debauchette

sleepsex (ii).

The next morning, he had no memory of what had happened. I told him, but at first he didn’t believe me, and when he did believe me, he was baffled. And yet, I couldn’t believe that he did this while completely unconscious. He was on top of me, he was fucking me, and it wasn’t sluggish, sleepy sex. It was the sort of sex that requires leverage and balance and a great deal of energy.

Then he told me that he’d done strange things in his sleep before. He once filled his bathtub with socks. Another time he’d moved all of his shirts to the bedroom and then sorted them by color. One time he woke up outside his building with his keys in his hand. Yet all of this seemed so implausible. He’d need to look to see where he was going. He’d need to have the foresight to bring keys. He’d need to sit down and identify the color of each shirt.

So I did some research.

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Parasomnia is a sleep disorder in which physiological systems that are normally activated during wakefulness are activated during deep sleep. Deep, deep sleep. That might include the motor system (physical activity), cognitive processes (the processing of information), or the autonomic nervous system (such as sexual arousal). Sexual parasomnia was identified only loosely as a category when I first read about it, but the term ’sexsomnia’ has since been coined by a neurologist in LA.

I prefer ’sleepfucking.’

What’s interesting to me isn’t that this happens, but that the person’s sexual personality changes so radically when they’re in this deep sleep state. My boyfriend went from being a disengaged lover to a fiercely aggressive fucker. And this is similar to a few of the case studies I read. For example, in one case, a 33-year-old man seized his wife in her sleep, tore off her clothes, and forced intercourse. ["Atypical sexual behavior during sleep." Psychosomatic Medicine, 2002;64:328–36.] In another case, a woman described her husband as being more aggressive during these episodes than during normal sexual activity, sometimes grabbing her by the throat. ["Sexsomnia—a new parasomnia?" Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. 2003;48:311–17.]

But just when I was prepared to assume that sexsomniacs were deep-sleep rapists, I read that in some cases, the men were more gentle during these episodes than during wakeful sex. One woman described her boyfriend as a “different person” during sexsomnia, a more sensual and gentle lover, and more interested in satisfying her sexually. ["Sleepsex: a variant of sleepwalking." Archives of Sexual Behavior. 1998;27:269–78.]

So there’s something Jekyll and Hyde here, something more complex than just the release of inhibitions, something below the rational mind.

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(More to come.)