My husband sleeptalks. And sleepwalks. I knew this for a long period of time before we got married. We had numerous occasions, where I would wake up looking like I had drunk whiskey in a dodgy bar with some fellas from a redneck town in America talking about how bitching life is, then had tried to walk my way home but fall over and drag myself through a bushes, only to be captured by the police for trespassing a neighbour’s property and eventually be released at 6am. And he would look at me having what looks like the best sleep of his life and go “jesus, what time did you get to bed at?”
If only he knew. What I don’t always understand is, and am actually quite grateful for, is he uses sign language in his sleeptalking to me. I’m deaf, so he could be speaking the other 50percent of the time and I would be blissfully unaware. But he’s deaf as well, and has been pretty much oral for most of his life. In fact, we are pretty much oral with each other (get your minds out of the dirty gutters you) and use very little sign language except when we have our hearing aids / CIs out. That always psychologically interests me. We’re both very comfortable with our deaf identities before you ask, as fluent BSL users.
There was one time when I woke up, in our bed. Stark cold. Absolutely freezing. I slowly realised there was no duvet, and no husband. If there’s one way to piss me off, it’s the cold. Coming from N Ireland, I should be used to it but I swear the girls in my family are just as bad so I’m sure its some hereditary disease we don’t know about yet. Anyway, I walked into the spare room to check if he was there. Nope. Bathroom? Maybe in the bath, running cold water on himself? That might make me feel better I suppose. Nope. Walked downstairs, to an empty kitchen, dining room, and in a glimmer of hope, what looked like a human being on the sofa was actually my favourite furry blanket, nope. Then it occured to me the only place he could be was in the single bedroom, where our roommate sleeps. Uh-oh.
Before you get filthy and deeply disturbing thoughts, she was away that weekend.
I saw him sitting on the bed with the duvet wrapped around him, so feeling the utmost sympathy I switched the bright lights on.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Umm…. I’m sleeping here….”
“Fine…. Gimme the duvet!” *snatches duvet off him and storms out of room turning bright light off*
I dived back into bed, and could feel the vibrations of him walking about, clearly disoriented but as soon as I was warm again I drifted off to sleep, in about 30 seconds. I know, I’m too nice, I waited 20 seconds too long.
Anyway, there’s been so many, but one of the recent one has to be when I came up to bed later than him during the Christmas holidays and turned the TV on in the bedroom which clearly ‘stirred’ something in him.
*pulls duvet back to get into bed*
“What are you doing! This is Mum and Dad’s bed!”
“Wow, let’s just have sex in it”
“No…… no! Grow up!”
And this is a man who doesn’t say no to sex in anything or whenever. I must remind him tomorrow of his moral virtues, looking like, you know……
and that’s all for now…
