Sleeping Beauty

I remember finding a little black book that belonged to my father. It was slightly bigger than the palm of my hand and relatively thin compared to other books I saw him acquire. It resembled a pocket bible, compact and sturdy enough to withstand being shoved into carry-on luggage. I don’t recall what age I was, only that I was not of a level of maturity to understand the contents of its pages. It was filled with hundreds of descriptions that related to normal everyday actions and objects. Or so I thought.

All these years later, I know now that book was an encyclopedia of paraphilias. It catalogued atypical sexual arousal involving obsessive fixations or fantasies, presented through concise definitions.

My dad was an avid learner in all areas that overlapped health and psychology; however, I know this was personal research unrelated to his position as a nurse in the public sector of mental health. The fact of the matter was, he couldn’t keep it in his pants. That was the nail in the coffin as to why he was fired from his job, never mind his abuse of alcohol. At fifteen, this news was presented to me by my mother in a stack of papers that might as well have been titled: Crimes Committed by Your Father.

Within these pages was a detailed account of him exposing himself to a colleague at work. I may be misremembering here; it could have outlined that this was done to multiple female coworkers, but one is already too many.

I always made excuses for him. Past tense.

I didn’t believe that my dad was capable of such things, or perhaps didn’t want to, but he did. Now, he’s impotent. I wish I didn’t know that information but my step-mother never missed a beat in telling me about their active sex life, as if to brag “he doesn’t cheat on me like he did your mother because we do it so much.” But a partner’s level of activity or participation will never stop an addict from seeking more and he has cheated on her too. Although emotional cheating doesn’t count, at least not to him.  

I’m still working on my ability to bridge paragraphs that contain different subject matters, and I haven’t figured out how to introduce the next one yet, so I’ll just say it.

Last week I landed myself in hot water, after leaving a comment which I thought to be harmless and uncontroversial. It was on an Instagram reel that included a twenty-nine second clip taken from an Australian movie The Little Death (2014). The text superimposed just above the scene read: “One man spoke for all MEN.” The caption of the video describes the movie as: “A film that examines modern relationships through a set of interconnected stories, each shaped by a private sexual fantasy and the emotional impact it has on the people involved.”

The scene included a breakdown of a marriage. A woman who had discovered her husband had been having an affair and his confession, which to my ears was reminiscent of the classic DARVO spiel. For those that are unfamiliar, DARVO is a common tactic used by perpetrators of wrongdoing. It’s an acronym that stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

Step 1: Deny. The offender refuses to take responsibility for their actions and instead shifts their focus to minimising their harmful behaviours.

Step 2: Attack. When confronted with evidence, the offender attacks the person questioning them, criticising and discrediting the accuser’s reliability, credibility and even mental stability.
Step 3: Reverse Victim and Offender. The offender flips the script, positioning themselves as the true victim and labelling the person who spoke up as the aggressor.

In personal relationships, DARVO often involves eliciting shame, gaslighting a victim into believing they are in fact the perpetrator of abuse. This behaviour usually surfaces in response to being held accountable. Think of a man morphing into a scared dog that gets backed into a corner. Feeling confined, they may begin to snarl and show their teeth. They bark and bark without fatigue, wearing you down either through an elaborate rewrite of events you experienced or fabricating new ones entirely.

If they’re lazy, they may just recite the following prayer by Dayna Craig:

“That didn’t happen.

And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.

And if it was, that’s not a big deal.

And if it is, it’s not my fault.

And if it was, I didn’t mean it.

And if I did, you deserved it.”

The transcript of the Instagram reel that used a scene from The Little Death, is as follows:

The wife raises her voice to address her husband in rapid-fire.

“So, she’s not younger than me.

She’s not skinnier than me.

And she’s not prettier than me.

Then why couldn’t it just be me?”

There’s no pause between the wife’s last words and the husband’s response.

 “Because she’s softer than you.

She’s quieter than you.

She doesn’t yell at me.

She doesn’t call me an idiot or tell me to shut up all the time.

She listens to me.

She’s nice to me.

She doesn’t make me feel like the only thing stopping her from being happy...

is me.”

The comment I made that summoned teenagers from school hallways, divorced dads in their quest for a re-do, and lonely singles from their hobbit holes was:

All I heard was, ‘she doesn’t hold me accountable.’

Suddenly I was public enemy number one. I was a nefarious woman, immoral and heinous. I had to be taken down. An army of men were sent in. Replies were shot out like a firing squad. We’re currently up to seventy-one.

Historically I’ve found men who believe that the only value a woman provides is her looks, will always attack appearance. Treating it like an Achilles heel. There was much of that in this instance. Some told me to shut up or shut it, as if they believed their voice was one of authority that I’d be subservient to. Attacks expanded to my sexuality, relationship status, career and lifestyle. Some assumed I was a stay-at-home mum, as if to say I was useless to society. Maybe it was a projection of how they feel about their own kin. One man was especially creative and put an A-grade effort into orchestrating six lines of clown emojis. I wonder if he tapped that emoji individually sixty-one times, or if he had the wits about him to copy and paste sections of it.

Many comments appeared as if they were prematurely sent; half typed out or written so poorly I felt like I had to decode or translate as I read them, as if they were constructed while under the influence.

“Coming from the trans that does crack at parties” sent me hollering into bouts of laughter. So obscene that the only way to process it, was if it was thrown out over the writing table of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

The irony of that accusation wasn’t lost on me. I’m health conscious to the degree it dictates my life. I was a vegetarian who was in an on-again-off-again relationship with the diet from age twelve and now eat chicken hearts every week to support my subpar energy levels and iron deficiency. My pop died from stage four stomach cancer when I was younger, and I think that’s where my obsession with eating healthy foods started. Although, it’s pushing towards the extreme of Orthorexia nervosa.

When I used to dance, men would offer me drugs in place of money for tips. Each time I would let out a soft laugh as to keep my manner playful and decline with a “Oh, I don’t do drugs. I don’t even drink tap water because I’m scared of it.” That wasn’t a lie. I used to lug around a Brita water jug to venues and workplaces, although since I hung up my dancing boots, I’ve upgraded to a reverse osmosis countertop water station.

I may have alcoholism in my blood, but I do not have the stomach to support a drug habit of any kind. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve experimented with drugs. I’ve tried cocaine three times, and each time the only noticeable physiological effects were bowel urgency that required me to flee to the nearest bathroom, tachycardia with my heart rate exceeding one hundred beats per minute and secondary hyperhidrosis with whole body sweats.

I was a late bloomer. At twenty-four my boyfriend at the time dealt drugs. It was always within reach. In fact much of the time, I was the one cutting it up and bagging it for him. Three hundred to four hundred dollars for an hour’s work sidelined my aversion to illicit substances. I got really good at eyeballing a gram, but of course I always double checked with a set of scales as to not rip off customers.

After the third time of trying coke, I didn’t see any point of it. To me it was a drug with net loss, with my body copping the expenses. I remember when my boyfriend got his hands on a supply imported from Peru and told me, “You will never have an opportunity to try anything this pure ever again.” It didn’t interest me. He may as well have been saying “You see this white powder right here? This is a one-way ticket to intestinal ischemia. You’re about to feel all of the sudden and severe effects of reduced blood flow in your intestines. It will feel as if someone has reached inside you to braid your small intestine with the large, turning, twisting, and pulling them over each other until they’re bound so tight, your body contorts with it.”

Still, I would watch him snort lines of it on a daily basis, although that wasn’t the only substance he was doing. At the sound of sirens, he would take up post next to the front door to peep through the blinds and would let out a “they’re onto me.” Paranoia had set in.

At some stage I tried to reason with him to cut back. I had become disgusted by the sound of the nose he used as a vacuum. I asked him to stop doing it in front of me and what was an open habit soon turned into a shameful one.

I remember one day when we were supposed to have a cute picnic at a lookout spot on a cliff that overlooked the sea. That memory was tarnished by the events that transpired after.

On our way back to the car, he scraped his knee on a broken wooden post, jumping past a manmade barricade. It drew blood but to me it didn’t look anything worse than a scrape a child may obtain falling off some playground equipment onto those textured rubber tile mats. Still, that was enough to make him cry. When we got back to the car he pleaded with me to do a line or two, for ‘medical purposes’ of course. To make the pain go away. Cocaine was originally used as a cure-all. Toothache? Cocaine. Fatigue? Cocaine. Hay fever? Cocaine. Asthma? Cocaine. Altitude sickness? Cocaine.

Man scrapes knee. Cocaine?

Although if he really wanted to utilise the drug for its anti-haemorrhaging and analgesic properties, he would have applied powder directly to the cut and not up his preferred nostril.

But enough about him, back to my own drug-use.

MDMA I’ve tried twice. The first time was at home with this boyfriend. I sweated profusely from every pore of my body, my temperature plummeted and I felt nauseous. When all these symptoms passed and I finally felt my body relax, I surrendered to the positive effects of the drug. Nothing felt better than the skin-on-skin contact with my partner’s body. As I cuddled up to him, I began to see elaborate patterns dance on my plain white ceiling. In that moment or hour, it felt I could have spent the rest of my life there, with him.

The second time I tried MDMA was at The Ritz-Carlton. We had booked a room for two nights and on the first is where I swallowed that gelatine capsule filled with yellow rocks that resembled my favourite unhealthy-healthy snack, crystallised ginger. There would be no dancing patterns on the ceiling of this trip. I cycled through wrapping the bedsheets around me in a cocoon-like manner, to kicking them off. Shaking and feeling like my body was going to explode but not in the way that mirrors foodborne illness. Instead, it felt like I had ingested a ticking time bomb and was waiting for my limbs, tissue and organs to go flying in every direction of the room, splattering against the walls. My partner didn’t cuddle up to me this time. He wanted to go for a walk and so, I was left with water by the bedside to get myself through this without the guide of my shaman.

I’ve had GHB in my system a total of four times. Twice consensually, and twice through being spiked.

When I was spiked for the first time, I was seventeen. My friend was having a going-away get-together. As we often did on weekends, we met up at the park behind the local music venue. The only difference was that this time, it was a Tuesday afternoon, and I had school the next day. The alcohol was supplied by one of the host’s friends that just so happened to be twenty-five years old. It wasn’t unusual amongst this friend group for men in their thirties to be mingling with boys and girls who were as young as fourteen, or thereabouts. Most of the members of the group had hardcore influenced aliases. Can’t help but think now that was a method in crime evasion. It’s a lot harder to be taken seriously if you turn up to a police station to report assault if the only witnesses are known to you by the names of Skittles and Acid.

 I remember being handed a bottle of white rum to drink from freely. We all sat under an alfresco area. One minute I remember it being light and the next it was dark. I have two memories thereafter. Needing to pee and not being able to stand or walk, my friend and a guy I had just met carried me to the cubicle of the nearest public bathroom. Then I remember being back in that alfresco area and not being able to keep my body upright and falling to the ground. There was a complete disconnect of mind and body. Probably soul too.

Eventually, someone must have answered my phone, with my mother on the other end calling me. Apparently, she wasn’t mad at me, just concerned. Convinced I had taken drugs and asked whoever was still around at that stage, what I had taken. By that point I’m sure the twenty-five-year-old was long gone. He attempted to pursue me afterwards through Facebook Messenger and asked if he could cook a meal for me in his home. A week later he ended up in hospital requiring surgery after being t-boned by a car. Call it karma. I call it a divine intervention.

When I took GHB for the first time, it was dispensed to me by my boyfriend via a reusable applicator, much like that of an eye dropper. He marketed it to me as a MDMA in liquid form. They call it Fanta here.

I can’t really remember anything of my experience; I guess that’s why it’s used as a date-rape drug.

The second time we partook, my partner overdosed on it. I wrote in total twenty-six pages over the course of three hours, although not all pages are complete. Some just have the date and time jotted in the right-hand corner at the top of the page. Other pages have the same thing written out five times, with only slight word variations. Some sections have repetitive apologies like: “Sorry my handwriting is terrible. Sorry if you can’t read what I just wrote. Sorry that last comma was supposed to be a full stop.” My wits were gone and there was little coherence.

The most cognisant section of writing is as follows:

“You threw up on the floor twice and on the bed once and I was so scared. I tried carrying you to the bathroom to get you to shower but you kept falling asleep on me and I couldn’t get through to you or engage verbally to get you back to bed. I had to use my body weight to push you forward while also keeping you upright with one of my arms, steering you back to bed. I managed to get you down safely on the bed but only your upper torso is currently supported by the mattress. I feel like I’m filling out an incident report but really, I’m just wired and wish I was talking to you right now…I have probably ripped out close to ten pages trying to get what I want to say out but it’s so hard to put pen to paper. Hope you can read my writing along with the tens of thousands of mistakes I’ll probably make on this one page alone. Very high. Very tired. Very horny. A little hungry. So, so hard to keep one train of thought.”

The ramblings continued until the last few lines, which read:

“What I wanted to say is, every time I reach this point on the page, I tear it out because I feel like it can’t be simplified, put into words.”

What I tried to say in all those pages was that I had forgiven him for cheating on me, but I couldn’t physically write it out. My mind wanted to convey one message that my body couldn’t agree with. In fact, that night at the Ritz-Carlton when he had stepped out to go for a walk and left me in bed, he was pursuing other women through his phone.

Amongst all the pages, I documented looking at him passed out in bed, panicking, my jaw locking up from stress related tension and wanting to call the ambulance but not wanting to compromise his position. God forbid he was sent to the same hospital he worked at. I remember checking his pulse at one stage, and for the first few seconds I couldn’t feel it. I slightly adjusted his positioning and almost immediately, he started snoring.

This boyfriend who accidentally roofied himself often vocalised how attractive he thought my innocence was, that being my lack of drug-use. My limited experience excited him. I should have seen this as a red flag.

When I was spiked with GHB for the second time, I was raped by two men. At least that’s what I’ve concluded. I thankfully have no memory of the events of the night. Waking up naked in a household with men I wasn’t acquainted with and who tried to jump my bones no less than five minutes after regaining consciousness, helped me come to this conclusion. I had to lie to convince them to let me go home and when I finally made it out, I realised my legs were covered in large bruises. All over my shins, knees and thighs. I don’t intend on revisiting this matter, but I haven’t shared a drink with a stranger since then.

There is something disturbingly familiar about the state GHB puts a person in. Unconscious, defenceless, a forced vulnerability. If any folklore tale were to represent it, it would be Sleeping Beauty.

 Not the Disney version, but the one by an anonymous author written between 1330 and 1344. It is considered by many scholars to be the earliest tale of a waking Sleeping Beauty.

Perceforest or Le Roman de Perceforest, isa collection of narratives considered to be chivalric romance, but not by me. The following story is to the best of my knowledge, L’histoire de Troylus et de la belle Zellandine or more simply, the story of Zellandine.

They say you can find anything on the internet, but in my search to find early transcriptions of this tale, I feel buying drugs off the dark net would be a much easier quest. I found a scanned copy of the original medieval manuscript written by a French scribe, but no translations to accompany it.

All the retellings from third party sources had just as many variations as you could expect a story to have, being passed down through generations for over half a millennium.

In one version of this tale, Troylus, a knight from Scotland, and Princess Zellandine had already met and fallen in love before Zellandine falls into a mysterious sleep from which she cannot wake. In others Troylus is unknown to her.

But as the tale of sleeping beauty so often begins, there is a curse that is cast. After the birth of Zellandine, her father, the king of Zeeland extends an invitation to three goddesses to feast in his domain, hoping to bestow upon his daughter good fortune. Venus, goddess of love, Lucina, goddess of childbirth, and Themis, goddess of destiny, all attend. However, Themis becomes enraged when she is not provided with a knife to eat.

So much so, Themis curses the baby girl with the words “from the first thread that she spins from her distaff a shard will pierce her finger and cast her into a sudden sleep, from which she’ll never wake until it’s sucked out.”

When Troylus hears news of Zellandine falling into a deep sleep, he travels to Zeeland. But only after a weeklong side quest in which he visits the temple of three goddesses: Venus, Lucina, and Themis. He prays on the matter of how to wake the princess in which Venus answers and says to him:

“When you pluck from the slit
The fruit that holds the cure,
The girl will be healed.”

Troylus doesn’t understand this obscure messaging and impatiently sets off in search of the high tower. A structure built to protect Zellandine from the prying hands of man. When Troylus arrives at the tower a mysterious figure appears and advises him to “follow the urgings of the goddess Venus.” An unseen force lifts him up into the air, transporting him to Zellandine’s quarters.

Troylus is immediately captivated by a beautiful woman sleeping naked in bed. He leans in and asks for permission to kiss her. Troylus then hears the voices of reason and discretion echoing “No man should breach a girl’s privacy without her leave, and he certainly shouldn’t touch her while she sleeps!” Yet, he proceeds with a kiss. Believing this will wake the princess.

Zellandine remains in her peaceful state of unconsciousness, while Troylus becomes frustrated. He complains to Venus of her inadequacy in providing guidance. To which Venus scolds him for not understanding her hints and says to him:

“You’re all alone with this beautiful girl, the one you love above all others, and you don’t lie with her!”

Troylus hesitates again, to which the goddess stokes the flames of his desire so intently that he sexually assaults the sleeping Zellandine, taking her virginity.

Of course, it’s the doing of another and not his inability to control himself.

Troylus is momentarily startled by a sound Zellandine lets out. He prepares to act innocent should she wake to discover what he has done. The mysterious figure reappears and urges Troylus to flee before he is caught. Troylus quickly places a ring on Zellandine’s finger, in preparation of reframing indecent assault as a form of marriage proposal, before leaving in haste.

Nine months later, Zellandine gives birth to a baby boy, and even in childbirth, she remains asleep. When the baby becomes hungry, he does not cry, instead he searches for his mother’s breast, mistaking her thumb as a source of food. He suckles Zellandine’s finger dislodging the splinter from which put her to sleep. Eventually, Troylus returns to find the awakened Zellandine with her rape baby, and they run away together to wed. Although, Zellandine is shown to mourn the event of her sexual assault despite ‘loving’ her husband.

In a later version of Sleeping Beauty, the story devolves, becoming more dark and twisted.  “Sun, Moon and Talia” authored by Giambattista Basile in 1634, mirrors the same reason of why an internet rumour of why Morgues are less inclined to hire men than they are women, went so viral. For the princess is not just asleep. A travelling king whose wife awaits him at home, stumbles across a castle acting as a tomb. When there is no answer to his knock, he enters it to find Talia, a princess condemned by eternal sleep. He is ‘conquered’ by the maiden’s charms. In today’s terminology, he would be labelled a necrophile. For it was said he fell in love with the lifeless woman, her white flesh like a lily. And so, he desecrated her corpse.

Nine months later, the impossible became possible. She gave birth, delivering twins. Sun and Moon. One of the infants, again much like in the events of the earlier tale, went in search of the mother’s breast for milk. Mistaking her finger and removing the splinter. The curse is lifted. The King, father of the twins returns to ‘visit’ the sleeping princess and discovers she is alive. He then explains to Talia what happened and it is said they fell in love.

The wife of the King eventually comes to learn of her husband’s extramarital affairs and plots to kill the twins and feed them to the him. However her plans are foiled by the cook, and the Queen is put to death. Burned alive. Talia and the King marry and live happily ever after…

What happened to the stories of immaculate conception?

Folklore and old stories such as these are not bedtime stories, but cautionary tales, heeding warnings of humanity’s greatest evils.

Today sleeping beauty is a story edited clean of the debauchery that is adultery, rape and cannibalism.

How does any of this relate to that little black book I discovered and the comment section I found myself a target in? At the risk of sounding like someone who should be institutionalised, muttering to themselves that the world is ending. It is all connected. Or rather, interconnected. Still, remarks of my offensive and empirically wrong take that justified an onslaught of verbal abuse online, aroused my curiosity. Not so much in regard to what was wrong with the men commenting, but to the contents of the movie the Instagram reel had sourced this divisive piece of content from.

The replies continued with:

“Yall females are delusional”

“Jaded cunt”

“You’re worth as a human being is less than that of the lint in a bellybutton, but go off streetwalker”

“What does a feminist know about accountability”

And the same rhetoric of men who use ChatGPT generated cartoon caricatures for their profile pictures, recycling words, slurs, and name calls into each other’s mouths before circle jerking about.

A total of three days passed after I left that comment, before I decided I had nothing better to do than to sit down and watch the movie.

The title The Little Death is derived from a 19th century euphemism for orgasm and refers to the post-orgasm sensation described as a brief loss or weakening of consciousness.

The film is categorised as a romantic comedy, but that feels like a gross misrepresentation for something that plays out more like a horror. Modern media is still repeating the same narrative patterns centuries later, only now the men who once labelled tales of rape as chivalric romance are the ones selecting film genres.

Twenty minutes into the film, a couple named Phil and Maureen are introduced.

It appears to be either late at night or early morning before the sun has had a chance to rise. A husband wraps his arms over the covers that encapsulate his sleeping wife, she exclaims “Oh, please be kidding.” Rejecting her husband’s advances. Cue the upbeat and unmistakable “bom bom bom bom’s” of The Chordette’s “Mr Sandman” as he rolls back, retreating to his side of the bed, as if there is a distinct line of separation between the married couple that says, “do not cross.” The screen transitions to a black title screen where pink writing reads: “Somnophilia.” Before displaying the definition of the word as “sexual arousal from watching a person sleep.” Sounds like we’re entering familiar territory, only this time the setting is not a kingdom, but the home of a middle-class couple. The screen transitions back to the couple, only some time has passed. Natural light illuminates the room, and he is seen gazing at his sleeping wife. He looks at her, somewhat lovingly, and props himself up, leaning on one arm, brushing his wife’s hair off of her face and tucking it behind her ear. She awakes and grumpily says, “What are you doing?”

He sucks his teeth, replies with a shrug, an eyebrow raise and the word “Nothing,” as her eyes remain closed, head unmoved from pillow. She follows up with, “Could you brush your teeth if you’re going to breathe into my face like that” with a slight New Zealand twang.

As the movie progresses it becomes clear that Phil and Maureen have a loveless marriage. Phil spends most of the night watching his wife sleep, which leads him to a cycle of falling asleep at work and having to stay after office hours to meet deadlines. This turns into a habit of missing family dinners and coming home after his children have been put to bed, adding more pressure on his wife to uphold the household.

One day when Phil’s boss catches him falling asleep in the conference room during a meeting, he gives Phil a warning and after having a conversation about his issue of falling asleep on the job, he extends to a solution in the form of a strong sedative. Left-over medication he was given in Thailand for a shoulder injury. A drug that he cautions isn’t technically legal here in Australia, but vouches for its strength, saying “These little suckers will knock you out every six to eight hours” following up with “That’s the same stuff they force feed prisoners when they riot.”

Still, Phil is reluctant to accept the pills. He briefly overshares his sensitive gag reflex with his boss before agreeing to a compromise: breaking the capsules into a cup of tea instead of swallowing them whole. Just before he’s about to have his first medicated concoction, playful screams from the kid’s upstairs bedroom are faintly heard. Seeping out of the walls, down the stairs and into the kitchen. Phil makes his way up to the source of the noise, opening the door to let out a sound that is familiar in many Australian households with an “Oiiii” getting his kids back in line before telling them to go to bed.

By the time he makes his way back to the kitchen to retrieve his special tea, Phil finds his wife lounging on a sofa watching TV with the cup in hand. She brings it up to her lips and for a moment it looks like Phil is going to speak up to stop her, but he doesn’t. He watches her take sips until it’s all gone.

Some time passes before Maureen is shown slumped on the couch, passed out and blissfully snoring away. Phil again, somewhat lovingly gazes upon her, seeing if she’ll wake to a “Hey” and a few light taps on her hand, with one last fast and heavy slap down and “Hey” as if to test the strength of the sedatives. He begins clapping his hands together in her face, like one of those Jolly Chimp toys that wears a yellow vest with red and white pinstripe pants, bang cymbals together.

The ensemble of an acoustic guitar and strings lull in the voice of Roy Orbison’s “Beautiful Dreamer.” The love song of fragile hope continues to play as he looks at her, lifting her up from the couch when a child’s voice startles him.

“Dad.”

The music cuts as he dramatically drops the unconscious vessel of his wife, quickly turning to face his two children who are looking down at him from the upstairs wooden banisters. He tries to play it off, before ushering his kids away and back to bed with a forced sense of authority in his tone.

He places the body of his wife down onto bed and pillow as the song beautiful dreamer commences. With Maureen laying supine, he holds her limp hands in his, bringing his lips to them before holding them against his face. He stands, hovering over her, kissing her cheek before awkwardly kissing her again and again, only the last kiss involved her upper lip. Laying next to her, Phil raises Maureen’s hand so that her palm is cupping the side of his face. He’s then shown embracing his arms around her, resting his face on hers, before nuzzling his head to rest on Maureen’s chest.

And with that, he begins intentionally drugging his wife. Montages of Maureen’s unconscious body are played over the soundtrack of pop love songs.  With Phil presenting his sleeping beauty with an array of gifts, flowers, a silver sequined dress, and other items of clothing. The framing and clothes changing to represent the passing days, all merged into one scene. Phil is shown day after day, dragging his wife’s body over hardwood floors and up the stairs. Positioning her in bed with one frame depicting an almost naked Maureen. Her clothes stripped, hair pinned up, she is facing down on the bed, with a towel covering her lower torso. Phil empties out half a bottle of oil onto the middle of her back before enthusiastically massaging it into her skin.

Within these shots of Phil and Maureen, there are scenes of Phil falling asleep in his work’s carpark, at his desk, and even in a bathroom cubicle where his boss finds him and later gives him a final verbal warning of, “If I find you sleeping again, that’s it. You’re done.”

Back at home, the only insight given into Phil and Maureen’s marriage is that of a disgruntled wife and a distant husband. As Maureen voices her frustrations with Phil, he’s shown tuning her out, drifting off to his fantasies where he’s watching her ‘sleep.’ Dolling her up with a makeup brush in hand, he applies blush to add colour to her cheeks, before standing back from his work to take it all in.

Phil is caught sleeping at work one final time before he’s fired. The next we see of Phil he’s slumped over, resting himself against the back of a sofa and looking down at his hands in dismay. His wife walks into the frame and is stood at the top of the stairs overlooking Phil.

Noticing her presence, Phil lets out a soft, “Hey” and Maureen replies with her voice pitched just a low, “Where have you been?”

There’s a long dialogue that takes place before the scene attached to that earlier mentioned Instagram reel plays out. A snippet stripped of all context for the consumption of men, framing an affair as justified and positioning the wife as emotionally abusive. Maureen and Phil have a joint bank account, and with all the transactions she finds of funds spent at local florists, on women’s clothes, on body oils and cosmetics, she concludes her husband is having an affair.

Rather than coming clean, Phil goes along with it, adding to the narrative that he was cheating on her with one of his co-workers. His reasons for doing so being the same script presented earlier:

“Because she’s softer than you.

She’s quieter than you.

She doesn’t yell at me.

She doesn’t call me an idiot or tell me to shut up all the time.

She listens to me.

She’s nice to me.

She doesn’t make me feel like the only thing stopping her from being happy...

is me.”

Throughout the film the only time Maureen calls Phil an idiot is when she confronts him with the bank statements. She tells him to shut up once. Maybe that’s unwarranted, but if my husband made a habit of coming home so late that he was missing family dinners and I was left to put our kids to bed, night after night, I would probably lose it a little bit too. I don’t really know why I feel compelled to fill in the gaps at this point, when it’s clear a perverted man who lets his paraphilia control his life and who would rather lie to continue acting on his impulses isn’t the victim in this situation.

Thankfully Maureen doesn’t entertain the conversation, ending the interaction by calmly telling him to get out.

The definition of Somnophilia as presented by the film The Little Death, removes its sinister nature, framing disturbing scenes to be nothing more than something to laugh at. Somnophilia is categorised as a predatory paraphilia in clinical, forensic and psychological literature and is not just “sexual arousal from watching a person sleep” as the film presents. Instead, it is defined as sexual arousal derived from engaging in sexual acts with a person who is asleep or unconscious, thereby involving non-consensual contact with the unsuspecting victim. A sleeping beauty fantasy.