Shared Sleep
Susan Roca
Word Count 1458
It had been 22 years since I slept with a man who wasn’t my husband. Now my ex-husband. The ink on the divorce papers was slow to dry and I was even slower to start dating. And I certainly wasn’t ready to invite anyone into the king-sized bed that we shared for all those years. So when, 25 months post-divorce, I found myself on a pull out Ikea bed in the studio apartment of the attractive and separated-but-not-yet-divorced father of three adult children, I felt a part of me had woken up.
We matched by way of modern algorithms on a dating app, proceeded to a coffee meet up, a flirty gallery date, late night music in an Irish pub, a lingering walk through the East Village and another few “I need to make sure you are a good person” meet ups before we wound up at his place in Brooklyn. I couldn’t imagine being naked with a man before seeing his place. Where he made his coffee, kept his food, brushed his teeth. Ate. Slept.
There are a few names for the first person you sleep with after a long relationship. Pancake. Rebound. Situationship. Fling. And most of them don’t refer to the actual act of sleeping with someone, even though to me, that’s the most intimate part. The flirtation that leads to kisses that leads to clothed body parts touching that leads to all the rest “in bed” as the fortune cookie word game goes. The build-up and release. But then after that. After the canoodling, the lights turned attractively low, the sweaty parts or not sweaty parts, after the rapture, or almost but not quite rapture, then comes the quiet. Then there is the silence as two people whose bodies may or may not be all that familiar with each other, decide whether to entwine with arms and legs akimbo and try to drift off to sleep. To close their eyes to one another and trust that in the morning light they might look and feel the same. That is the most intimate part.
That night, the new lingerie didn’t stay on very long. And after an appropriate amount of middle-aged time, we laid naked and exhausted under soft jersey knit sheets and a light down comforter very unlike the weighted one I was used to. It was understood that I was spending the night. This was potentially the start of something good and good things start with a good night’s sleep. But after sleeping with the same person for 22 years, knowing every inch of his body, the mole on his left thigh, the way his feet were always warm, the way the covers folded over us as we spooned, it is a challenge to sleep solo let alone with a new body next to you. This new person whom I had a first coffee with, whose hand I held as we walked through the photo gallery, whose lips I kissed on the Soho Street corner, whose thighs touched mine under the table at the Irish bar in the East Village, felt different under the covers of a strange bed. A bed that suddenly seemed small and cramped as we settled our heads on the too-fluffy pillows.
Where do I put my right arm that suddenly seemed to be in the way? Is it okay if I turn toward him or is it rude not to spoon? Do I slip into the t-shirt I brought to sleep in or sleep, as I prefer, in the buff? Is there pillow talk or is he already asleep?
He had turned on some classical music earlier in the evening that quietly floated through the apartment as the silence between us grew louder. He was drifting comfortably to dreamland, and I was wide awake and noticing every unfamiliar sound, every small light that glowed in this unfamiliar space. The low hum of the refrigerator lurching not far enough from us to officially be in another room.
When I was married, I had always slept well. I drifted off to sleep easily after intimate exchanges under or over the covers, after an exhausting day of motherhood, corporate machinations, housework. Sleep came easy. Then came divorce, menopause, an empty nest, a move to another city and sleep became someone I used to know well but hadn’t seen regularly for a while.
It didn’t help that this new-to-me bed was tucked into a corner of the room which meant I was a bit hemmed in. Hemmed in by a man I was just getting to know, hemmed in by random thoughts that were racing in my head, hemmed in by the sheet that was tucked in tightly against the wall. Do all separated men live in studio apartments? Should I leave right after breakfast? Did I remember to put out food for my cat back home?
Sleep wasn’t coming. The green light of his microwave clock blinked: 1:30am, 2:32am, 3:47am. And suddenly I thought of the old flip clock radios of my 80’s youth and of sleepovers with a gaggle of girlfriends at Brenda Jacob’s cul-de-sac house. After a night of popcorn, the Happy Days to Love Boat line up, truth or dare, and her dad yelling at us from down the hall to go to sleep, I was one of the last ones whose eyes were still half open at 2:30am. The clock radio was tuned to a top 40 station and some Elton John or REO Speedwagon was playing quietly in the room, but I wasn’t used to any music in the room when I slept and the pillow was too soft and the covers too itchy and some of the girls thrashed a bit in their sleep as we laid crammed on blankets her mom laid out on the living room floor. And maybe the fear of some good-natured mean girl tricks from those still awake thrashed in my head as well. It hadn’t been since then that sleep was as elusive as it’s been recently.
The very nice man next to me, the one unintentionally pinning me in, snored. It was just a low rumble, not too cartoonish or boisterous, but enough to work its way in and create a yield sign to any sleep. Maybe it wasn’t him per se. It was anyone or anything that was unfamiliar, new, uncharted. Including all the new situations and hormones I now found myself swimming in that left me awake and alert at times when I rather be drifting off and dreaming of a time when sleep came easy.
I did my best over the next few months to grow accustomed to sleeping next to the new man in my life. It felt like it should be easy, but it wasn’t. The nights we did spend together were tangled in: Will I or won’t I get enough sleep tonight? Covers on, covers off, pillows, limbs, snuggling, to spoon or not to spoon, music on, music off. He fell asleep easily and stayed that way til morning. I only dreamed of nights like that.
It was a bit easier when we were at my place where I could slip out from the king-sized bed in the middle of the night and roam around the rest of my apartment if I felt restless. And I often did. Sometimes I read til I was tired enough to crawl back into bed and try again. Sometimes I was able to settle back into slumber. Sometimes I wasn’t. It was more challenging at his place. I only had the bathroom to escape to when random thoughts or his snoring or my bladder woke me regularly at 2:30am. And 4:04am. And 5:27am. I tried my best not to wake him and he did his best to keep sleeping. I couldn’t blame him; I envied him.
I look back now and realize that I probably sensed he was my rebound relationship, and perhaps that’s why sleep didn’t come easily with him. To share the space under the covers and lie vulnerable with another person is an incredibly intimate act, in some ways more so than sex. In the end, it wasn’t my lack of sleep that doomed us, that would have been sad. Instead, like many rebound relationships, it was the other very awake remaining 16 hours of the day that did us in.
I am sleeping alone for the time being and getting used to it. The newness of being on my own post-everything is waning and not waking me up as often now. Sometimes not at all. And now, most of the time, 2:30am comes and goes without my watchful eye because I am busy sleeping.
Susan recently separated from New York City and crossed the river to New Jersey where she works from home for an entertainment company. As a recent empty nester, she writes more, commutes less and sleeps soundly, most nights. Her work has been featured in Coffee & Crumbs and on WNYC and various college-ruled notebooks tucked away in her closet.