The next day’s adventure begins and ends out on the fire escape in the sun with my shorts rolled up and oil all over my chest, I’m a porn movie just waiting to happen. In the fake condos across the street, this guy leans out of his second-floor window to smoke, but pretty soon he’s staring up at me. I try not to notice until the right moment. He waves, then runs inside and re-emerges with a camera. I pose with my plate of food. Later, I wave him over, but he has to go to work. Maybe another day is what I’m thinking.
Jeremy calls before bed, he says I’ve got two words and only two words: Marina. Safeway. It’s that game we play in bed—our two favorite locations are Fontana West, posh ’60s condos on the water, and, of course, Marina Safeway itself. We dream of the chilly produce aisle on hot summer days, the old ladies with Vuitton purses from way before it got trendy again, the straight men with manicures.
This guy comes on my face, and when I ask him to snap a picture, he says: evidence to live by. Throwing together my outfit for the anti-capitalist fashion show—why don’t I do this more often? I wake up manic about Prada, Prada, nothing but Prada. Jeremy wants me to dress him up but he’s scared—oh honey, don’t be worried, I’ll hug and kiss you, and if you need heroin . . . We photocopy the Prada label onto hundreds of sheets of paper and onto huge labels that go on everything. Garbage bags, Santa slippers, stuffed flamingo—we’re gonna rule every runway from here to Miami and back to Tokyo.
Jeremy and I are too gorgeous to even describe; let’s just say it’s all about minimalism. Mullets, visors, layers and layers of gowns and bathing suits, smeared lipstick and black glitter, stuffed animals beneath our clothes to help our figures, and the rest is art. We pick up Brodie, on the street someone says where’d you get those outfits? Prada. We’re late to the show, but we are the show. Everyone’s working anarcho chic runway damage: striped T-shirts, ties with cutoff dress shirts, asymmetrical hair. I say if everyone isn’t wearing Prada, how come they’re all wearing the same thing? I guess it’s anticapitalist, but not anti-fashion. Every time someone stares—which is every time—I say: it’s Prada. If someone says I like your Prada, I say how’d you know? Oh—the cut, of course.
Brodie disappears and the place is more than packed. Kirk’s one of the few people who fully appreciates us, his whole face lights up—he says Sahar just told me you’d be wearing Prada suits. Jeremy needs pot, so we go to the car and I get bitchy—everyone’s so tired, they look at me like tourists, I always feel like I’m wasting my outfits. Then Jeremy gets bitchy—I don’t know what to say to these people, this wig itches—I just need the right mix of drugs and alcohol and people and it isn’t happening.
We sit it out, which is what I like about our relationship: we’re drama’d out but we’re not having drama. We go to the Castro for runway, and I want to engage and enrage, but Jeremy wants to hide. We eat at Bagdad, where at least a couple of queens praise our Prada—do you know how much this cost? At my house, we take showers for hours and then Jeremy leaves, but let’s fast-forward to two more showers—that’s five for the day—four tricks, well that almost pays for the ergonomic desk chair and the air purifier!
Sometimes I get up in the morning, and even though I’m a mess, or maybe because I’m a mess, I need to talk to someone now because the world’s going to end. I call Allison because maybe it’s a good time to reach her. Then I call Rue. Rhania’s at work, Jeremy’s sleeping, I’m not ready for a long conversation with Andee or Ananda, Zan’s out of town, I’m not in the mood for Chrissie, I need to eat before Socket or Jaysen, okay forget the phone I better eat, that’s what I need: to eat.
Emergency: it looks like they’re starting construction next door, what am I going to do? I go out to look at apartments, reminds me how nice my place is. Even if the building’s a dump and the owner will only give me a rent adjustment, not a rent reduction. On NPR, they’re interviewing the woman that invented new ways to slaughter cows. She knows how they feel, which moo means they’re happy. She’s autistic, once she was incapacitated but now she’s a success story: every day she gets up to perfect the methods of murder.
The good news is that the construction next door won’t start until 2003, the bad news is that they’re planning a thirteen-story building. After all the times I’ve tried to get Jeremy to go to the Power Exchange, she goes alone. Bitch.
I’m obsessing about the boy across the street who took a photo of me. I think he’s in hiding, but tonight there are two buff guys with their shirts off, watching the internet. I get so horny that I go downstairs to watch their internet too, but they’ve pulled the blinds. I go to Frenchy’s and suck off some tweaker. The radio announcer says don’t pathologize, mythologize, but a Palestinian boy’s first word is “shooting.” In therapy, four personalities emerge. The best one is Marie, who says: oh Mattilda, she’s tired. Marie’s more me than me. Everything starts with choking, choking, choking—Latin is the language of torture, stop putting needles in me, I don’t even do drugs. Then back to the little boy, who says: why do they want to kill me? The twelve-year-old is enraged and desperate, internalizing the dying part, unaware of any other possible history. And then there’s the point where everything goes white, and I’m floating floating floating—it’s not just the dissociation, it’s the drugs, I guess they drugged me.
This guy comes over from the phone sex line; I’m always surprised when they show up. He’s cute, fucks my face until I’m bored, plus there’s something scratchy in my throat. I keep getting distracted by some awful smell—is that his ass, or his breath? Finally, I realize it’s his feet. I open all the windows after he leaves, but it still smells. The word that comes up over and over: release. Jeremy’s entering a diving competition and I’m going to a synagogue at a hotel where all these different parties are happening—one of the rooms is for rich hasids, then later people like hasids but they wear stylish red sun-hats and dresses like bibs. Then it’s every warehouse I’ve ever been to, except it’s Bloomingdale’s, it’s the Power Exchange, it’s my house, it’s Berlin. I’m trying to clear people out because I want to go to bed.
But then I figure I might as well dance, so I change into tight, bright floral shorts and do this move where my feet don’t touch the floor for 45 minutes. Finally, good exercise that doesn’t hurt—I’m weaving between cocktail waiters and high-end security guards, feet don’t stop pumping until the bath-and-body section, where there are lots of glass bottles on glass shelves with mirrors.
When I land, I’m looking for Jeremy, through an area where someone’s trying to pull a curtain—for a back room? But it’s too crowded, actually it’s a wrestling ring but I’m not going in there. I’m trying to slide through and some guy starts to rub my chest, but not until I find Jeremy. There’s Jeremy—he’s got a new haircut with tighter curls, I rush over to hug him but he turns away. I know it’s because he’s flirting with some boy, he looks really angry with me, saying not now and acting all cold too. I turn to the boy and smile: hi, I’m Mattilda. I can’t believe Jeremy won’t kiss me because he’s flirting, I’m boiling and the boy says I don’t live in a didacticism because this is Berlin where we have neighborhoods. Jeremy disagrees: didacticism is a neighborhood. Oh no—they both like those conversations!
The boy turns to leave; he’s the kind who can’t deal with boyfriends. And Jeremy still looks mad—I yell after the boy: you can have sex with him! This is where I realize it’s a dream because Jeremy’s so angry. What’s so good about having a relationship is that tired boys don’t matter to me; there are so so many tired boys and only one beautiful Jeremy, though that doesn’t answer the question of why this boy mattered to Jeremy. I go back into the dream because I still want to tell Jeremy that it was only the kiss, I was so excited to see him and there he was so cold over an even colder boy, because, after all, it was Germany. When I get back, I realize they’re selling office supplies—postal scales for one Mark—that’s too cheap, they must not work—I find one on the floor and I start bouncing up and down on it, readying
myself for takeoff. Waking up again, I feel so calm, because in the dream my legs were wings, pumping toward the sky.
MOTHER’S DAY
I hear the most horrible conversations in yoga studio locker rooms. This time, it’s a hatha studio but the owner of the Bikram place is there, bragging that the way to keep employees working hard is to get them to invest their life savings in the studio. Another guy starts talking about opening a factory in China—I’m serious. I want to say: slave labor or child labor? But the guy says something to me and I even smile. Why am I invested in his good will?
Today there are 67 pigeons standing in a row on the façade of the demolished laundromat, plus 33 more perched on the sign. An even hundred is as far as I can count. Only one pigeon is brown. Every time I meditate, I start to nod off—is it the liver detox pills? On the radio, Jennifer Stone says: Medea is a suicide bomber, she takes no prisoners.
I go to the new Ethiopian restaurant that took over Maye’s, Seafood Since 1887. It’s all about the teal booths, photos of old San Francisco on the walls, worn-out Oriental carpet—the only problem is the Trekkie techies arguing about who’s figured out the most complicated computer language. At home, I crash. What is wrong with the radio? First it’s taking care of Mother Earth like she’s your own mother—hello, have you met my mother? Then it’s an announcer finding his voice while covering Little League. And finally, Car Talk: I was driving my girlfriend’s Bronco and suddenly it was a tropical rain forest. No, Mary—that was your pants.
Jeremy’s great-aunt has closets and closets full of things she’s ordered from the Home Shopping Network, a whole attic filled with zip-front caftans and collectable figurines, but Jeremy says: you’re not the kind of boyfriend I could bring home. I’m insulted—I can’t imagine going to see Jeremy’s family in Minnesota, even if I got to try on all the great-aunt’s caftans. Actually, I hate caftans. But what does Jeremy mean? Jeremy says: you know, you’re just not the family type. I say: you’re just worried they’ll see who you really are. All this tension in my stomach, I’m wondering whether Jeremy’s ashamed of me—I’m not so sure I want to know. He says maybe you’re right.
How many times in one day can I meditate, each time more exhausting than the last? I’m not mentally ill, I’m mentally still! An old woman walks on the bus wearing a T-shirt that says Gray Matters. It’s Rue’s birthday, honey are you feeling thirty-five? Ninety-five—well, you always have been ahead of your time! Later, I’m sucking my mother’s cock and a piece of it comes off in my mouth—gross—and the crazy part is that up until that moment, I thought I was still awake, lying in bed misunderstanding everything. Jeremy tells me it’s Mother’s Day. Zan’s mother dies and he feels numb, doesn’t know what to think and I guess that’s how I’d feel too.
This trick is driving me crazy, everything he does makes me cringe so I’m sucking his cock and my jaw starts to hurt, it’s the new pain from the new yoga like half of my face is going numb. Job hazards: if I can’t jerk him off or suck him off, then what can I do? Finally I get hard, so I fuck him. Afterwards, he says: this may sound weird, but you’re the best sex partner I’ve ever had in my life.
Jeremy says some people like pets, and some people like their feet—and you don’t even have to feed your feet. We drive to Orr Hot Springs, Jeremy wants the windows closed but then I can’t breathe. He closes my window while I’m meditating; hello it’s about being hyper-aware, not brain-dead. All I can think is I’m sweating, open the fucking window, I’m sweating, open the fucking window—until I give up, and open it.
We get to Orr, the redwoods and the stars and could there be anything more beautiful than looking up at all those white things? And holding Jeremy in the steam room, he doesn’t want me to suck his dick there because it’s against the rules. Bitch, whose rules? After a few joints, though, he’s shooting his load all over my face in the hot tub, then running back to get the camera and I’m still there, posing for the world. The cold pool is the best, hills sloping upward into sky and those stars, so many stars, we’re stars!
In the warm pool is where I grab Jeremy’s head and start to shoot, but he pulls away and damn I’m shooting shooting darling I’m a shooting star! Jeremy says was there a big turtle in the water? Turtles live in shells, I say—if you were a turtle, you’d have a pretty shell and I’d come live inside.
There’s so much air, but I’m still learning to breathe: diaphragm, belly, chest up, into neck and head, down to the earth and up to the sky, more sky here too and maybe someday, everywhere, when everything will be easier. Sometimes, fighting all this pain I get from trying to take care of myself, I forget that maybe I’m still getting there, everywhere I want to be. Even though my head hurts, my neck is going numb, back muscles burning.
In the morning, I feel like a demolished parakeet and Jeremy’s aggro, I used to hate that word but it’s grown on me. The springs calm us both down—as long as I can meditate every hour, I’ll be okay. Jeremy hurt his finger and it’s swelling up, a lava lamp waiting to happen. In Guerneville, they won’t let me in the bar without ID, which is just fine with me. Jeremy jokes: such derivation is not alien to the syntax—he’s studying for his linguistics finals.
In the morning, I stay in bed for two extra hours to try and feel relaxed. I end up with a sinus headache and an attitude problem. I think there’s lavender in my eye pillow because my eyes are burning, the 400-dollar air purifier doesn’t do a damn thing. If I keep the hood of my sweatshirt over my head, will the day fade away? Oh my head my head my head, ache! At least my handwriting looks good. On my way home, “Pretty Woman” is blasting out of some bar and two guys start singing to me. I am a pretty woman, I swear I am! I wake up thinking how loving Jeremy is opening doors, though one door leads back to how all my friends were always trying to kill themselves and I was afraid of bridges because what if a gust of wind came and blew me off?
Opening doors to my heart and that’s a scary place, mace—no, pepper spray, it can make you blind and cause panic attacks—you definitely cry, maybe die. That time Zan and I got bashed after the March on Washington in ’93, which is where we met. We got bashed right after a million gays in white T-shirts packed their bags and flew home, leaving a lot of trash in the streets, including the preppy Georgetown University students who asked me and Zan what we were doing. Kissing. Their parents had probably given them pepper spray to keep them safe from muggers and black people. Or fags, I guess.
They sprayed it directly into my eyes, such a burning pain I was screaming into a restaurant where I splashed cold water in my face so red I thought it was spraypaint, the restaurant where I used to go late at night in high school. They said take this outside. I took it to the hospital for saline pumped directly into my eyes through tubes. They said it was a good thing I came right away because I might have lost my vision. Afterwards, a cop prevented me from using the snack room—not your kind. Meeting my parents for dinner the next night, they asked: why did you have to be so overt?
Benjamin wants to kill his mother and my trick is all about frottage, but after three couples arguing on Maury Povich about whether the child is his, my dick is sore. Frottage can be painful. The trick points to the TV and says black people are crazy. He’s black, but maybe he doesn’t realize I’m crazy. Later, phone sex is funny—all these tweakers playing games. This one guy wants to know if I was molested—well, yes, actually. Then he says I must be on some crazy drugs. I want to go over to this other guy’s house but it’s 4 a.m., my dick is jumping for side-stroke, back-stroke, fancy diving too—but what about the crawl? When I shoot, there’s so much come on the floor and I wonder who Jeremy is fucking.
The next day is only the usual garage sale: babies, rabies, and scabies. Your pick—a million dollars! Having experienced not only the glamour but the misfortune of celebrity over the years, Danielle Steel nonetheless does not park more than one or two of her twentysomething cars on the street at a time. It’s true that she’s lost count of all the cars, but since someone else writ
es her books, she spends most of her days with kids who’ve tried to kill themselves. Her maybe-gay son succeeded, she doesn’t want these kids to join him. Sometimes, late at night, Danielle Steel gets dressed up as Jackie Collins and stands out in the rain yelling TAXI!
Postmodern terrorism: the next target is the World Trade Center at Little New York in Vegas, and you thought gambling was a joke! Memorial Day and fighter jets are flying overhead, yesterday they arrested thirty people at the permitted anti-war demo. The protesters agreed to march on the sidewalks, without signs or noisemakers, but apparently they were still going too slow for democracy.
Well, I finally figured out how to use craigslist successfully. Posted for sex in Lafayette Park, just below Danielle Steel’s magnificent driveway, and then rushed over. The guys weren’t all that hot but damn I was fucking this guy in the dirt. And the fog was surrounding us with romance. Except that when I came, I felt disgusting. I don’t like the feeling of coming in a guy’s ass, even with a condom—I think it’s the physical sensation, like I’m trapped with nowhere to explode.
On the walk home, there’s this guy I’d die for, but stop dying, okay? He’s so clean-cut, it’s sick. I almost turn around and follow him home ’cause I’m disguised as clean-cut and sick too, but I figure I just came, it won’t be that fun to suck cock. Even this preppy blond jock boy’s—well sure I’d take his load if he offered it, but I’m not going to run back uphill stalking him. Though he did have his hands near his crotch, inviting me to watch, watch!
So Many Ways to Sleep Badly Page 7