Sleep Talkin' Man by Karen Slavick-Lennard Read Free Book Online Page B

woman. There has never been a single utterance to come out of Sleep Talkin’ Man that has offended me, or left me fretting for my relationship. I’ve got a husband who still sends me off to work with sandwiches in which he hastucked little love notes. Why would I get myself worked up over some nutty nighttime nattering?
    STM does spend an inordinate share of his limited airtime spewing insults. People have commented that he must really dislike people, or suffer from some serious anger issues. All I can say to that is, as the person who sees more of him awake and asleep than anyone, it’s just not true—Adam spends most of his days in good spirits, and genuinely likes and gets along with just about everyone. So I believe that, for the most part, his clever but scathing insults are not inspired by anyone, but are just Adam’s subconscious letting off a bit of steam while entertaining itself along the way.
    Nevertheless, Adam’s sleep talking has occasionally gotten him into a spot of trouble with those who did take something personally. For example, this little time bomb from two years into our relationship:
    â€œYour mum’s at the door again.
Bury me. Bury me deep.”
    My mom read the blog that day. When she spoke to me a day or two later, she joked about Adam owing her an apology. By the time she had made this quip three more times over the next week, I got the message that she really was waiting for an apology, or at least some assurance. I think my mother was feeling genuinely concerned that STM was revealing some kernel of truth about Adam’s feelings. Seriously, Mom, the guy herds pygmy goats, keeps a midget in his closet, and married a zombie. How much more evidence would it take to convince you that STM’s universe is populated with an entirely different cast of characters than Adam’s? There’s a whole other world up there in Adam’s head, and STM insults his way through every bit of it.
    That said, it often happens that particular events in Adam’s waking life crop up in some warped form in his late-night mumblings. This has been known to drop him in a bit of hot water. For instance, one night after he had shamelessly teased the receptionist at work about the prolific :) and :( faces studding her e-mails, STM came out with:
    â€œIf she sends me one more fucking smiley
face emoticon, I’m gonna shove that
keyboard so far up her ass, she’s gonna
have to tweak her nipples to force quit.”
    That one caused some trouble. To be specific, when he walked into work the next morning, it caused a stapler to be hurled at his head.
    Real life references didn’t always pepper Adam’s sleep talking as they do now. In fact, for a long time, everything Adam said seemed utterly random and unrelated to reality. It was a full ten months into STM’s existence before he said anything that we were able to recognize from our waking life. But there was no missing it that first time:
    â€œMy snorkel! My snorkel! Judge won’t like
it if I don’t have my snorkel!
You PLANT it … Don’t want baby snorkels.”
    Now, I can’t tell you where the snorkels fit in. I can tell you, though, that this was the night before he was going into family court concerning visitation with his kids. Perhaps his anxiety was so intense that it broke right through more literally than anything else had up to that point. Although, as you can see, he didn’t quite manage a complete departure from the surreal.
    We had another month of nothing but randomness from STM, and then, just after one of our best friends revealed that she was pregnant for the first time, we got our next little glimpse of Adam’s life in STM’s exposition:
    â€œBabies don’t bounce. They don’t bounce!
Shame.
It’d be much more fun if they bounced.”
    This regretful warning was most informative for our pregnant friend, I’m sure.
    Another month went by with no