The Nielsens

This is getting a bit ridiculous.
Actually, I'm a little torn, because it certainly does provide its share of entertainment. Hell, I don't get anything like this with premium cable. But I could use a little sleep. Tonight it's one of those reality TV shows, with some daytime talk-show thrown in. I have lying next to me the host, audience, and, to a sometimes frightening degree, the subjects.
"JESUS, do you see that thing??," one of her asks from the seats in about the third row.
"Honey, the camera's on you."
"For Christ sakes, she's got another goddamn head growing out of her shoulder! Besides, do you think I wore a red blazer because it's hip to look like a blood clot?"

The worst part is the voices. When I say I'm in bed with the host, audience, and guests, well.. I don't have an especially large bed, if you get my drift. The voices are unbearably perfect, from the low growl of a southern male (male!) truck driver to the tight lilt of a mousy suburban wife. At the moment, the spitting image of Bob Barker's voice is telling me we'll be back in a moment.
Let me explain. You see, my wife is (to put it as mildly as possible) an active sleeper. I noticed it about 2 weeks ago, when television shows we'd seen earlier that day were replayed with astonishing accuracy, on a nightly basis. It's just been recently that I've started to worry. That she started sounding like an entire room.
Like I said, it does provide its own bit of entertainment, once you get used to it. But there have been incidents. Neighbors have sent less-than-neighborly notes. Landlords have been notified. An active sleeper. One loud, active sleeper.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we're back with our two guests."
"Yo, what kinda shit izzis? It's only ONE guest, motherfucker-"
"Uh, producer, will you make sure you take care of that in editing?"
"she's just got two HEADS!"
"In a moment we're going to show you some shocking footage of our guests traumatic recent surgery. You'll be absolutely astonished with what you'll see... no family should miss this! Back in a moment."
Applause - then quiet. The applause is the most impressing thing about all this. Now, if this were by any stretch an exact interpretation of the daily goings-on of daytime television, it's possible that it wouldn't concern me so. But let's face it, tonight's guest has two heads, for Christ's sake. The next door neighbors can hear her. Every bone in my body is crying for sleep.
But still. I want to see what happens.


Fourteen minutes after the alarm goes off, I can't believe I'm actually hearing it. According to my preliminary calculations my eyes had been closed about seven seconds. After pounding the clock radio silent, from the kitchen I hear singing: 'Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy', a song from a recent Toyota commercial, in my wife's perfect - well-rested - voice.
She is a blurry vision in a terry cloth robe and blue slippers, deftly filling two coffee mugs. As she turns to me, I think to myself that she is the only person I've ever seen complemented by fluorescent light.
"Hey babe. You know what's weird? For some reason I woke up in the mood to buy a car. How'd ya sleep?"
I have to clench my teeth and leave the room.

At work, it's 11am before I actually feel awake and start doing things that are related to being employed. But the six cups of coffee I've drunk have me shaky, inattentive, and in a foul mood in general. These aside from the bi-hourly trips to the bathroom. I finally force myself to work, but in a very safe fashion, being careful not to tackle any tasks that might test me and potentially expose my addled state. Calls I should have made yesterday, reports that I churn out to the same people the same way every day, etc. Low profile, wait for the end of the day. Work, but do not be worked, I think to myself. You've been worked on a bit already.
Why I haven't really pursued this with my wife... in fact haven't even mentioned it... I haven't quite figured out yet, and the explanation seems more and more difficult to justify as time passes. But as far as I remember, I reasoned that it was a phase - initially endearing, but only recently an issue. I even still get my kicks out of it on a good night, and sometimes masochistically stave off precious sleep to hear the end of a particularly juicy segment. A widower confronted by her five-year-dead husband. A televised suicide by hanging. An abused child who grows bazookas in her backyard in anticipation of the day. You know, the good stuff.
At lunch, sympathy hardly runs rampant. I've for some reason chosen this moment to find an audience who might lend an open-minded ear. My timing, and my decision-making skills, I will soon see, have obviously been affected by the lack of sleep.

My coworkers Larry and Paulie, with whom I socialize mainly out of proximity are, after your first meeting, apparently brothers, and based on their behavior, apparently fifteen years old. Nothing could be further from the truth. Larry comes from money, his parents being the only portion of the family alive still enjoying the inheritance of the Hebrew National Hot Dog Company. The knowledge that Larry doesn't actually need to work for a living is infuriating, given the fact that he hardly seems to mind coming in every day. In fact, there's not much that seems to bother Larry; he rarely thinks before he speaks or acts, and this only adds to his adolescent demeanor. For example, he might slap one of his canned-hams of a palm up aside Paulie's head in the middle of a sentence, and then wonder why you've got that reactionary look on your face. As if something happened.
Paulie, we think, does not have a home. He is in his office when we arrive in the morning, he is there when we leave, and always wears the same outfit... a white button-down shirt opened at the collar, yellow cardigan, brown gabardine pants and white saddleshoes with a brown leather instep, bifocals hung around his neck on a small chain. Nobody has ever seen him eat, although he does close the door to his office every day for about fifteen minutes. These are the people I've chosen to unload my problems on.

"Wait a minute," Larry says, a pimento lodged between his front teeth, "you're telling me your wife's like watching a VCR tape on acid?" Meet Larry.
"I wouldn't go that far. Everybody's got freaky dreams, so you can't expect it to be normal-"
"Yeah, but you're saying she like, is a bunch of people and shit. What's up with that?"
"I'm really not sure, Larry. She stores it away during the day along with whatever else she might dream about, and has some pretty amazing recall when she's sleeping." I think I might regret bringing this up.
"Dude... you can make money off of this."
"Excuse me?" I am regretting bringing this up.
"You could like, rent her out... for pay-per-view! Or like, pay-per-sleep!"
"You have got to be fucking kidding me."
"No, wait!" Larry sticks a plastic forkful of lettuce in my direction for emphasis. "What if you could like, hotwire her or something, so that other people get it? It'd kinda be like getting illegal cable!"
"Does she have fillings?" Paulie speaks.
"What? Fillings? I don't know... yeah, I'm pretty sure. Why?"
"Well, remember that story about the guy who picked up radio stations because he had fillings? Well, maybe you could get her fillings taken out. Or at least grab a wire hanger and some tin foil while shes sleeping and see if you could turn the volume down."
"Guys! What the hell are you talking about? Do you see me? Do you see what I look like? I haven't slept four hours in the last week!"
"I'm just saying," mumbles Paulie behind his coffee cup. "Maybe some foil." This suddenly becomes just about the funniest thing Larry has ever heard, and a pat of his semi-chewed wheat toast lands on my side of the table.
I rise to leave, fighting off the head rush. "Thanks for nothing, fellas. I'd hate to say it wasn't a little slice of heaven. Because it wasn't."
Swallowing down a quarter pound of tuna, Larry calls after me, "Yeah, let's see how much you're bitching and complaining when she starts getting the Playboy channel."


The early evening rain feels good on my face, and the cold October air whips a momentary alertness through my nostrils. I'm taking deep breaths, pacing briskly next to my parked '74 Vega. I consider getting back in the car, but decide to do a quick set of jumping jacks by the side of the road instead. To get the blood pumping. To steady my nerves. Ten minutes ago, I was sound asleep and doing sixty-five down the New Jersey Turnpike. I pulled over when the realization finally came that I couldn't snooze the alarm of an eighteen-wheeler's air horn, which was politely pointing out the sparks that were shooting out from the hood of my car as it consummated its parallel with the guardrail.
Tonight, my wife and I are going to have a talk.

Arriving home, the crumpled Vega safely in the garage, I heave myself through the front door. I suddenly feel as though I could sleep easily for days, and that nothing even my spousal satellite dish could interrupt it. But I have had this thought before, and tonight I am resolved. She's not going to believe a word of it, of course, but I have to try. My seismic nerves and the rings around my eyes are evidence. She will have to understand.
Upon entering the living room, my first thought is that my eyelids have shut themselves again, which would explain why I can't see anything. But I make out shapes and bits of light that, upon further inspection, reveal themselves to be candles lit at various points throughout the room. On the couch, wiping away the condensation from an ice bucket, is my wife, in a silk kimono. She is beautiful. I stare at her for a moment, perhaps trying to figure her intentions, and perhaps questioning my own; thrown off a bit by the change in the rooms atmosphere.
"Welcome home, honey. Come sit." She pats the space next to her's on the couch.
"What's all this?" I ask, still trying to find my bearings.
"Oh, it's nothing, really. I just thought we could use a nice quiet night together," she says, the irony lost on her.
"Well. Um. I mean, great. The place really looks great." I sit next to her and am illuminated in candlelight.
"Wait," she says, furrowing her brow and leaning in closer to me. "Are you okay? You look terrible. And why are your clothes all wet?"
"Well, I bent the car up a little. But it's nothing serious. I just tapped the guardrail a little on the way home. I'm okay, really."
"Are you sure? Do you want to go to the hospital?" She lays a cool hand on the side of my face.
"No, really... I'm fine. Don't worry. But listen," I take her hands in mine and look into her. This is probably the best shot at this I'll get. "I need to talk to you about something."
"I need to talk to you too."
I clear my throat. "See, for the last couple of... wait a minute. What do you need to talk to me about? Is everything alright?"
"Everything's wonderful, babe," she cups my face in her hands and looks at me, the look that could launch a thousand ships, the look that pushed me in love with her the day we met.
"We're pregnant."


Lying in bed that night, I can't exactly recall at what point I decided to again let The Conversation wait, at least another day. It is entirely possible that I'd forgotten about it momentarily. Understandable, I think, given the circumstances. We've always been in agreement about wanting a family, wanting children, but only recently have my wife and I been trying in earnest. Now the day is finally here, and my soul is leaping from cloud to cloud, my brain is racing with thoughts of little league and swing sets and skinned knees and silly songs. My body, however, is still the sad picture of the least fit of all parents. I realize now, as I lie in bed, that as we talked about it I'd probably chalked up her bizarre sleep patterns to scattered hormone levels. But God knows I can't go through this for another eight and a half months. I need sleep, and I need it tonight.

"Juuuuuuust sit right back and youll hear a tale..."
Oh no.
"A tale of two rednecked hicks"
Oh please no. Not now.
"Who traded in their pickup truck for a crack whore turning tricks."
Fabulous. Just fucking fabulous.
"A crack whore turning tricks."'

I'm tempted to wake her up right this very second. Right this second, and tell her everything, but I know in her half-sleep she won't believe me, and she'll just fall back to sleep eventually. But at the moment, the skipper and the professor are on the Judge Joe Billy Brown show, arguing over who co-owned more of their Ford F-150, and who gets the whore on what nights.
"Skipper," says Judge Brown, "I ain't your little buddy. And if you don't shut yer yap and talk when I say you can talk, I'll find you in contempt of this court."

Maryanne and Mr. Howell are brought in as material witnesses. And in my rage, I still can't help but marvel at the exactness of each voice, from Skipper's big-man bluster to the professor's even, logical monotone. And at the sight of Larry, my co-worker, whose face is outside my bedroom window.
What. The. Fuck.
I jump out of bed and stare out the window, not believing my own eyes. Larry almost seems surprised to see me, but then smiles as if he's an expected guest just waiting to be let in. I throw the window up with so much force I worry for a moment that I might have broken both my arm and the glass in the process.
"Larry. WHAT are you doing on my garage roof?!" To the side, I see that Paulie is also there, holding some odd items in his arms. Larry has a six-pack of beer and four bags of potato chips and assorted junk food.
"What do you mean?" Larry answers, looking confused.
"It's a pretty simple question, Larry. It's eleven-thirty at night. We do have a front door and a doorbell. So. Again, Lawrence: What the fuck are you doing on my garage roof?!"
"Dude. Don't call me Lawrence."
"Off. Now."
"I hate when people call me Lawrence."
"Larry! I'm yelling, but trying to contain it in an incensed whisper."
"My dish is out."
"What?"
"My satellite dish. We came over to see if your wife could get the Ranger game."
"I'm calling the cops."
Paulie sticks his head in the window from the side. "I brought some foil. And a few wire hangers."
"I'm telling you both. Right now, get off my goddamned roof, because I'm calling the cops. Go. Away. Right now, both of you, and do not come back." I shut the window, almost catching Larry's fingers in the process. As I roll the shades down and get back into bed with Gilligan's Wildest Police Chases, I hear Larry's muffled voice from behind the window pane:
"Mark my words, buddy - Playboy channel. Then let's see how much you're bitching."


The next day, I again wade through work, alternating between hyperactive fits of shaky productivity and staving off sleep with the seemingly endless supply of coffee in the employee lounge. I duck my boss at every corner, worried that my shabby appearance will only highlight the fact that I rarely seem necessary. I pray at odd moments during the day for the clock to reach five. At four forty-five, I feel I am in the clear, except for the drive home, and decide to prep for the commute by stopping at the lounge to chug yet another large, black cup of Juan Valdez's best.
Big mistake.
"Nielsen!" My boss appears in the doorway to the lounge, as I, briefcase and overcoat in hand, spill the remains of my coffee down the front of my shirt. "What, are you leaving? Listen I need you to stay a little late tonight. Milan just called. They need the new flash report in a couple of hours for their morning meeting with the board."
"But the application that builds the report isn't even ready yet. We just started testing."
"Well, it's going to be ready by tonight otherwise it's both of our asses. Just get it done, okay? And Jesus, clean yourself up a little, will you?"

Horrified at the idea of having to stay awake another few hours, I head back to my desk and call my wife to tell her I'll be home late.
"I'm sorry, hon. There's nothing I can do, and I'm on thin ice lately as it is. I promise I'll be home as soon as I can."
"Do you really have to stay?" She sounds genuinely upset. "I mean, isn't there anyone else that can do this for you?" Her pleading breaks my heart, and all of the sleepless bones in my body tell me she is right.
"Not as far as the boss is concerned, babe. Don't worry about dinner; I'll get something on the way home. Why don't you give Helen a call and see what she's doing tonight?"
"It's not dinner. It's just... Well. You know. It's been a while."
"What do you mean?"
"You know." She gets that playful tone. Instantly, I know.
"Hon, I really am sorry. I'll be home as fast as I can. You just make yourself something to eat and get a movie or something, okay?"
"Okay. Love you... hurry home."

I walk in the door a little after midnight, completely exhausted. Standing in the doorway, I can hear that the television's still on. I would assume she's fallen asleep watching it, but the lights to the living room and the kitchen are on as well. I walk into the living room and don't see her anywhere. From behind me I hear footsteps coming out of the kitchen. I turn, and it takes more than just a few seconds to adjust to what I see.
"Oh! You're here!"

My wife is wearing a black bustier-and-garter thing that I have never seen before, fishnet stockings, and, of all things to be wearing at midnight, stiletto heels. I stare, having not the slightest idea what to say. She moves toward me, and I notice that at no point is she looking directly at me. Her eyelids are heavy, but open, and her pupils have a very glazed, nonfocused look to them. Suddenly I have even less to say now, because I realize with horror that she is sleepwalking.
"They said they were going to send a man over, but I had no idea they meant someone so... so strong looking." She giggles. She actually giggles.
"It seems as though I have some... plumbing work that needs to be done." She walks... strike that... sashays over to me and throws her arms around my neck. She never seems as though she is quite looking at me, although her eyes are pointed in my general direction. I think. Should I wake her? I've heard that's very dangerous. Jesus... she's got a southern accent.
"Um, sure ma'am. Whatever you need. Why don't I just walk you to your bed and you can rest up while I get the work done?"
"Oh!" she giggles. "That's just a grand idea! After all," she winks, "that's where I need the most work done anyway." This is going entirely too far, and my mind is working, thinking how much further it might go in the coming months. This could be dangerous. Why couldn't she just rent a movie on pay-per-view like I asked her? I look at the television.
She did rent a movie, apparently.
It's on the Playboy channel.
I'm the plumber.

I follow her into the bedroom, gingerly guiding her toward the bed, because she seems to be moving as though she is in a different house. Every attempt to put her down and coerce her back to sleep is met with an aroused and uncharacteristically strong counter-effort. Her hands grope, on my chest, over my back, around my neck, pulling at my belt. Her mouth is on my face, my neck, my stomach. I am tired, and I am worried about her, but I have various other reflexes that don't necessarily conform to logic. I can feel the bulge in my pants respond to her touch, and when she senses it, it seems to fuel her.
Well.
She is in bed, at least.
Now, my wife and I have what I have always considered a healthy sex life. But to say that what is taking place tonight was especially energetic, even athletic, would be an understatement. I have never even heard of some of these things. We sweat, and we converge, again and again, into each other, a superb and beautiful wrestling match, her body contorting into positions of which I didn't even think she was capable. But when we reach our peak together, as we always like to do, I can hear it... I hear the satisfying, crystal-clear sound of my own wife's voice, telling me in shudders that it is she who is there, and not the made-for-TV lonely housewife; it is she who I have satisfied, and who lays next to me, sated. She looks at me through lazy but cognizant eyes, that same look that launched a thousand ships and pushed me that very first time. She is back. She is not the one who started this, but she has finished.
"Wow," she says. "What happened?"
From my home next to her on the bed, I tousle her hair. "You were having a pretty wild dream," I say, and smile to myself in the dark.

She falls asleep, and I am only moments behind her. As my eyes get heavy and my joints settle into the sheets, I can hear something coming from the bottom of her. It is an orchestra, a brass band in an open field. It is our national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, being played to an infinitely small late-night audience. Then, the straight, single note of a test pattern lasts for about a minute, and I think that it is the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. After that, the silence hugs me like a matching spoon. This concludes our broadcast day. As I fall asleep, I remind myself to listen to Larry more often, and that I should probably buy him lunch tomorrow.