This is going to be of a sexual  nature. So if you don't like subjects like that, please do not read on.

As every guy, I have had night time erections. Lately I have been having them since I stopped taking medication which dampened my libido considerably (though not for that reason). Let's put that aside for a moment.

Another point is my waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go to sleep again. After having laid awake for some time, I get up and watch tv. During those episodes I sometimes seem not to wake up entirely. Not getting as awake as I am during the day. Which is good if you want to go to sleep again soon.

Now let's put these two incidents together. This happened to me twice. I was up, sitting on the couch with the tv on. I don't know what show was on, but it was of a non sexual nature. I wasn't really concentrating on watching. I did notice that my night time erection came back. Which appeared strange to me, since I wasn't asleep. I'd expect to only get an erection while awake, from arousing stimuli. Such as seeing provocatively (un)dressed women. Nothing like that was happening at the time. But still the erection didn't taper off. I stayed quite hard. I didn't understand it.

I held my penis with two fingers, without doing anything but holding it. Strangely enough it felt very different from when I would do so in the event of sexual arousal. Looking at my hand, it felt like that penis wasn't mine. Like it was a body part I borrowed from someone else for a spell, complete with sensory perception. With no sexual thoughts or imagery about, I continued to look at this scene. My feelings about this separated from my perception of my body as a whole. It became an entity on its own. Something with a different purpose than I was used to attributing to it.

I thought about it for some time, wondering what I should do with that feeling of experiencing something new. What would be an appropriate action to undertake in a situation like this? I didn't know. Of course sexual connotations did occur to me as a possibility, but they didn't manifest themselves. There was just this perception of a strange, new experience, evoking a strange, new feeling. And all without drugs.

Then the erection finally tapered off and I decided to go to bed again. I wished it would happen again. I wanted to explore that feeling. Like it could be a door to a whole new world of bodily experiences I had never had before, where my penis was a thing on its own.

The following days, when I tried to evoke the same feeling, I did not succeed. I could not consciously reach that same level of detachment to this body part of mine. And I haven't since.

Was it just my sleepiness that conjured up this strange perception? Was it an imperfect feeling, less than it normally would be? Or was it more than that? It felt like more. But now I can't tell anymore. It's gone. Maybe forever. Maybe until the next near sleep walking experience. If that's what it was. I don't know that either.