Karen Slavick-Lennard - Sleep Talkin Man

This is my story. It starts with me. And it ends with me. And everything in the middle is about me.

Greatest fucking story ever written.

I feel compelled to repeat these words every time I talk to someone about, or meet someone who has heard about, Adams sleep talking. You see, about three-and-a-half years ago, I suddenly discovered that the sweet, mild-mannered Englishman with whom I share my life has a very different side to him that is only revealed when he goes to sleep. By day, Adam is delightful: kind, generous, clever, romantic, insightful, humble, respectful, infinitely likeable. Youd love him. But at night, the man who chatters at my side is ruthlessly cutting, profoundly egomaniacal, bizarrely perverse. In short, the antithesis of his waking self.

So before you go poking around in this book, please take my word for it that Sleep Talkin Manthe alter ego, the insult comic, the baby-juggling donkey jockeyis an aspect of my husband that he reserves entirely for his sleeping hours. Adam does not wish to exterminate all vegetarians, he does not spend his days lobbing the c-bomb at everyone in his sphere, and he does not have a badger trained to attack on command (although, that could be pretty handy sometimes).

So what is Sleep Talkin Man? Where does he come from? Is he a monster comprised of the darkest elements of Adams soul, kept repressed and hidden from the waking world? Is he the spectre of obnoxious, self-obsessed men everywhere crying out to be heard? Is he the cynical, embittered spirit of Charles Bukowski? Well probably never know. Best to just enjoy him while hes around, and be thankful hes not running the nation.

As far as anyone knows, Adam had never really talked in his sleep before I came along. His parents had never heard him. His former wife of eight years never heard him. He does have an old girlfriend from university who came forward and reported that Adam used to randomly swear in his sleep now and then, but nothing more elaborate than that. So it would appear that Sleep Talkin Man was born late one February night in 2009.

The end of that evening had gone the way of most of our evenings: Adam had given me a kiss goodnight, snuggled down into covers, and was asleep within ten seconds. I had gazed down at him in envy, sighed, and turned my attention to an online Killer Sudoku puzzle, hoping it wasnt going to be another one of my insomniacal nights.

About half an hour had passed like that. I was still doing my puzzle, waiting for sleepiness to steal over me. The flat was silent except for Adams steady rhythmic breathing and the ticking of the kitchen clock. Suddenly, Adam reached up, patted my head and intoned, Yeeeesssss. Sleeeeeeep. OK, perhaps this was a bit peculiar. But it was relevant, and good advice, so I didnt think much of it.

A few minutes later, he declared quite emphatically into the silence, Enough with the cheese. Enough! Well, sure, I do eat a lot of cheese. Im not ashamed to admit it. But my cheese consumption hardly seemed worthy of such scorn. I started to giggle, and then to laugh out loud. Not surprisingly, my guffaws roused him from his mumbling slumber. When I relayed what had happened, Im not sure that he actually believed me, but he giggled along anyway.

It was a few weeks before I heard from Adams sleeping self again. Little people are FUNNY! he muttered in my ear during an afternoon nap. Yikes, I thought, I guess my husband is not quite as politically correct in his sleep as he is in his waking life.

It was in mid-July though, still very early days, when Sleep Talkin Man fully revealed his true colors. It was a peaceful, silent night, when out of the darkness I heard, Consider yourself fired dickhead. Whoa. This was the first indication that I was spending my nights with a truly different animal than the man I had married. First of all, Im pretty confident that, until that moment, Adam had never uttered the word dickhead in his life. Not because hes averse to swearing when the situation calls for it, but as an Englishman from an uppermiddle class background, hed be far more inclined to use the traditional wanker or tosser when out to demean. And on top of that, I couldnt imagine Adam could ever sack someone with such obnoxious yet effortless aplomb. That was when I started to think of Adams sleep talking as the words of not the Adam I knew, but of someone else entirely. And he could be a real, well, dickhead.

From that point on, Adam talked in his sleep more and more frequently. It started out every couple of weeks. Then it was every few nights. Then nearly every night. And finally, loads every single night. Sleep Talkin Man came to have such a strong, individual presence in our life, we began to think of him as an entirely separate entity, a sort of third spouse who, instead of helping around the house or earning money for the family, provides us with regular, if unusual, comic relief.

Sleep Talkin Mans appearance in my life also kicked off an eye-opening education in British slang. Never from Adam alone would I have been exposed to the infinite ways in which the English can employ our shared mother tongue to patronize and humiliate. The C word aloneused much more liberally in the United Kingdom, and generally as an insult to men rather than womenhas been demonstrated by STM (as we call him for short) to have inexhaustible application.

(When putting this book together, we had to decide whether to leave the words exactly as STM spoke them, or make them more American-friendly. We settled for keeping the language intact, although we did convert to American spellings. So as you read, keep in mind, my fellow Americans, that pissed means drunk, knickers are panties, cunt is not as bad as youre used to, and if you come across a completely bewildering word or phrase, well, its probably one of those silly British things. Ive included a handy glossary of Britishisms in the back of the book, for those occasions when context just isnt enough.)

From the beginning, I was enjoying Adams sleep talking far too much to keep it to myself. Skype sessions with my friends and family back in the United States always began with an update of the latest and greatest from STM. Meeting new people, I always found a way to work the subject in at parties, at the grocery store, to anyone whod listen. I just couldnt get enough of it.

I loved Adams sleep talking so much, I decided to share it with the world, via a blog. And now, its come to you in this book. I hope you get even a fraction of the delight reading STMs words of wisdom that I got from hearing them uttered in the night. Or, if nothing else, I hope you come away with a truly shattering insult to use in just the right moment, awake or asleep.

Im so happy I could shit a puppy.

So this is what it feels like to be a gummy bear! I cant walk though, I have to rock.
I think Ill call myself BerNARD. Not BERnard.
BerNARD. And Ill be a golden gummy bear.

Even my reflection is jealous of me.

You know, it would be easier to kill the vegetarians than invite them to dinner.
Bloody fucking lentils.

Congratulations. You may now wipe your face on my butt cheeks.

Well, fuck you! Fuck you, Amazon.
You dont KNOW me. I kill puppies.