Choke Hold

There is a fine, almost microscopic line between a warm, loving, romantic cuddle and holding someone in a tactical wrestling pin so they cannot escape under penalty of death.

When you are twenty-four, you don’t notice the line. You lie on a cheap futon that smells faintly of dorm-room floor, your arm clamped beneath a person you’ve been dating for three weeks, and you think, This is bliss. My arm is turning gray, but my soul is soaring.

When you are fifty-three, however, soul-soaring takes a back seat to deep vein thrombosis. At fifty-three, your spine is a stack of creaky teacups, your right knee sounds like a handful of gravel tossed into a blender whenever you flex it, and an arm left without oxygen for twenty minutes doesn’t just go to sleep—it files for divorce.

Which brings me to my current situation.

It was precisely 2:14 AM on a damp Tuesday morning. I knew it was 2:14 AM because the glowing red numbers of our alarm clock—a digital behemoth with extra-large display numbers designed for people whose eyes have begun their inevitable, mid-life slide into blurriness—were burned into my left retina.

I could only see out of my left eye because my right eye was pressed directly into the collarbone of my beloved wife of twenty-six years, Brenda.

Brenda is, during daylight hours, a gentle soul. She is five-foot-two, weighs roughly one hundred and fifteen pounds, works as a children’s librarian, and apologizes to the kitchen cabinets when she accidentally bumps into them. She bakes zucchini bread for the neighbors. She speaks in a melodic, soothing voice that calms feral cats and angry toddlers.

At night, however, Brenda undergoes a terrifying metamorphosis. The moment her brain waves shift into REM sleep, her bone density appears to triple. She becomes an object of infinite mass and crushing gravitational force—a human neutron star. Furthermore, her internal thermostat breaks. Awake, she wears cardigans in July and complains about drafty grocery store aisles. Asleep, she radiates heat like a molten lava flow, generating a localized climate that could comfortably support a small colony of tropical orchids.

Currently, Brenda was executing a maneuver known in professional wrestling circles as the Rear Naked Chokehold, combined with a half-guard leg-lock.

Her right arm was draped firmly over my neck, her wrist resting heavily against my carotid artery. Her left leg, which possessed the surprising, wiry strength of a python that had been doing CrossFit, was thrown over both of my thighs, pinning my legs into a unified, immovable trunk. Her head was tucked under my chin, sealing off my airway to a comfortable thirty percent capacity.

To make matters infinitely worse, we do not sleep alone in this bed.

Anchoring the lower right quadrant of our King-size Tempur-Pedic mattress was Winston.

Winston is an English Mastiff. He weighs one hundred and eighty-four pounds. His head is the size of a microwave oven, and his primary hobby is sleeping like a dropped sack of wet quikrete. Winston had sprawled his massive, velvety body across the foot of the bed, specifically targeting my ankles.

So, to summarize my structural physics: Top half: Locked down by a 104-degree, 115-pound human furnace with a death-grip. Bottom half: Compressed by nearly two hundred pounds of slumbering livestock. Bed material: High-density memory foam that had contoured to my body over the last four hours, effectively creating a personalized clay mold or sarcophagus from which there was no lateral escape.

And why, you might ask, did I urgently need to escape?

Two reasons.

First, I had made the catastrophic error of drinking two glasses of water after 8:00 PM. At fifty-three, drinking fluid after eight in the evening is a contractual agreement with your bladder to assemble for a emergency summit at 2:00 AM. My bladder was currently pulsing with the urgency of a dam about to burst in a disaster movie.

Second, somewhere in the hallway, our smoke detector had just begun the dreaded, low-battery death chirp.

Beep.

It was not a continuous alarm. That would have caused adrenaline to flood my system, granting me the hysterical strength required to throw off Brenda and Winston like a villain escaping from under a pile of rubble. No, it was the insidious, intermittent chirp that smoke detectors issue every fifty-eight seconds when their 9-volt battery reaches two-percent capacity.

Beep.

I lay there in the dark, suffocating, simmering in a pool of my own sweat, my bladder screaming, staring at the glowing red numbers: 2:15 AM.

"Brenda," I whispered. My voice sounded like a dry leaf scraping across asphalt. "Honey."

Brenda did not move. She let out a soft, delicate little snore—squee-huff—that was almost insulting given the vice-grip she was exerting on my upper body.

"Brenda," I tried again, slightly louder. "Sweetheart. My arm is dead. My legs belong to Winston. I am dying."

Brenda reacted to my pleas by exhaling a breath that felt like the exhaust port of a clothes dryer directly into my sternum. Then, as if sensing a desperate bid for freedom in her sleep, her arm tightened around my thoracic cavity. My ribs let out a faint, crackling groan.

Beep.

"Right," I muttered to myself. "Tactical operation required."

When you have been married for a quarter of a century, you develop specialized skills. You learn how to swallow a cough during a quiet church service; you learn how to nod convincingly while mentally playing sixteen holes of golf; and you learn the physical art of the Nighttime Extraction.

The Extraction requires patience, friction management, and absolute stealth. If you wake the furnace, the furnace gets annoyed. An annoyed sleeping spouse does not release you; they adjust their weight, bury their face deeper into your neck, and lock their limbs down with double the force, like an octopus reacting to a predator.

I decided to start with the lower extremities.

I gently twitched my toes inside the heavy wool socks I was forced to wear because Brenda insisted on keeping the ceiling fan on high to "circulate the air" while she roasted me alive.

My ankles were completely immobilized beneath Winston’s hip. Winston was snoring softly, a deep, rhythmic bass line that vibrated through the mattress coils.

Plan A: The Foot Wiggle.

I slowly, agonizingly, shifted my right ankle a quarter of an inch to the left.

Winston grunted. He didn't wake up, but his giant, heavy jowl flopped sideways, landing with a wet thud directly on my right foot. He had increased his downward force by fifteen percent.

Plan A was a failure.

Beep.

The smoke detector mocked me. It was a psychological weapon designed by cold-hearted engineers who clearly lived alone in concrete bunkers.

I took a slow breath—as deep as Brenda’s arm on my lungs would allow—and reassessed my options. My left hand was pinned against my own ribcage. My right arm was extended out under Brenda’s back, dead from the shoulder down. If I pinched the skin of my right forearm, I felt nothing. It belonged to the room now. It was furniture.

"Okay, Arthur," I whispered to myself. "Think. You managed the logistics for a mid-sized regional logistics firm for twenty years. You can figure out how to slide out of a bed."

The main problem was the memory foam. Memory foam is great when you're lying down at 10:00 PM, thinking about how comfortable your life is. It is an absolute nightmare when you need to make a sudden tactical retreat. It forms a pit around you. You aren't just lying on a bed; you are trapped in a personalized crater of your own body heat.

I began Plan B: The Inchworm.

The Inchworm involves microscopic movements of the hips. You contract your core—or what remains of your core after years of craft beer and dark chocolate—and pull your torso upward by one-sixteenth of an inch, then hold. You wait for the sleeping partner's subconscious to accept the new position, then you repeat.

I contracted my abs. My lower back gave a sharp, indignant pop.

"Mmmph," Brenda mumbled into my chest.

I froze. I stopped breathing entirely. I held my breath so long my ears began to ring.

"Don't put the lawnmower in the dishwasher, Gary," Brenda murmured softly, her lips brushing against my pajama top.

"I won't, darling," I whispered softly. "I promise. Gary would never do that."

(My name is Arthur. Gary is her brother, who died in 2012. Sleep-Brenda lives in a wild, non-linear continuum where family members, household appliances, and farm animals exist in a chaotic temporal blender.)

Brenda shifted slightly. Her grip on my neck loosened by a fraction of a millimeter.

Opportunity!

I seized the moment. I attempted to slide my torso backward out of her grip. But I had forgotten about the friction coefficient of flannel pajamas.

Brenda was wearing flannel. I was wearing flannel. Flannel on flannel does not slide. Flannel on flannel acts like Velcro.

When I pulled back, my top stayed put, Brenda’s arm stayed put, and my upper spine stretched like an accordion. A searing spike of sciatica flashed down my left thigh.

I let out a sound like a deflating bagpipe.

Beep.

"God help me," I whispered into the dark ceiling.

It was 2:22 AM. My bladder was now operating at 110% capacity. I was experiencing visions of the Hoover Dam cracking under the weight of a million gallons of water. If I didn't get up in the next three minutes, my marriage was going to face a test far greater than any vow about "sickness and health."

It was time for radical measures. It was time for Plan C: The Pillow Swap.

The Pillow Swap is a dangerous maneuver. It requires higher-level motor skills, which are difficult to execute when your right arm is completely paralyzed and your brain is foggy from carbon dioxide retention.

The strategy was simple: I needed to slide a firm contour pillow under Brenda’s arm and chin at the exact micro-second that I pulled my neck and chest away, fooling her body into thinking she was still smothering her loving husband.

I reached up with my left hand—the only appendage still operating under my direct neural command—and grabbed the spare king-sized feather pillow resting against the headboard.

I brought it down slowly. I positioned it parallel to my chest.

I braced myself. My left knee was trembling from the strain of holding back Winston’s weight at the foot of the bed. My back was arched. I felt like a bridge engineer trying to calculate the load-bearing limits of a crumbling suspension bridge during an earthquake.

Beep.

"Now," I gritted through my teeth.

I thrust the pillow under Brenda’s forearm while simultaneously arching my spine and performing a frantic, desperate hip-roll to the left.

CRACK.

My left hip joint made a sound like a dry branch snapping underfoot.

Brenda’s eyes fluttered. She made a confused, snorting sound. Her hands clutched wildly at the air. For a horrifying half-second, I thought she was going to wake up fully, realize the ruse, and unleash the terrible fury of a librarian denied her eight hours of restorative sleep.

Instead, her hands clamped down hard on the spare pillow. She pulled it against her chest, tucked her chin over the edge, and let out a long, contented sigh.

"Good boy, Gary," she whispered.

I was free from the top half!

I had achieved tactical disengagement from the shoulders up!

However, I was still pinned from the waist down. Brenda’s heavy, python leg was still hooked over my thighs, and Winston’s 184-pound frame remained solidly anchored across my ankles.

I was currently bent at a bizarre, unnatural ninety-degree angle, my upper body hanging precariously over the left side of the bed, my nose approximately three inches from the hardwood floor, while my lower body remained trapped in the mattress crater.

Blood was suddenly rushing to my head. My paralyzed right arm was slowly coming back to life, rewarding me with the excruciating sensation of ten thousand icy needles stabbing into my fingers.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow," I whimpered quietly, biting my own lower lip to suppress a scream.

Beep.

"Shut up," I hissed toward the door. "I'm working on it!"

I needed leverage. I planted my left elbow onto the floor. The hardwood was freezing, but it was solid ground. It wasn't memory foam. It was an anchor.

Using my left elbow and my resurrected, tingly right hand, I braced myself against the floor and began the painstaking process of sliding my legs out from beneath Brenda’s leg.

Inch by inch.

Slither.

Brenda’s leg dropped onto the mattress with a soft thud where my thighs used to be. She didn't stir. The feather pillow had completely fooled her.

Now, only Winston remained.

Winston is a sweet dog, but he has the emotional intelligence of a potato and the physical presence of a boulder. If you wake him abruptly, he doesn't bite—he simply rolls onto his back, presents his belly for rubs, and expands his volume to occupy all available space in the universe.

If Winston rolled over right now, he would pin my feet permanently under two hundred pounds of loose dog skin and dense muscle.

"Winston," I whispered, my face still hovering near the floor. "Winston. Psst."

One of Winston’s massive, floppy ears twitched. He did not open his eyes. He emitted a long, low whine that vibrated through the floorboards directly into my elbow.

"Winston, move your big butt," I pleaded.

I took my left foot and gently, carefully, used my toe to poke his flank.

Winston groaned. Slowly, majestically, like a galleon turning in a calm harbor, he shifted his hindquarters three inches to the right.

It was just enough.

My feet slipped free.

The sudden release of tension was so violent that my leverage failed. My left elbow slipped on the hardwood, and I collapsed in an ungraceful, crumpled heap onto the rug beside the bed, making a sound like a dropped duffel bag full of wet laundry.

I lay there on the cold floor for a long moment, staring up at the ceiling.

I was bruised. My right arm was throbbing with pins and needles. My lower back was locked in a tight, angry spasm. My flannel pajama shirt was twisted around my torso like a tourniquet.

But I was free.

I glanced up over the edge of the mattress.

Brenda was fast asleep, cradling the spare pillow with serene, angelic contentment. On the other side of the bed, Winston had already re-settled, his gigantic head resting comfortably on the spot where my torso had been three minutes ago.

They had completely filled the vacuum I left behind. There was no longer any room for me in the bed. I had been completely written out of the sleeping ecosystem.

Beep.

I sighed, hauled myself up onto my creaking knees, and braced my hands against my lower back to force my spine into a vaguely vertical position.

"Right," I muttered. "First, the bathroom. Then, the battery. Then... the sofa."

I limped out of the bedroom, my right leg dragging slightly as the circulation slowly returned.

I navigated the dark hallway by memory, avoiding the third floorboard from the bathroom door, which creaked like a haunted mansion if you stepped on it. I reached the bathroom, flicked on the dim nightlight, and handled my emergency business with a level of profound relief that borders on spiritual enlightenment.

When you are twenty, relief is simple. When you are fifty-three, a successful 2:30 AM bathroom trip after being trapped under a dog and a spouse feels like winning an Olympic gold medal in survival.

After washing my hands, I stepped back out into the hallway to face my nemesis.

The smoke detector was mounted on the ceiling, precisely eight feet up.

I am five-foot-ten. On a good day, stretching my spine to its absolute limit, I can reach eight feet if I stand on my tiptoes. But at 2:32 AM, with a back that had just survived a mechanical twisting event, standing on my tiptoes was a medical impossibility.

I limped down to the kitchen, found the aluminum step stool under the sink, grabbed a fresh 9-volt battery from the drawer where we keep forty-seven mismatched batteries and a dozen twist-ties, and dragged the stool back to the hallway.

I climbed the two steps. My knees popped in a rhythmic, two-part harmony.

Pop-click.

I twisted the smoke detector casing, popped it open, snatched out the old battery, and slammed the new one in. The red light blinked once, approvingly. Silence descended upon the house.

"Take that, technology," I whispered to the plastic disc.

I stood on the step stool in the dark hallway for a moment, listening to the quiet house. The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. The central heating unit clicked on, pushing warm air through the vents.

I walked quietly back to the bedroom door and peeked inside.

The room was quiet now, save for the rhythmic duet of Brenda’s gentle squee-huff and Winston’s deep, rumbling snores.

I tiptoed to the edge of the bed and looked down at my wife.

In the dim glow of the red alarm clock, she looked so peaceful. Her hair was tousled across the pillow, her small face soft and unbothered by the anxieties of the world. She looked nineteen again, the girl I had met in the college library, the girl who used to laugh at my terrible jokes and hold my hand in movie theaters.

She had no idea she was a nocturnal apex predator. She had no idea she possessed the grip strength of a hydraulic vise. To her, she was just cuddling her husband. To her, love meant holding on so tight that light and air could not pass between us.

I looked at the four inches of remaining mattress space at the very edge of the bed—a narrow strip of land barely wide enough for a broomstick.

I could go to the couch in the living room. The couch was firm. The couch did not have a 184-pound dog on it. The couch did not radiate heat at the temperature of a pizza oven. I would sleep better on the couch. My back would thank me in the morning.

I stepped away from the bed, turning toward the door.

Then Brenda shifted. She rolled slightly toward my side of the bed, her hand reaching out into the empty space where I was supposed to be. Her fingers pattered blindly across the sheet, searching.

When she found nothing, a tiny, subtle frown appeared between her brows. She let out a small, disappointed whimpering sound.

"Artie?" she murmured, her voice thick with sleep. "Where’d you go?"

I stopped. I looked at the sofa option. I looked back at Brenda.

I sighed—a long, weary, affectionate sigh that came from the very bottom of my middle-aged lungs.

"I'm right here, honey," I whispered.

I walked back to the bed. I carefully, meticulously, worked my way onto that ridiculous four-inch strip of remaining mattress. I lay down on my side, balancing my body like a tightrope walker over the edge of the drop-off onto the hardwood floor.

I reached over and laid my arm across her waist.

Instantly, the subconscious tracking system in Brenda’s brain locked onto its target.

Without opening her eyes, she whipped around. Her arm snapped over my shoulder like a trap shutting. Her knee came flying over my thighs, locking me back into the vice. Her head buried itself into the crook of my neck, sealing off my airway to fifty percent capacity.

Down at the foot of the bed, Winston felt the movement, let out a deep sigh, and shifted his massive head back onto my ankles, adding his two hundred pounds of gravity back into the equation.

The heat returned immediately. The memory foam began to sink. My right arm began its slow, familiar journey into numbness.

I lay there in the dark, pinned against the edge of the abyss, utterly immobile, perfectly uncomfortable, and completely unable to move a single muscle.

I looked at the red numbers on the clock: 2:41 AM.

There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.

I closed my eyes, took a shallow, constricted breath of my wife’s radiator-warm air, and smiled into the dark.

I wasn't going anywhere. Mostly because I couldn't. But mostly because I was right where I belonged.