To revisit the subject, sexsomnia is a parasomnia, and parasomnias are disorders in which the body’s physiological systems are activated during sleep, so while the rest of us are in bed, parasomniacs are going for a stroll, or organizing their cabinets, or humping their bed-mates. Those with the propensity to hump are sexsomniacs.

The interesting thing about sexsomnia is that the sleepsex personality is often very different from the wakeful personality, and that aspect fascinates me. It makes me wonder a bit about how our sexual minds work.

My own warped and weirdly satisfying relationship with a sexsomniac is here: one, two, three.

-

When I was going through puberty, I was able to lucid dream, to exert control over my own dreams. It started when I had the same nightmare three nights in a row and through that repetition I became aware within the dream that it wasn’t real. I can’t imagine this happening now, since my dreams are either mute or unremarkable, but back then they were very intense.

Controlling the dream was never easy – it was like swimming in rough water, in that it took constant effort. If I relaxed or lost focus, I woke up.

So, as a young adolescent, my natural inclination was to force my dreams in an erotic direction. I didn’t have a clear understanding of sex then, but I did have a clear feeling, like how I feel now when I’m aroused, but much more intense. And my dreams, like my mind, were weird like anime, like Alice-in-Wonderland weird, with lots of penetration and exaggeration and strangers and dark nooks and irrationally sequenced events.

I’m mentioning this because I think it’s partly to blame for my paraphiliac lust for sleepsex. One woman’s nocturnal violation is another woman’s kink.

*

When my boyfriend – I’ll call him Jack – rapefucked me in my sleep, it prolonged our relationship past its prime. Even when I realized that we weren’t a good couple, I stayed with him because I was attracted to his alter-ego, his subconscious sleep personality. After that first night, it happened again and again, almost nightly. We’d both go to sleep and then I’d wake in the middle of the night to his hands prying my thighs apart, his breath at my neck, and sometimes surprisingly coherent dirty language. He got so much harder asleep than awake, and while most nights he would wake up mid-fuck and roll off, leaving me in a state of agony, other nights he’d come and come loudly. It was more satisfying and more exciting than our mutually conscious sex had ever been, and I felt more attracted to him at night, like this, than when we were both awake. In other words, I was most attracted to him when he was asleep.

I wondered for a while if he were just inhibited when he was awake. I tried to push our sex further, beyond the cool, steady rutting, but the results were disastrous and deeply neurotic. Eventually, it just made more sense for me to pull back and wait for the sleepfucker to pay me a visit.

So I had a relationship with two sides of the same man, the restrained overachiever and his primal subconscious. During the day, I’d sit and work alongside the overachiever. Or I’d listen his stories about the hospital, or we’d talk about film, or books, or my research, and then he’d brush his teeth, and I’d brush mine, and we’d fuck a little, and it was done. But the sleepfucker, he was just a beast. He’d grip me from behind and jerk me up onto my hands and knees so he could mount me. Or he’d flatten me under his weight and pin me down. He’d grind into me hard, and I learned to bite my pillow and swallow my moans because if I knew that if I woke him, it would be over. Being fucked by the sleepfucker was like masturbating with a faulty vibrator: there was always the risk that just as I was about to come, it would stop. So I’d keep both hands clapped over my mouth or I’d clench the pillow between my teeth and pray he’d stay under long enough for me to come.

And I knew we had a horribly warped relationship – or that my relationship with him was warped – because whenever the sleepfucking stopped for a few days, it left me feeling neglected and I’d contemplate a breakup. But then I’d wake up with his cock thrusting into my cunt, and I’d hold off a little longer…

One day it stopped for good. Jack had hit a down-swing in his depression (depressives are prone to sleep disorders) and he was prescribed a cocktail of drugs that effectively killed off his alter-ego. The sleepfucker wasn’t coming back.

I stayed with Jack to help him ride through the worst of his depressive downswing, but once it started to let up, I returned the keys to his apartment and left in a clean, sharp break.

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.

*

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.

*

(More to come.)

He’s an ex for a reason – we weren’t a great match. He was a good-on-paper match, someone with a similar background and similarly ambitious nature. We both had a solid academic record and a shared hatred for grades as a system of evaluation. We both liked dive bars, music, and New York. But we differed sexually. I was openly sexual while he was fairly inhibited and prone to asexual depressive slumps. Worse, I thought that my sex-centered habits were something I needed to shake, or grow out of, or simply suppress. During that relationship, I tried to be what I thought girlfriends were supposed to be (and learned never to do again).

At night, we had a predictable routine. He’d brush his teeth, I’d brush mine, he’d pack his bag for the next morning, I’d wash my face, he’d shut down his computer, I’d pop an Ambien, and we’d both move to the bedroom. Then we’d hit the lights, fuck according to routine, and sleep.

Consistently, it was a sexless fuck. I’d slip out of my panties and he’d tug down his boxers, and he’d put his dick inside me. He’d thrust a bit, come, and roll over. And I’d think, “Well, sex isn’t the most important thing…”

Then, one night, I woke up to a man on my back. He was rock hard and his cock was digging into the back of my thigh. In seconds, I was ravenous. Dizzy. I raised my hips and reached back to guide his cock inside me, and once he was in, he was forceful, slamming into me, hard. Suddenly, I was his fucktoy and I was in absolute heaven, as if we’d made some kind of breakthrough in our relationship. Finally. Finally, he was showing signs of real animal lusts and absolute abandon. It all hit me like a tsunami: I remembered what I’d been missing about sex and lust and I wanted it all.

And then he stopped. I whispered, “What’s wrong?” but he didn’t answer. He just mumbled, rolled off, and muttered an apology. My cunt was on fire.

I rolled over and reached for his erection, but it was gone. And he was dead asleep. Breathing heavily, then snoring.

I doubled over and fucked myself as best as I could, savoring those fresh memories of what he’d just done. I came, but I couldn’t sleep because my body was in heat. I wanted to fuck again, to be fucked. So I lay back and rubbed my pussy until my wrists gave out.

*

(And now I sleep. More to come.)

I told him that there was no way, seeing how I was menstrual and drowsy from over-the-counter and imported over-the-counter medications. He said, “In that case, I need to come by.” He liked the idea of fucking me, however menstrual, while I’m drowsy. This is a trend.

Matt’s plied me with cold medication (when I had a cold) and zolpidem (when I couldn’t sleep), and he’s said outright that he’s generous with his medicine cabinet because it makes me more pliant. I’ve been with a few men, most of them writers, who’ve had a thing for drowsy, intoxicated sex. We’d plow through a bottle of wine or several pints of beer and then fuck on a mattress in the middle of the floor. And I’d encourage it, not just because I enjoy being manhandled, but also because I know that when I’m disarmed, so are they.

This stands in striking contrast to my other life, where I’ve been a pristine model of sobriety. I’ve been so meticulous about preserving my lucidity, and for so long, that my quasi-retirement has me luxuriating in the pleasures of drunk, stupid, adolescent, date-rapey sex, and with it, my relentless sleepfuck fantasy. I like being fucked in my sleep, I like waking up to an erection pressed into my hip and a man’s fingertips at the soft edges of my cunt. I go from dazed to nymphomaniacal in seconds, and I think it’s because my rational mind is still dreaming. But it’s been such a long time since I’ve let that happen.