So Many Ways to Sleep Badly

by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

  Drying off, I notice a woman watching me from the restaurant next door. Then I get contact solution at Walgreen’s and the night has turned to practical necessities instead of an ambulance ride to detox. In the dream where I always find my father, he makes a toast to me—to my beautiful wife, miss Mattilda, the apple of my life! If I wasn’t dreaming, I’d be dead. Zan says he was having sex and he couldn’t stay hard, where was the hundred dollar bill? At yoga, I notice the ceiling fans for the first time, turning and turning without effect. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a mouse, crawling beyond power.

  Later, I wanted to be fifteen and sheltered by a force field, flying around with mysterious best friends, solving the world’s problems. Brodie and I go to a performance about 9-11. This one actor talks about running into a homeless guy after the Towers went down, and how could he be so insensitive as to ask for change at a time like this? We rush away after 15 minutes, pull open the door and we can’t get through because there are so many people. Oh no—we’re backstage.

  I’ve run out of passionflower tincture, so I can’t sleep. Who says herbs aren’t addictive? The roaches are all over the counter—what a nice new tablecloth! I make toast, which tastes freezer-burnt. They need to pass a law that says it can never get dark before 8 p.m.—I really need my sunshine. Rue says pretty soon you’ll be a houseplant, and he’s right, I’m stretching out to the sun from behind closed windows, though at least I have a little more mobility. I can wipe the come off the floor, though immediately I feel so exhausted that I can’t do anything else but put on Frankie Bones and breathe deeply, hoping for air.

  Days when I never wake up, just walk around delaying sleep. This guy on the Geary bus says you don’t know where Geary Street is, do you? Nope. At 1:30 a.m., I finally get a trick—I was about to go to the Power Exchange but I love hotel lobbies late at night, the shelter of the chandeliers, wondering what the security guards think of me so I yawn, pretending I’m just so used to all this money. Then the hallway that goes on and on, I want to run back and forth! The trick’s nervous, he keeps saying I just didn’t want to deal with the bars, you know what I mean.

  I say: I’m the last person you need to explain this to. The toiletries all have pictures of the lobby and I think of starting a collection. I used to collect crystals from hotel chandeliers. Afterwards, everything’s crisp—it’s the last moment of my day. Outside my building, the same hooker is working, but is her hair wet, makeup smeared, or is it just the light? I want to invite her up for tea, but I’m worried that she wouldn’t understand my attempt at solidarity.

  Whole Foods on Sunday: this woman screams at her kid in the stroller—SAY APPLE. At the fish counter, a woman in fur wants to know which fish is the least fishy. There are so many different kinds of roaches. There are the tiny ones, or are they babies? The short, fat, dark ones. The big, long brown ones are the scariest and the fastest, reaching their heads out from around corners.

  Obviously, I’m trying to get around talking about my nerves, winding around my body like an electrified fence—turn it down, turn it down! Tendons betray me, pincushions for the air and everything beyond it, weighing down on me, just me, why me? Outside Bagdad Café, this guy grabs his boyfriend and points at some muscleboy—look at those fucking lats, he says. I go inside to use the bathroom, then sit on the bench outside Harvest Market and watch the gays go by—there are so many ways to wear khakis! This woman tells me she went to see a psychic, the psychic told her someone’s after you, give me your refrigerator.

  I like the way this trick’s whole body clenches then releases every time my dick goes in and out of his ass. I hold his neck. The shower’s fancy for a motel, tiles on the ceiling and a light inside. Afterwards, I go for a walk and I realize I’m in the urban suburb at the bottom of Russian Hill—big guys in suits, smoking cigars. A gym called Gorilla Sports inside an old movie theater. Two guys walk by singing a cute song—I hate fags, I hate fags! The women with them giggle, hee hee hee.

  Two-thirds of the way through yoga and I’m still energetic, yes this is the answer and then boom the exhaustion hits me, I almost fall asleep during final relaxation. I realize the sky is the deepest, brightest blue at dusk, so who needs daytime? In the locker room, two white guys talk about traveling to Vietnam, how beautiful it is, how nice the people are. Then one of them says he was in the infantry during the Vietnam War.

  I’m saved from runaway desire until I see this other guy’s back, just let me grab on and stay there—a koala bear in a tree, how cute! Andee calls from Berlin, he went to Greifbar and everyone was so drunk they couldn’t even stand up. He says we never got that drunk, did we? I say no, they need to learn a few tricks from their New York sisters—it’s time for lines! Then at least they can say: you gotta bump?

  Times when the lines were cut with too much laxative, on my way from the bar to the after-hours, I’d have to shit in the street. Andee says everyone in Berlin goes to the sun box, it helps with seasonal affective disorder. You mean the tanning salon. Does it help with four-seasonal affective disorder?

  Another annoying call: what service do you provide? A hot dog and a hernia, honey, pass the ketchup. At Magdalena’s birthday party, everyone’s sweet and cuddly—though Zan keeps throwing weird shady comments out of nowhere. Something like: watch out for Mattilda, she’s got lots of STDs. Then she wants to hug me and pretend we’ve been boyfriends since we were nineteen. We were boyfriends when we were nineteen, but that was almost ten years ago.

  This straight-acting boy who I’m practically drooling over goes to bed. Let me be clear here—when I say I’m drooling over the straight boy, I mean that the drool piles up inside my mouth, choking me. No one notices. Rhania drives me home, a puddle forming in my lap—is that a hole in the roof, or are you just happy to see me?

  Rue has pneumonia, that’s why she’s been vomiting for four days. I’m worried about her, but I’m also worried that I’m gonna get pneumonia too. Fatigue and horniness fighting it out in my head, and—as usual—fatigue wins big. Brodie invites me to a going-away party for people I don’t know, but I’m going away to Diamond Heights. Sure, the views are good, but what a hideous neighborhood—the dark years of architecture, after the U.S. saved the world. The trick will call me a cab, and the cab will take six hours to find the place, small talk will get so large that neither of us will be able to move. That will be the going-away party.

  There’s a big ditch next door to my building, where they tore down this huge laundromat but left up the façade. I throw my rotting food down there so the roaches don’t get it, figure it’ll biodegrade faster anyway. In the big room at yoga, I can hear the fluorescent lights humming or maybe that’s the heat, boiling our bodies into all these weird positions. After class, one guy asks—is there a specific temperature the room’s supposed to be? Good question. Downstairs, someone’s talking about the owner’s new Porsche, or is the Mercedes SUV new and the Porsche old?

  Ms. Diamond Heights wants to watch Will & Grace, but I’m worried she doesn’t think the meter’s running. I get all romantic and seduce her: let’s go into the bedroom. On a bathroom break, I notice an hour’s passed—I say how ’bout if we just relax and come when we’re ready, you can pay me 250. Suddenly this bitch gets uptight. Before, we’d been exchanging porn talk and pulling back and forth and back from coming, not yet. It was fun, I was turning it out, I was feeling it, he was feeling me, I figured I’d give him a nice deal and we’d relax into searing orgasms.

  But no—Ms. Diamond Heights of the three-bedroom house, views of all San Francisco and artifacts strewn about like knickknacks—Ms. Diamond Heights who told me she bought the house three years ago at the height of the market, Ms. Diamond Heights can’t afford more than 150 because she’s losing her technology job. I tell her she can come all over me, but then I figure I might as well come too, even though I was fantasizing about a bar pick-up. I hate bars. I can’t even remember the last time I picked someone up a bar. I know I’ll want to kill Diamond after I come,
but this is still before.

  It’s one of those orgasms that could be amazing, but it arrives when I’m trying to prevent it. Then Diamond comes on me, and I want to kill him. Luckily the cab shows up quickly, but one of these days, honey, one of these days. Miss Scarlet. In the study. With the lead pipe.

  After the chiropractor, my jaw aches and I just want to lie down and die. Wait: here comes a toothache. I love healthcare practitioners. This trick has the ugliest apartment I’ve ever seen in my life, so many cigarette burns and wax stains in the carpet, it’s two choices: stick to it, or fall through. Of course he has a waterbed. Limo after limo on Polk Street—or even better, the fake cable cars with loads of screaming drunken straight guys—where are all these wonderful citizens going? I refuse to take another nap—so sick of that bed, sick in the head. Tonight’s solstice, another excuse for everyone to get fucked up. It’s the holidays, right, the holidays—oh the holidays. Tell me where it hurts and I’ll get the make-up, break-up, this is a fucking stick up! Just stick it in. Next season’s look: I killed my best friend.

  I’m worried that when I push food down the drain, I’m not only clogging the drain, but also feeding the roaches—burnt beans and rotting grains, a feast for their senses! I actually make it to the solstice party at the Fourteenth Street House for the first time ever, it’s so crowded that people are standing in line. They send twenty of us around the block so we can get some cardio.

  There’s a cute boy in line and that’s the boy of my night: Jeremy. We make out—he has such nice big soft lips. He’s aggressive and almost frantic, grinding down on me—his favorite position is to pull one of my legs up and push his dick between my leg and my asshole, fun. Everyone’s crowding around us but we’re alone, together, opening our eyes every once in a while to look around: bigger crowd.

  Jeremy keeps teasing my asshole with his dick and I keep switching positions and then we slow down, oh it’s such pressure between our lips and the magnetic pull as his dick brushes my asshole so gently, and then the head is inside, I pull away. Don’t want to get fucked without a condom in front of all these people—what a bad example—and maybe I don’t want to get fucked without a condom, period. But then I’m sitting on his lap again, his dick pushing inside me, he’s grabbing my chest all over like he’s holding me in and damn I can’t stop from shooting, he shoves his dick in farther and leans forward to catch some of my come in his mouth.

  What a fun discovery—holding hands, we explore the house but mostly each other. The highlight is later, sucking him off upstairs while the hippies are pounding on their drums, sweat pouring down my face I almost don’t know where I am except head resting against his leg, dick pumping my mouth and he’s moaning moaning moaning come into my throat it’s like I’m being cradled there in his lap with something nice to suck on. I sit up and spit come into his mouth, what a messy concoction! We find vegan sushi, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

  LEARNING

  It’s the morning of Christmas Eve and the marquee at Frenchy’s says COME SEE OUR HO HO HO’S, but what about me, discreetly plying my trade from only a few hundred feet away? I go to yoga and there’s hardly anyone there, the employees want to leave. The instructor says let’s get cocktails!

  I get home, and I’m ready to throw all my dishes out the window and listen to them smash. Maybe I should go back to the yoga studio and throw a brick through the window. But that would hurt my hands.

  I need exercise, but everything except Bikram fucking yoga destroys my fragile fragile body. I’m so angry, screaming hurts my throat and pounding my head against the wall hurts my neck—what are the other options? Taking a plane somewhere would destroy my digestion, should I just turn up the music and see what happens? Last-minute Christmas sale: I need a body that doesn’t hurt so much.

  Midnight and I have a manic moment, must be all those gifts piled under the tall tall tree, oh everything smells like gift-wrap and pine, oh how I love the smell of pine! And the reindeer flying through the window—oh shit, now there’s glass everywhere. I throw together a Christmas wig anyway, purple hair tied in big messy ponytails, toilet cozie doll on top with a garland of plastic poinsettias. Then it’s Christmas and I’m a gingham catastrophe—dress and oven mitts that match, or clash, depending on your opinion. And who asked for your opinion? Christmas stockings over my shoes, makeup smeared everywhere, red lipstick and green glitter and don’t forget white, oh it’s a white white Christmas!

  Magda comes over to do her makeup and then we rush off to the Castro Theatre for Female Trouble. The movie’s gorgeous, but awfully long. Our bathroom photo shoot is the highlight, Magda on the toilet and I’m sprawled on the floor. Then we’re in the Badlands bathroom with the boys complaining—we thought it would be fun to terrorize them, but we were wrong. Later, we’re at the Stud and fags are just gaping at me like what on earth, or worse—they’re saying: you go, girl! That’s what straight people say. If only these girls would learn. Pick something—anything—and learn it.

  The day after Christmas and there are still no evening yoga classes, my trick has eyebrows like Dracula or at least someone from Transylvania. He’s from L.A. Wants me to stab him with a fake knife, push it into his belly and there’s a website for it. When he comes, I see two strands of saliva between his upper and lower gums like fangs.

  Of course I shouldn’t tell anyone this, but I’ve been thinking about Jeremy since the day we met, kissing those yum yummy lips and then collapsing in his lap, take me into your arms! He comes over and I’m nervous, we drive to the beach in the rain, the waves are frightening in the dark but I love all the air. That’s why we’re there; Jeremy thinks it’s funny and we hold hands, which makes me giddy. We walk towards the ocean and I’m trying to piss when the tide comes in—rushing backwards, I trip over Jeremy and fall flat on my back. The water pours over me and I can’t stop laughing.

  Jeremy’s surprised that I’m not more upset—he says: I’d be cursing and yelling—but I just think it’s funny, I mean I think it’s funny because I’m with Jeremy. And I’m glad he has a car, otherwise I’d probably get sick out in the cold, waiting for the bus.

  I’m soaked and sandy and freezing; we head to my house. I get undressed and we make out but I’m nervous, I need to eat. I eat in Jeremy’s lap, he holds me but I’m still nervous—I don’t know what to do with all this vulnerability rushing inside me. I thought I didn’t go on dates because I didn’t meet the right people, but maybe this is why—we take a shower and I’m almost shaking, Jeremy says is it because we had such a great first time? We go to a cheesy but gleefully stylized movie that’s somehow beautiful, it’s about how tiny miracles change people’s lives so easily, and how you have to go after what you want, which is probably what you need. Jeremy and I hold hands, I kiss his neck.

  Back at my house, Jeremy’s tired because he went out drinking the other night and ended up doing coke then crystal. I wonder how often that happens. Jeremy wants to know what I do for a living—I’ve already told him I’m a whore. No, really, he says. I guess he’s used to a more respectable crowd, but he recovers quickly—I’m a total slut, he says—it’s not much different. I say: you have more fun. We kiss goodbye, I feel calm with anticipation.

  A few days later, Jeremy and I are jerking off in his car, cops bothering the girls working the street and I hate the fucking cops. We drive around the corner instead of going upstairs. I love Jeremy’s expression when he comes, a baby ready to cry. I’m pushing Jeremy’s head to my dick—desperate for release I say please—and when I come I’m screaming, the windows are fogged.

  I’m so excited about yoga but then I get scared, almost like with Jeremy but he holds me. This yoga beats me—turn the fucking heat down or I’m gonna vomit! Afterwards, there’s a long line for the showers and one guy’s practically doing his laundry in there, I want to smack him. The owner’s telling someone about installing a private shower for himself and I want to smack him too. Smack smack smack and they all fall like d
ominoes. Yoga is so relaxing!

  I want to go to the tops of tall buildings and look at the views, but Jeremy wants me to go to Oakland in the rain. I bring him ginger and ganmaoling tablets because he’s getting over a cold, I don’t want to kiss but I want to kiss. It’s so easy and smooth until Jeremy says why fight gay landlords who evict tenants with AIDS when you can fight the Christian Right? He thinks mainstream gay people aren’t the real enemy—I’m suspicious that he’s on their side.

  This is the point where usually I’d disengage, but this time I want to see what else is possible. Jeremy says I really like you. I like him so much and I’m scared I mean I’m not scared—at least, not when I’m with him. On my way home, the Seventh and Market 24-hour check-cashing place is jammed and the cops drive up and arrest two black guys who are just standing there. The cop car drives off and then this one white guy chases after the only other white guy there with a baseball bat—racial profiling is so effective! The 19 bus stop has moved, so I miss two buses in a row.

  I dream that it’s sunny and warm out; I can sit on the fire escape to get tan again. I wake up covered in sweaty sheets, but it’s still cloudy out. Rue’s sick again, body giving out. Chrissie says girl, I need someone to open me up—it’s been a hideous afternoon, give me a razor blade. She’s running around my house, filling a vase she got at Goodwill with batteries and pens: art. Benjamin calls to figure out which New Year’s party to go to, I want to go back to bed. Chrissie says remember when we used to get high together, why don’t you just do a bump?