her pillow
has two or three tiny little bumps that she (a) would recognize anywhere, (b) has grown intimately fond of, and (c) cannot sleep without. Laurie will call me absolutely irate to report that Carl fell asleep with
her pillow
again and she had to “rip it right out from under his listless head.” (I told Carl he should write a book about it. He’s not the cursing type or I’d have sworn I heard him call me a smart-ass.)

Just as pillow thievery is not conducive to remaining happily married, neither, it would appear, is having separate and distinct wake-up times and methods. Now, my difficulty not only falling asleep but
remaining there
once I’ve surpassed that first critical hurdle is legendary. Deadline looming two worrisome months away? Can’t fall asleep. Kid gets up to go to the bathroom? I’m up. Squirrel scampers along the branch of the tree that is next to but not even touching the back fence? There go the last eleven winks. Ambulance or police siren screams by on the highway four miles away?
Dear God, where are the children?
Now I must race across the house, up the stairs and into their rooms so that I can be sure that they haven’t sneaked out and robbed a convenience store or gotten flattened by a train. While I’m there, I might as well gently lay a hand on each of their tiny chests to confirm that they are rising and falling with robust regularity. A half an hour apiece generally is enough to convince me that I am not just imagining that they are tucked safely into their little beds and that they will probably make it through the night.

Because I am intimately familiar with the elusive nature of the beast we call sleep, I am the most considerate roommate a semiunconscious person could ever have. When Joe is in bed before me, I brush my teeth and wash my face in the guest bathroom. I take a painstaking thirty seconds to twist the bedroom doorknob the ninety necessary degrees to unlatch it, so that it doesn’t emit a single audible creak. I tiptoe to the bed and peel back the covers gently, one layer at a time, so as not to shock his docile body with a massive, unexpected blast of arctic air. Then I crawl in like a burglar through a window, careful not to deploy more than a single bedspring with any given movement.

I think another reason I am so freakishly courteous is because of my ex-boyfriend Jake. (Jake is not his real name, but I am still friends with Jake and would like to remain so, so indulge me here.) During the three years I lived in sin with Jake we just couldn’t seem to get the hang of sharing a communal bedroom. I’d turn in at my usual rock-star bedtime of eight thirty to read, passing out at some point shortly thereafter. Jake would come in to join me anywhere between midnight and sunrise the next morning.

“You asleep?” he’d ask,
not using his library voice or even his regular inside voice
, swinging the door as wide as it would go. As he would stand there letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, the hallway light worked like twin laser beams to carve matching holes into my retinas.

“Kitcha catcha shhhh shhhhhhhh arghhhhhhhhhhhh!” I’d stammer furiously, wrapping my pillow around my head and trying to resist consciousness.