Inbetween

I sleepwalked again last night. I woke up this morning in a mad blur—ten minutes behind schedule, eyes cloudy, hair flying from my head—and saw the results of my late night travels on the floor. Two connected sheets of paper towel lay in front of my dresser, one folded over the other, a paper plate resting on top, a spray bottle of Windex standing next to it. I wanted to know what was on the plate, but needed to get dressed and out the door. I knew if I was late for work one more time, I’d be fired.

I looked at the plate and saw two open hot dog buns smothered with creamy peanut butter. The empty jar of Jif was turned over and stuffed into the top of a box of Oyster crackers, the combination resting on my computer chair. I cringed as I saw the transparent streaks against the inside of the plastic–tell tale signs that I’d scraped all I could and there would be nothing left for my lunch. Oh well, it was worth it.

“Damn it,” I muttered as I pulled on my socks and noticed they didn’t match..

Pressed into and piled on top of the peanut butter was a whole assortment of snacks from my pantry—I saw pretzels, potato chips, Oyster crackers, Famous Amos Chocolate Chip cookies, whole Planters peanuts that almost turned the creamy style Jif to chunky. The potato chips were sticking straight into the air, lined up like ruffled surfboards stuck in a peanut butter beach. I hopped to the bathroom on one foot, yanking my left sock on with force. The sink held further evidence: a half empty can of roast beef hash and a crumpled potato chip bag. I knew I had smelled something meaty in there. Must have been underneath the hotdog buns. I brushed my teeth, spitting toothpaste foam next to the open hash can and down the drain.

The first time I sleepwalked was the most exhilarating moment of my life. I found the folded, connected paper towels and paper plate on the floor in front of my dresser like I have every time since, this first occasion topped only with an unopened can of Bold flavored Manwich. I swung my legs out of bed and there it was sitting on the floor in front of my dresser, presented so perfectly, like a work of art. The can label stared directly at me—a big juicy sloppy joe. I just sat there and stared back, too confused to even register the situation. I closed my eyes, rubbed them with my fists and looked again, something I thought people only did in sitcoms. It was still there, and it was then that I noticed the kitchen mop leaning against my bedroom door. I burst out laughing. It was seeing the mop outside of the kitchen closet and looking so foreign with its sponge head resting upon my shag carpet that did it for me.

It was so weird. I sat down on my bed and thought, eventually coming to the conclusion that I must have sleepwalked. I mused on it for hours, slowly recognizing how amazing it was. Sleepwalking is something beyond our control as humans. The very thought of my body, absent of my conscious mind, under its own control, motoring around my house, or in my yard, or wherever it wants to go, doing whatever it wants to do, absolutely fascinated me. Sleepwalking is like straddling the line between sleep and life, a state where a person exists in neither world, only as a mass of flesh walking the earth when it shouldn’t. What possible force can drive a body at rest to rise from the depths of sleep just enough to walk the night? There must be a reason for it, I thought, but it eluded me.

Even more interesting–what will a body do without a conscious mind controlling it? How does it function? How does it know what it wants? Is it acting out the deepest recesses of the human mind? Primal urges? Things that a person doesn’t even know is contained in his or her brain? It sounds so science-fictiony, but it really happens to people. It happens to me.

I wanted to tell everybody after the first time. I pictured myself at lunch telling my coworkers, wondering what sorts of questions they would ask me. I couldn’t wait. I arrived at lunchtime and sat in the company cafeteria.

“So, guess what I did last night?” I said with anticipation.

“What?” a coworker asked.

“I…I sat on my couch and watched tv.” I was given strange looks all around and the conversation moved elsewhere. I don’t know why, but I suddenly didn’t want to tell them about my sleepwalking. I didn’t want to tell anybody. It was interesting and it was unique and it was personal. It was mine. Only I could see the world it opened up.

I cooked the Manwich for dinner that night and mopped the kitchen floor. It seemed the appropriate thing to do.

I went to bed hoping I would sleepwalk again. It was all I could think about. I looked it up on the internet to see what caused it. I was ‘suffering’ (the website’s term, not mine) from a malady that there was no known cause for. It was incredible.

I woke to the alarm at seven o’ clock the next morning with anticipation. A smile spread across my lips as I wondered what I had done the previous night. Maybe I had made another dinner suggestion for myself. Perhaps I had taken something from my bedroom and placed it in the kitchen, continuing to play some sort of room switcheroo game with my worldly possessions. Or, I madly hoped, maybe I had cleaned the whole house from top to bottom, even scrubbing the toilets and vacuuming behind the couch. I jumped out of bed and glanced at the floor. No paper towels or paper plates. I was a bit disappointed, but quickly recovered. Good, I thought. Don’t want to be too predictable.

I scanned the rest of the room and saw no changes from the night before. Everything seemed in its correct place. Damn, I thought. I started panicking, worrying that maybe the sleepwalking had been a one time thing. Maybe I was going to be forever stuck only in the alternating worlds of the awake and of the sleeping, never again permitted to wade in the mysterious inbetween. I ran through the house, sliding on the hardwood floors. Behind ever door, in every cabinet, under every chair, was the possibility of evidence of my body taking over, a mass made of muscles and organs strolling through the house doing its own innate actions–the subconscious come alive. I wondered what it all meant.

By ten, I realized I hadn’t sleepwalked. I sat on the frame of my living room couch, head in my hands. The cushions were strewn across the room. Chairs were flipped, tables overturned, curtains pulled to the floor. In the kitchen all of my pots and pans, my plates, my silverware, cutlery, napkins, everything was out in the open. The counters were covered, the linoleum unwalkable, several of my good glasses broken, dangerous shards reflecting the pale overhead light. The bathroom was a mess.

I skipped work and slept all day.

The next day and the next were much the same. I gave up, accepting the fact that God had ripped away what I had become obsessed with. I cleaned the house and tried going back to work. My boss had relayed the message that I had had the flu, and everybody told me they hoped that I was feeling better. I wasn’t. I was beginning to fear that I hadn’t even sleepwalked at all. Maybe there was another explanation for the Manwich and the mop. I tormented myself.

A week later it happened again. I can’t describe the feeling it gave me when I awoke. There on the floor were two connected, folded paper towels, a paper plate on top, and my HandiVac sitting next to it. A perfect mound of Raisin Bran was constructed in the center of the plate. The raisins gleamed in my eyes like nuggets of black gold. I jumped out of bed so quickly my legs tangled themselves in the blanket and I fell with a thud, my wrist pinned underneath my chest. It hurt, and I knew that it was sprained, if not broken. At the very least I had to go to the hospital. I thanked God it wasn’t my leg.

I shimmied across the carpet to my masterpiece. There it was, superbly displayed. I reached out with my good arm and touched the cereal. It was hard and seemed coated in something. I leaned forward, smelled, and giggled. I plucked a flake from the top, tendrils of sticky maple syrup tracing its path to my mouth then disappearing. Sweetness flowed across my tongue and I grinned. It was great. It was wonderful—magnificent even! I laughed at how unique I was–how special I was.

Two hours later I called the hospital. My wrist was broken.

From that day forward it became a regular occurrence. Each and every morning I woke up to a paper plate of food from the pantry and some sort of a cleaning item. I awoke to pizza topped with Karo syrup, uncooked rice mixed with coffee grounds, Frosted Flakes smothered with honey (one of the few disappointments—much too similar to the Raisin Bran and syrup). Each day it seemed to become progressively more and more elaborate. And I never knew how many cleaning items I owned!

One day it was a broom, the next a toilet brush, after that a dishrag. I began cataloguing everything. I made a list of anything in my house that could possibly be construed as something to clean with. I wanted to know how long I could keep this up. After a month of sleepwalking, I realized that there were no more cleaning items in my house that I hadn’t grabbed in the middle of the night and placed in my bedroom. I didn’t want to repeat myself, or even worse stop sleepwalking. I had no clue as to the significance of the cleaning items and the plate of food I brought myself nightly, but I knew I wanted it to continue. I feared that if there was no new choices for myself, everything would stop.

I went to Wal-Mart and bought Brillo pads, vacuum bags, Pine-Sol, and more. I stocked up for six months worth of sleepwalking.

I researched thoroughly. I learned that about ten percent of all humans have sleepwalked at least once in their lives. I discovered that the scientific term is somnambulism and it is most prevalent in children ages four to twelve, apparently from overactive imaginations. In adults it is often related to substance abuse, but I knew not in my case. It occurs during deep non-REM sleep. It can be genetic.

I also read that in the legal arena, a person is often not held responsible for any crimes committed while sleepwalking. I read about a case in Arkansas where a woman who had stabbed her husband sixty-eight times plead innocent by saying she was sleepwalking and had no recollection of the incident. Her plea resulted in a hung jury. Twelve average Americans could not decide if she was responsible for her actions. They knew for a fact that she had grabbed a butcher knife from her kitchen, walked to the bed she had shared with her husband for twenty-seven years, her two small children in the next room, and plunged it into his chest repeatedly, most of the blows coming after the life had already left his body. But she was not responsible. What was then? What drove her to do such a horrible thing?

I began to wonder if she even knew herself. If I were on that jury, I would have voted to acquit. I knew that something inside had prompted this housewife to kill, but it wasn’t her. It was her sleepwalker version—a doppelganger that looked like her, but acted without the love of a mother and a wife.

I have decided to video tape myself tonight. I want to see this world of sleepwalking that I have spent so many hours in over the past months but have never truly experienced. I want to see who I am in this place, why I am there. The very idea of sleepwalking dictates that I can never know what it’s really like, what is happening inside my mind. Nobody can. This is the closest I can ever be—watching a zombie version of myself on tape. No, I don’t like that word. Zombie conjures up images of outstretched arms, stiff movements, the walking dead, while I feel that sleepwalking is the exact opposite—walking around at the most basest form of the life, the congenital human condition.

I went to Rent-A-Center this afternoon and got three video cameras, one for my bedroom, one for the kitchen, and one for the hallway inbetween. I also rented two VCRs and two televisions so that, in conjunction with the set I already own, I can watch all the tapes at the same time.

I’m lying in bed trying to fall asleep with my lamp on. I wonder when it all starts exactly. At the same time every night? I will discover everything tomorrow. I’m falling asleep.

The alarm goes off and I shoot my eyes to the floor. I see two connected sheets of paper towels laying in front of my dresser, one folded over the other, a paper plate resting on top, a bottle of Dawn dishwashing liquid standing next to it. For the first time, I don’t bother to investigate what I have created on the plate. I hurry to the dresser and pop open the camera. I dash to the hallway, notice that the light is still on, and reach up to the shelf where camera number two is located. I grab the final cassette from the kitchen.

I walk to the living room, sit on my couch, and lay the three tapes, all labeled with their respective room and today’s date, next to the three remote controls on the coffee table in front of me. I look forward and see my television and VCR framed on each side by the twin Rent-A-Center models. I take a deep breath and organize the tapes. Bedroom on the left, hallway in the middle, kitchen on the right. Once I’m prepared, I pop them into the VCRs and hit play on all of them simultaneously.

I look at the images of the rooms in my house, noting how foreign they look at nighttime. I hit the display buttons on the remotes so I can see the time in the upper right corner of my bedroom and the kitchen, bottom left in the hallway between. I fast-forward. I can hardly to tell the tape is moving, I’m so still in my bed. The display zips past one hour, two hours, then three. I am getting worried. I watch myself in the bedroom and realize that I have not moved at all. How is this possible? I’ve read that the average adult changes position 16.7 times during the night. Does this have something to do with it?

There it is. At 3 hours, 47 minutes, and 23 seconds I start to move. It’s approximately 2:47 a.m. in the world of the awake and of the sleeping, but who knows what time in the inbetween. I rewind back to the very instant I start to move and pause all three tapes. I reset the display counters. It is time zero.

I watch myself stir, mumbling something I can’t hear. I lean forward on the couch. After a few seconds on twisting and turning, my legs fight from underneath the blankets and I stand in the middle of my room. I stretch my arms to the ceiling and yawn. I watch myself glance around my bedroom. My eyes flash over the camera quickly, unaware that my movements are being recorded. They disappoint me.

I rewind the bedroom tape and pause it while I’m staring into the camera, letting the others videos continue. The eyes looking back at me are distinctively mine—nothing more, nothing less. I don’t know what I expected, but not this. I wanted to see eyes that were more alive than they had ever been before. I wanted to see them lacking worldly knowledge but instead containing pure animal humanity. Instead, they are simply me.
I stop the still progressing kitchen and bedroom VCRs and rewind them, pausing them in synch with my bedroom. I hit play on all three.

I exit my bedroom and walk into the hallway. I move my eyes from the television on the left to the one in the middle. The camera is aimed so that my bedroom door is off-screen. My hand reaches into the picture and flips off the light switch. I am dumbfounded.

I see my bedroom and kitchen at nighttime, a square of blackness separating the two. I crank the volume of the hallway up to the highest bar, down to nothing on the other rooms. All I can hear is an electric hum, no movement. Ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds pass and nothing has happened. I am fascinated with myself. From the lack of sound, it seems I’m not even moving. The bedroom shows no sign of me. I must be in the hallway, but what am I doing? What is the significance of turning off the light? Am I hiding something?

I watch the lit rooms, wondering if I am going to return to the bedroom first or go into the kitchen. Nothing in the hallway changes. Then I step into the kitchen and I can immediately tell that I have changed. It is 4 minutes and 17 seconds.

I am carrying myself with more confidence than I have ever seen a human being possess. My walk is—well, indescribable. The only thing I can say is that looks like I am enjoying walking, like I have never done it before. The simple act of moving one leg after the other, touching the ground and lifting off in a repeating pattern, seems so fluid. I open the pantry and begin collecting food.

I watch in awe at the care I am putting into selecting the items. Up to this point I have never thought about the weirdness of my sleepwalking. I have accepted that fact that I am creating strange dishes for myself like its something every sleepwalker does. I think about the woman from Arkansas and what her husband must have seem when he opened his eyes in bed on the night he died—a wife who wasn’t his wife. A person bent solely on malice and death. I wonder if that urge to kill is inside of all of us somewhere and that we are just better at repressing it. Maybe not—my mind seems bent solely on eating and cleaning.

I see my back as I stand before the open pantry, head moving back and forth, back and forth. Every couple minutes I grab something from the shelf. I have selected a train-car of Animal Crackers, a bag of dried cranberries, two chocolate granola bars, and a packet of angel hair pasta.

I get a side view of myself lining up these items on the kitchen counter. I walk to grab a paper plate from above the microwave, directly next to the video camera. I look into it and on the couch I stop breathing. Looking at the television, I see the most amazing thing in myself. My sleepwalker eyes are more than I could have ever expected, ever known could be possible. They are so brimming with life I can barely look. No, that’s not quite right. They seem stripped of life, the life as I know it now. They are full of something else. No, that’s still not right, not right at all. I can’t figure it out until in a flash on clarity I finally realize that what is so amazing is what is not there. The lack of worry or self-doubt or sadness that is always in every human being at some level whether we realize it or not. I feel as if I’m looking at the eyes of a newborn child, eyes that know nothing about the world we live in and everything associated in it. They are taking it all in. They don’t miss a thing. They are pure.

I turn off the VCRs and the televisions—I can’t watch anymore. It’s too hard. I want to live like my sleepwalker self. I want to live everyday as if it’s something brand new and exciting. I want to take pleasure in walking. I want to create something absolutely ridiculous like a plate of animal crackers, cranberries, granola bars, and pasta and be so proud of it that I want to present it like art. I want to know what happened to me in that hallway. I want to know what I was trying to hide from myself. I want to know what its like to view the world as a clean slate, oblivious of the intricacies of human society.

I want to leave this world behind me and start anew. I want to live in the inbetween.

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