“It’s when you get up to pee,” said Berni.
“All right,” I said, sipping my coffee. It was Saturday morning, and I wasn’t completely awake yet; Berni had been up for a while, though, and she had something important to tell me. About peeing , apparently.
“You see… when you get up, NORMALLY, you open your eyes. You sigh. You brace yourself. You hoist yourself up out of bed.”
Berni was being generous. I am not young, and I am fat. Getting out of bed is a damn near geologic process for me these days, accompanied by some resentment and a sound board much like a bossa nova drummer trying to eat Rice Krispies while he works.
“But in the middle of the night, when you get up to pee,” she continued, “you’re not really awake .”
Berni was, again, being generous. My doctor put me on diuretics a few years back, and now I have to pee in the middle of the night, and I am well aware that I’ve developed the knack of getting up, staggering to the bathroom, venting the ballast tanks, and returning to bed, without actually completely waking up. “And?”
“And you sort of FLOAT up.”
THIS threw me. “…what?”
“You don’t brace yourself. You don’t even use your ARMS, as far as I can tell. You just… RISE. The closest description I can give you is like that scene in “Nosferatu,” where the vampire doesn’t just sit up in his coffin, he RISES up, full length, like he’s got hinges attached to his heels.”
“…I do that?”
“Almost,” she said. “It’s a little creepy. You just… RISE UP, and your feet float sideways out of the bed, and you don’t look like you’re trying at all. It just HAPPENS. And then you go from Nosferatu to Frankenstein.”
“…what?”
“You stand up on your feet. You rotate right. You begin to walk to the bathroom. But even though you’re asleep, your reptile brain, way down in your brain stem, is aware that there MIGHT be cats in the way. So you don’t just WALK.”
I said nothing. She continued.
“So you take very short steps, with your feet getting less than an inch from the floor, and you STOMP. Not loudly, but I can hear you. You don’t quite shuffle, but you take very short steps and you stomp-stomp-stomp-stomp all the way to the bathroom. Like you’re trying to let the cats know you’re coming, but you’re also letting them know that you’re asleep and you WILL step on them or nudge them aside if they’re in the way. And you look like if there was a brick wall in your way, you’d just push right through it.”
I stared at her. “I do this? Every night?”
“Every night. It’s your bladder. It’s like you’re being led by your bladder, and your bladder is by-ghod GOING to get to that bathroom, and … it’s not as good a pilot of the meat suit as your brain is. But the getting out of bed part? It’s got THAT part DOWN, cold .”
I sat there with my coffee in my hand. She kept going.
“It happens a couple of times a night,” she continued. “But it WILL happen in the MORNING.”
“In the morning,” I said, trying to process.
“In the morning,” she said. “Because on weekdays when you work, you get up before I do. But all summer? You sleep in. And when I get up, all of a sudden, YOU don’t wake up, but Nosferatu realizes that if he doesn’t beat me to the bathroom, then he’s going to have to WAIT to pee. So as soon as I sit up, Nosferatu RISES FROM HIS GRAVE, and his upper torso floats up and his feet float sideways, and you stand up and do the Frankenstein Shuffle to the bathroom, before I can finish getting up. It’s sort of impressive to watch, really. I’ve gotten used to just stopping for a moment, because Nosferatu generally finishes pretty quickly, and then Frankenstein turns around and stomp-stomp-stomps back to bed.”
As I recall, I blinked, and I sipped my coffee. “That’s what I do in the night, now?” I asked. “I mean, is there more?”
Berni thought about it. “That’s pretty much spot on. One thing I probably didn’t mention, that makes it even funnier, is that you don’t even seem to disturb the covers . You don’t fling them off and commence to risin’. It’s like you somehow gently fold them back, as though it’s a nightly turn down service, and I halfway expect to see a mint materialize on the pillow, calmly awaiting your return.”
I didn’t quite choke on the coffee; I had a mental picture of that scene from Return Of The Jedi , where Yoda Becomes One With The Force, and the covers gently collapse on the bed, where he vanished.
It is a disturbing thing, at my time of life, to find that one is apparently far more ethereally graceful in one’s sleep then one is while awake.
“And also,” she continued, “the reason I have learned to sit on the edge of the bed and wait for this ritual to occur , is because there has been a time or two where I lie in bed for a bit upon waking, doing calculations in my head as to when you last peed and think “okay…he peed 15 minutes ago so I’m probably good”, because by Ghod if it’s been 20 minutes since your last rising, it’s off to the races. And I can’t assume that just because you’re snoring I’m in the clear. Tried that a couple times. Even made it partway to the can before Nosferatu senses a disturbance in the force and somehow manages to CUT ME OFF without even noticing I’m RIGHT THERE.”
“So,” I said. “I am not only ethereally graceful, but I MOVE quicker in my sleep than I do when I’m awake?”
And now it was HER turn to sip her coffee and look at me.
Wul, damb. Nice to know I haven’t COMPLETELY lost my swiftness and grace in my old age…