I toddled off to bed pretty late last night. It was maybe two, three in the morning -- my wife had been in bed for at least three hours, and was sound asleep. I tiptoed in, trying not to wake her, and slipped into bed beside her. She was rolled onto her side, facing me, so I decided to give her a quick hug before snuggling down for the night.


'Cause I'm a romantic son of a bitch, that's why.


Anyway, I leaned over, put my arm around her and gave a little squeeze. But something didn't feel quite right. That's when I realized that I wasn't holding her side, and that she wasn't completely turned facing me. She was actually lying more on her back, and I'd basically just reached over and copped a feel. Honked a hooter. Mangled a melon. Let my fingers do the nipplin'.


Well, first off, I was a little embarrassed, of course. I mean, really -- we're married and all, but how rude, eh? She's lying there, sleeping peacefully, and here I come, charging in like a rhino with a stiffy, grabbing breasticles all willy-nilly, without even so much as a 'How you doin'?' I should at least buy her dinner first, right?


Never mind that I really didn't intend to be groping in her pumpkin patch, like a lecherous Linus on Halloween night -- it's the appearance of the situation that I was worried about. And I half-expected her to shake herself awake and say, 'Can I help you with something?' Or maybe 'Not tonight; I had a headache when I went to sleep three hours ago, so step the hell off.' Or even 'What, are you trying to dial Radio China? Unhand my tit and go to sleep!'


(Which is just ridiculous, frankly. Honestly, who says, 'Unhand my tit!' nowadays, anyway? I think that sort of thing went out of style with the whole 'damsel in distress' thing. I'm pretty sure you're obligated to use words like 'knave' and 'verily' anytime you use 'unhand my tit' in a sentence. I'll have to check on that.)


But none of that happened. As a matter of fact -- and pay attention, because this is where the story gets good, at least if you're me, which none of you are, so really, you can go back to only pretending to pay attention at this point -- nothing happened at all. She didn't smack me, or say anything, or even move. I'd like to think that she let out just a little 'Mmmmmmm...' -- you know, in a sultry kind of lippy-licking way -- but no. She didn't. Would've been fun, but no. I can't back that up.


Still, the fact that nothing happened is pretty cool, if you think about it. This tells me one of two things -- either she's a deep enough sleeper that a little bit of boob-batting isn't going to wake her up, or she was awake the whole time and completely let me get away with it, maybe because it seemed accidental. Which it was. This time.


But either of those two explanations opens up some very interesting possibilities for experimentation on some otherwise boring late nights. I'm still mulling over how I'll distinguish between the two hypotheses. If I can find some other way to determine she's asleep one night -- like whether she pees if I dip her hand in warm water, maybe -- then I can reach in for a little diddle-diddle-diddle to see whether that wakes her up. Or, if I think I can get away with 'accidents', I could try bumping into her in unexpected and erotic ways all over the house. Who knows where the limit is on that front, eh? I'm gonna have to find some excuse to stop wearing pants, if I really want to put that theory to the test. And you can bet I'll be working on that. This should be an interesting spring.