The Sleepwalker's Guide To Chicago

Lately I’ve been talking in my sleep. I can’t imagine what I’d have to say, or what cryptic messages might arise from down in the dark where the Other Guy lives. Usually I sleep like I’ve got an off switch, a dreamless blink of my eyes and night becomes day. You know, except for like...twenty-seven years of sleepwalking culminating with me half-naked on an Interstate in the dark of night and far from home. Aside from that, I sleep like a stone. 

Of all the places I’ve ever come-to when that Other Guy let go the reins, the most disorienting was definitely the night in 1998 when I found myself on foot out on Interstate 74 outside Chicago at 3:OO AM at the age of twenty-seven. The most practical was when I was fifteen and woke up having just finished cleaning my room at 4:00 AM. If only all my chores could be done in my sleep. It’d be like always waking up to a better world. Imagine that. Another time, I woke up taking a dump in the kitchen garbage can when I was five. I’m not really sure how to classify that one. I guess that’s polite enough when you consider how many other places, besides the toilet, he could have done that.

No one’s ever caught me in the act, so I don’t actually know if I would die from being roused in that state, though I’ve landed in some scrapes because I didn’t wake up in time. Once, when I was twenty, the Other Guy swapped places with me in midair, having lunged from my bed at the throat of some enemy we must’ve dreamed up. Like Wile E. Coyote realizing he’d sped over the edge of a cliff, I seemed to hang in mid-air for a moment before crashing down into the pile of dirty laundry at the foot of my bed. It could’ve been worse, not every landing is so gentle. When I was nine I woke up with my legs tangled and twisted up in the sheets, dangling upside-down from the top bunk, trapped between the bed and the wall, having dreamed of imprisonment in the lair of the Wampa from Empire Strikes Back. My waking escape from that predicament was somewhat less heroic than Luke Skywalker’s.

I’ve wondered many times over the years about the Other Guy, this somnambulist squatter living in my head. I mean he looks just like me, but seems to have no compunctions whatsoever about the propriety of bowel movements or dress codes, though I will grudgingly admit he has better housekeeping habits than I do. He might also be a bit more courageous than me; never hesitating to do the thing that needs doing, charging in without thought to the consequences. Which is how I wound up out on that Interstate in the wee hours, left holding the bag for the mission he was on.

Pretty sure the swank Inn he was headed to has a strict “no shirt, no shoes, no dice” policy that he didn’t think through too well, since he left my crappy motel room going commando in a pair of Levi's, no shoes or shirt. Gotta give him credit for remembering our room key though. And the pants. Let’s not sell him short there. Because that would’ve been a helluva thing to explain to the graveyard concierge at the Davy Crockett Motor Lodge where I was staying. But lacking shame, fear, or the sense God gave to a mule, I can’t decide if he’s the best or the worst part of me. Shitting in Mom’s garbage can would seem to make a pretty solid case for it being the worst part. But I can’t help thinking that what propelled him headfirst across an Interstate, on foot in the dark of night, marks him as the better part.

When I received her wedding invitation, I felt like pinching myself. Was I awake, or had I dreamt those years of my life?  How else could time enough have passed for her to meet someone, fall in love, get engaged, and plan a wedding? To have become an actual adult? Did I miss that many letters and phone calls? Had I sleepwalked across three entire years, open-eyed but fast asleep? Invitation in hand, I packed a bag and headed for Chicago to find out.

The ceremony passed like a fever-dream. I watched two grown-ups get married in their finery, while my best shirt and only tie stood out like a Fig Newton on a plate full of Christmas cookies. At the Country Club reception, the affluence was attended by a river of Grey Goose and Courvoisier that flowed continually, while I tried to blend in and keep my flask of Jaegermeister out of sight. I felt like I belonged at the kids’ table. 

When the music began I found myself with beautiful women in my arms as the drinks flowed, world without end. A strange fervency propelled me forward; as everyone else celebrated the beginning of a life together, it was like I was mourning the end of something I had no name for. Fueled by this—and a bottomless vodka glass—I won a heated gladiatorial contest for the Bride’s garter, thus becoming King of the Party. I used my powers only for good, of course: cutting in on any slow dance I felt like, and generally making a genteel ass of myself. And a lovely time was had by all. So much so that when decorum mandated the party come to an end, the core of us that were still raging decided to take the festivities to the Drury Inn just down the Interstate, where most of the wedding party was staying.

Sadly, the staff at the Drury were a bunch of fuddy-duddies who took a dim view to our 1:00 AM revelries and took it upon themselves to alert the constabulary of the greater Chicago area, who responded promptly to quell our shenanigans. In response, the coterie of well-heeled drunkards scattered when the flashing red, white, and blue lights of freedom began. In a sudden maelstrom of chiffon, the ladies attending me took flight, hems in hand, cerulean satin garlands trailing in the breeze of their passage. The panicked staccato of their scurrying heels would have been comical were it not for my imminent arrest as their ringleader.

And so I slunk out the back door into a gravel lot and hoofed it across the Interstate, threading my way boozily between the sparse traffic, to duck into the cheap little filing cabinet I’d rented for to lay my head. That was my intention, anyway. Turns out Other Guy had other plans. Feeling restless and deflated, I showered and passed out. I remember dreaming about those fair damsels in distress, being loaded into a paddy wagon by Eliot Ness and the coppers, as is the Chicago Way. So, feeling I had deserted them in cowardly fashion, I rallied and went to the rescue. Because fuck the Po-lice!

But when the Other Guy made it into the grass median separating the East/West lanes of the deserted Interstate and saw the Drury—lights down, silent as a tomb—it was me that woke up and realized that the party was over. Really over. I may have rallied for years on-end, but it was closing time, the lights were up at the bar, and I had the kind of life you get when the music ends and you sit in whatever chair is left to you. I hadn’t been in a meaningful relationship in over two years, I had a job a teenager could do, and I was half naked on an Interstate far from home, trying to rescue people that had gone back to their real lives simply by going to bed. Closing time; you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.

I can’t help thinking that's what he'd been trying to tell me.

I awoke on the highway Eisenhower built in the sure knowledge of all the things that had slipped through my fingers; the friendships, the opportunities, all the days lived on good-time autopilot, open-eyed but fast-asleep. And all I was left with was no shirt, no shoes, no dice. Because it turned out that no one needed to be saved, except me. For the first time, the Other Guy seemed like the one who’d been wide awake, looking out for us while I was asleep at the wheel, allowing my life to spool out without care, as though I’d live forever. So I turned away and gingerly made my way back to my shabby motel, my bare feet wet with the morning dew, relieved when I found that he’d remembered the key.

And the pants. Let’s not sell him short there. 

I’ve never sleepwalked again from that day to this. It seems twenty-seven years was all it took for the Other Guy to get us back on course. When I awoke the following morning, I had the mother of all hangovers, my mouth tasted like something had crawled in it and died, yet somehow I didn't mind. I made my way to the airport feeling like absolute hell, but went back to my life eyes open. 

Imagine, always waking up to a better world.