Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex?

by Mark Leyner

  But you can also get it in a shower stall, a locker room, a bathroom, or from sharing a nail file or emery board with a friend or family member who has toe fungus. So, please don’t deprive yourself of the pleasure of a pedicure, just be careful.

  If you want to pamper your little piggies at a salon, make sure that it has a current operating license, and that its instruments are properly sanitized. Autoclaving (heat sterilization) of the instruments is best, but germicidal chemical sterilization will also suffice. You can also always bring your own set of toe tools.

  CAN YOU GET HERPES FROM A HOT TUB?

  So, you settle in for a nice soak, without a care in the world. But is there danger lurking in the water?

  Well, we don’t want to be the bearers of bad news, but if that whirlpool or hot tub isn’t properly cleaned or chlorinated, you could end up with a nice body rash. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in 2004 that “Extensive spa use combined with inadequate maintenance contribute to recreational water illnesses (RWIs) caused by pathogens such as Pseudomonas spp., Legionella spp., and Mycobacterium spp.” Yuck.

  It’s not as bad as it sounds. Pseudomonas folliculitis (hot tub folliculitis) is a skin infection that can develop within forty-eight hours after a dip in the spa. It is caused by bacteria getting into the hair follicles. You then get red, round, itchy bumps that later can develop into small pus-filled blisters. The rash usually resolves spontaneously within two to ten days.

  As for the herpes question, the chlorine in hot tubs should kill the herpes virus. There are reports of people catching herpes skin infections from hot tubs, but these are very rare.

  WHY DOES YOUR SKIN GET THINNER AS YOU AGE?

  As we get older, there are some unavoidable processes at work that age our skin. This is something we will all experience and there’s not really much we can do to prevent it. When a person ages, his or her epidermal cells—the cells at the outer skin layer—become thinner, which makes the skin appear noticeably thinner. And the number of pigment-containing cells called melanocytes decrease, which can make your skin look more pale and translucent. Also, less collagen is produced, causing something called elastosis, which results in a reduction of the skin’s strength and elasticity, and sagging and wrinkles. Then there’s also a lifetime of exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet radiation to be factored in…. Not an especially glamorous picture, I suppose. But, hey, it sure beats the alternative.

  Anyway, don’t worry. As old as you get, you will never become completely transparent so people can see your internal organs and skeleton.

  Yes, I had one of those transparent anatomical dolls when I was a kid, and I had a G.I. Joe too. So?

  CHAPTER 9

  GROWING PAINS: FAQS ABOUT PUBERTY AND KIDS

  Arejuvenated Leyner, back from his extended vacation in Upstate New York, was ready to return to patient care.

  I had tried to keep our practice limited to individual therapy and couples counseling. I had some trepidation that exposing a vulnerable adolescent mind to Leyner’s disturbing therapeutic modalities would be very dangerous. Unfortunately, we had to make an exception when one of our couples insisted upon bringing their fourteen-year-old daughter in for a session.

  I had known Ralph and Cindy Tucker for several years prior to working with Leyner. Ralph was an insurance agent who specialized in physician disability and malpractice insurance. His wife was the office manager and an accomplished horticulturalist. Leyner and I had worked with them during a difficult period when Cindy and Ralph were briefly separated. We were particularly touched last Christmas when we received a box of Cindy’s prized tulip bulbs and a school photograph of their thirteen-year-old daughter Stacey, a beaming little girl with pigtails and braces.

  Ralph and Cindy entered our office accompanying what I can only describe as the spitting image of Anna Kournikova—a beautiful blond, lithe, and curvaceous young woman, her long hair flowing down to the small of her back. She was wearing a T-shirt that read “Squeeze Me I’m Juicy.”

  I was a little confused. “Ralph, Cindy—I thought you were bringing your daughter today?”

  “We did. Stacey, this is Dr. Goldberg and that’s Leyner.”

  The poised young woman shook our hands, “It’s a pleasure meeting you both. I was just curious—who wrote ‘sniff my crotch’ on the Van Gogh outside?”

  I looked over at Leyner expecting one of his predictably inappropriate responses.

  Leyner shifted in his seat and responded, “Oh, a particularly deranged individual did that. We decided to leave it.”

  “I’m glad you did,” she said. “It’s very refreshing.”

  I thought we should begin the session. I asked Ralph and Cindy exactly why they had come to see us today. They looked at each other lovingly but concerned, and Ralph began to answer.

  “I um…we uhh…” he stammered. Cindy saw he was floundering and stepped in. “We think that Stacey will be reaching puberty soon and we thought it would be helpful to discuss some of the changes she might expect with professionals.”

  I couldn’t look at Leyner. He remained silent.

  I glanced over at Stacey. She rolled her eyes and stared at her parents with a surprising lack of judgment and a precocious sense of loving empathy and indulgence.

  “Ralph, do you agree with what Cindy said?” I asked.

  “Umm, uhhhh, yeah,” he responded.

  I didn’t know quite how to phrase this delicately, so I decided to be somewhat blunt:

  “Sometimes it’s difficult for a parent to perceive changing facets within an otherwise inherently familiar domestic environment in the context of rapid and tectonic hormonal changes and libidinal contradictions especially when it’s exacerbated by a repressed albeit nostalgic tendency to embrace an idealized past.”

  Leyner laughed and couldn’t help himself. “I’d concur if I had the slightest idea what you just said.”

  Stacey jumped right in. “I think what Dr. Goldberg was attempting to say is that my parents are having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I had my period, I have boobs, and I think a lot about sex.”

  There was a long, long silence that permeated the room.

  Ralph had turned a bizarre shade of red, Cindy was fidgeting uncontrollably, but Leyner remained remarkably calm.

  I looked at my watch and wondered what I could possibly say to fill the remaining forty-three minutes.

  Leyner stood up. I braced myself for the worst.

  He cleared his throat and said, “I can only marvel at the grace and wisdom of your daughter. You should be very proud of her. Let’s pick up here next week.”

  The Tucker family seemed relieved that the session was over.

  Leyner escorted the three from the office, and upon returning, promptly collapsed in a heap on the floor.

  Obviously the enormous effort at self-control and decorum had completely exhausted him, and we were forced to cancel the remaining patients for the day.

  WHY IS ONE OF MY BREASTS GROWING FASTER THAN THE OTHER?

  None of us is perfectly symmetrical. Unfortunately, especially for girls growing up in our culture, we spend an inordinate amount of time emulating the seemingly perfect bisymmetry of people like Jessica Simpson, Tyra Banks, and, of course, Barbie. But unless you’re made out of extruded plastic in a mold in some factory in Malaysia, there are probably slight variances between one side of yourself and the other, whether it’s your ears, big toes, or even breasts. And this is especially true when your body is developing during puberty.

  The development of breast “buds”(small mounds beneath the nipple and areola) is usually the first sign of the onset of puberty in girls. As your body begins producing higher levels of female hormones, your breasts will go through five “stages” of growth. It is not uncommon for one breast to start growing before the other (sometimes even six months apart) and many girls’ breasts develop unevenly. But this is perfectly normal. And the difference in breast size usually decreases as y
our breasts develop. Your breasts will reach full maturity by the age of seventeen or eighteen, and their final size is determined by heredity.

  Instead of becoming self-conscious and getting all freaked out about things other people probably don’t even notice, you might try ridiculing the bodies of famous people. Making fun of the physical imperfections of celebrities is not only a constructive and enjoyable way to sublimate your own body dysmorphia, but it’s the new national pastime.

  DO GROWING PAINS REALLY EXIST?

  Growing up—in and of itself—is an enormous pain in the butt. The grades, the melodramatic infatuations, the looming necessity of earning a living…And hey, why do homework when, in five billion years, the sun is going to exhaust all its nuclear fuel and collapse into a dead, cold, shrunken cinder? And I didn’t ask to be born anyway…. Oh, sorry—I’m getting a little carried away with all the adolescent angst….

  What about those folkloric “growing pains”? There is no evidence that growing—the normal development of bones and joints and muscles—causes any pain. But many parents have experienced their children waking up in the middle of the night and complaining, for example, that their legs are sore. And because their children are in the midst of a growth spurt, the growth and the discomfort seem to be somehow connected. But this is not the case. Most probably your child has had a particularly active or strenuous or rough-and-tumble day of running and jumping and climbing, and all this activity can be tough on a kid’s joints and muscles. What he or she probably needs is some tender reassurance and perhaps a nice massage and some good ol’-fashioned cuddling. In the morning, the wee one should be fit as a fiddle. (If you think there’s been some injury, or if there’s persistent pain, or his or her joints are tender to the touch, or there’s a fever or a rash, your child should be taken to a doctor for an examination.)

  Being awakened late at night by a child complaining of vague aches and pains can be annoying. But try to be patient. It probably won’t help much to accuse your child of “faking” symptoms for attention or to get out of going to school the next day.

  By the way, when it comes to faking illness to get out of going to school (or “juvenile malingering”), Leyner could write the authoritative how-to guide. In an effort to evade the indignities of first grade, he perfected the art of using the hot bulb of his night-table lamp to heat a thermometer to a perfect 101 degrees—not too high a fever, but just enough to miss school. (This ruse requires an extremely adroit technique to prevent registering a shockingly high temperature that results in a day spent in the ER and not lounging around the house in pajamas with your mom waiting on you hand and foot.) Leyner was also skilled in convincingly simulating an exotic array of early-morning symptoms (for example, cyanosis, torticollis, and rectal prolapse) that makes Ferris Bueller look like a rank amateur.

  WHY CAN KIDS TOLERATE COLD POOL OR OCEAN WATER BETTER THAN ADULTS?

  It’s a classic scene. The shivering kid with the blue lips and chattering teeth, who vehemently denies that he’s cold and refuses to get out of the pool or come to shore. Does this mean that children are somehow more capable of enduring cold temperatures than adults? No. What it means is that children will universally resist any suggestion that they stop doing something fun. It means that children are acutely susceptible to peer pressure. It means that children take great, perverse pleasure in disobeying and alarming their parents. But it does not mean that they are less vulnerable to the cold. To the contrary, children are more susceptible to hypothermia and frostbite than adults. Kids cool faster than adults. And, due to a variety of factors—including size, heat generation, and vasomotor control—they are less able to thermoregulate in the cold. So when your kid is inebriated on sheer glee and seems oblivious to frigid temperatures, exercising some caution is actually a very good idea.

  WHAT IS A WET DREAM?

  A wet dream, otherwise known as a “nocturnal emission,” is the involuntary ejaculation of semen from the penis during sleep—an orgasm while you doze. They are most common when boys enter puberty and during the teenage years, but they can occur at any time during a man’s life. They are, like, totally normal. Many boys experience spontaneous erections during sleep. Nocturnal emissions can be the result of sexual excitement from erotic dreams, or physical stimulation from rubbing against sheets or blankets, etc. Sometimes you might wake up during a wet dream, but frequently you sleep right through it. So a wet dream might very well be a guy’s first experience of not only falling asleep after sex, but of actually sleeping during sex.

  Dreams are wonderful things. In dreams, we can have sex with Academy Award–winning actresses, porn stars, reality TV personalities, neighbors, coworkers, teachers, girls who ignored us in high school, ours friends’ moms, babysitters from childhood, that waitress from the German restaurant, cartoon characters…(What? You don’t think Smurfette is hot?)

  And sometimes the dream can have a real Happy Ending.

  3:33 P.M.

  Gberg: Professor Leyner? Are you at the research institute?

  3:35 P.M.

  Leyner: I was researching the exciting tragicomic world of nocturnal emissions.

  Gberg: I just read that Grandpa Munster died.

  Leyner: NO!?

  Gberg: Not sure what the nocturnal emission connection is.

  Gberg: He was 95.

  Leyner: Maybe he died of a nocturnal emission. It can happen.

  Gberg: Cum and go at the same time.

  Leyner: You can aspirate your own jizz…and die.

  Gberg: It says his wife was at the bedside. You never know.

  Gberg: Are you still obsessed with that book you are reading?

  Leyner: Speaking of cumming and going…did you hear that Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crowe are finished?? (Yes, I’m more obsessed than ever with Lord Nelson…I feel a great affinity with him.)

  Gberg: Affinity for Lance Armstrong or Lord Nelson?

  Leyner: Lord Nelson…c’mon.

  3:40 P.M.

  Gberg: On the nocturnal emission front, I found an article about sleep sex, sex while sleepwalking.

  Gberg: Has a Leyneresque ring to it.

  Leyner: Sex while sleeping…that’s terrific.

  Leyner: I love that idea…you’re asleep…you get up…start wandering around…

  Gberg: From the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

  Gberg: I love the names of some of these journals, they sound made up.

  Leyner: Arms extended in front of you…in classic somnambulant pose.

  Gberg: I just quoted the Journal of Chemical Senses.

  Leyner: And then…you use your little plastic hotel key-card and get into some businesswoman’s room—she’s on some trip promoting her company’s new exfoliant or something—AND…you get in…

  Leyner: There’s a Journal of Chemical Senses?

  Gberg: Yes, and don’t joke about the sleep sex, they describe a case of sexual battery where they use “somnambulism” as a defense.

  Gberg: There also is sleep eating.

  Leyner: And you slide into bed with her…in your sleep, right? And ever so gently penetrate her as she dreams of huge puffins and pirates and breadfruit.

  3:45 P.M.

  Gberg: You are a sick man. Lord Nelson would be so proud!

  Leyner: And in the a.m., no one’s the worse for wear, because what happens in Jersey City, stays in Jersey City.

  Leyner: If a person can run a country for eight years, simpering and drooling and obviously asleep—surely somnambulant sex is possible.

  Gberg: He was asleep when he gave the state of the union last week.

  WHY DO BOYS SLEEP LATER IN THE MORNING DURING PUBERTY?

  Life requires at least three ingredients—water, heat, and carbon-based molecules. With adolescents, there’s a fourth requirement: beds.

  Almost all teens—male and female—seem to crave the opportunity to “sleep in.” This probably seems more pronounced in boys, because it doesn’t seem so long ago when your little tyke was up at the
crack of dawn—maddeningly early—chomping at the bit to play or build a treehouse or go ice-fishing or shoot quail, any of those all-American things little boys want to do at ungodly hours when normal human beings just want to sleep. Then they hit puberty.

  Before puberty, kids’ bodies signal that they are sleepy at about 8 or 9 P.M. With the onset of puberty, kids don’t start feeling sleepy until around 10 or 11 P.M. This shift in an adolescent’s circadian rhythms (the body’s twenty-four-hour cycles) is called “sleep phase delay”—a tendency toward later times for both falling asleep and waking up.

  Melatonin is a hormone made by a part of the brain called the pineal gland. It is thought to help our bodies know when it’s time to go to sleep and when it’s time to wake up. An experiment conducted at Brown University showed that melatonin secretion occurs at a later time in adolescents as they mature. It also showed that melatonin secretion turned off later in the morning, making it more difficult to wake up early.

  WHY DO BOYS’ BREASTS GROW DURING PUBERTY?

  I guess you’re never too young to begin worrying about the dreaded “man-boobs.” Plus, there’d be no summer-camp comedies at the multiplex, unless bullies were able to mercilessly torment some poor, lovable schlub with a conspicuous cup size.

  When those hormones produced in the testicles to fuel puberty begin kicking in, many boys will develop some breast tissue. And this slight swelling under the nipples may persist for several years. But don’t worry. This is perfectly normal and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re growing breasts. About 65 percent of boys will develop some breast tissue—so it’s very common and very temporary. Unless you have a serious weight problem, this breast tissue should be all gone by the time you are twenty.

  WHY DOES YOUR VOICE CHANGE AT PUBERTY?