Know what I love? Know what I can’t get enough of? The feeling of my genitals crushed between my leg and the bed, hairs pulled from the most sensitive skin on my body and my sheets defiled by night sweats. If you, too, love sleeping in perpetual discomfort and besmirching your bed with your body’s most intimate filth, you should sleep naked.
My colleagues extol the luxuriousness and serenity of dozing off with nothing between bare skin and sheets. What these hedonists don’t want to admit is how sleeping naked feels after a brief spell of tossing and turning. Frankly, they’re scared to confront the effects of rubbing a swampy ass on white linens for eight hours straight — maybe because these [shudder] Californians crawl into bed coated in sand and smog every night, reeking of Juul clouds and gasoline.
These naked sleepers smush their unmentionables into their bedding and secrete into it like a plant irrigator into a summertime ficus. They wake up after a night of mattress frottage and tell us humble clothed sleepers we’re not truly living. The gall! No longer shall these libertines guilt us, I say.
You fucked up, Firefox new-tab-window-ad algorithm, I think it's gross to sleep naked even by yourself pic.twitter.com/G7gAMsWmBM
— Cody Peace Adams (@VentnerKendo) March 15, 2019
Sure, sliding bare into bed feels nice, but only while the sheets are still crisp, your skin clean and dry and the friction between them a sensuous surprise. It’s a delightful, electric, endorphin-popping feeling — for maybe five minutes, tops. After that, welcome to Clamtown, baby! By 2 a.m., there’s a uniform patina of grease on your skin, all the cool spots on the bed are now mini-saunas and your loose chest and leg hair have turned the whole area into a shag carpet. Sleeping on your stomach, you wake up to find your intimate appendages pinched and compressed. What a horror.
Naked bodies are gross to me. I can't believe people sleep naked. People are like "You ever just be naked in your apartment." So I can get my swamp ass everywhere? No thanks
— TC (@deviltownfunk) June 22, 2019
Some couples might argue that sleeping naked together is a sign of true intimacy, the ultimate comfort and indulgence after a workday spent apart. No. Naked co-sleeping is exponentially worse than the solo version. Only virginal fools starved for the touch of another human would think extended skin-on-skin contact makes for a happy slumber situation. Try this: Take two pieces of warm ham, plop one on top of the other and then place the slices in a microwave on low for the length of a sleep cycle. That’s the sweat sandwich you and your partner make together. Don’t you want to bask in your lover’s arms like some damn poetry? Put. A. T-shirt. On.
I maintain that sleeping naked is a travesty of rest itself. Real bedtime comfort requires swaddling the body in a light, cool layer of fabric that absorbs sweat and whatever else oozes from your flesh. For me, the best night’s sleep comes when I envelop my body in a cotton cocoon. To cover up, boxer briefs that allow for zero motion, and a T-shirt exactly one size too large. To fall asleep, I lie as straight and sardine-like as possible, taking up as little space as possible, like a 14th-century peasant sharing a sack of straw with his entire gout-ridden parish. I don’t know why this is comfortable for me, but it is. Judge away! I’m sure most of you would rather sprawl out in your bed like a squished daddy longlegs.
Look, you wanted a hot take, you got it. Personally, I have enough trouble falling asleep, and the thought of dead skin and other grime building up on my sheet and duvet cover is enough to keep me up even later. The more honest truth is that I’d rather not do laundry once every three days. But, hell, in a hotel room? I can’t strip off my clothes fast enough.
Cooper Fleishman
Cooper Fleishman is MEL’s director of news and audience, overseeing the Daily desk, social media, traffic growth and editorial product/engineering. He came from Mic, where he launched The Future Is Now, a channel about tech and digital culture, and Multiplayer, a gaming vertical focused on diversity and representation in geek culture. In a previous life, he was New York bureau chief at the Daily Dot, a copy editor for Us Weekly, a dog food salesman, a T-shirt silk-screener and an ’80s cover band drummer. He spent 21 years in Ohio, which explains a lot.
