Someone on the radio says you can’t die from heartache, and then this trick comes over with a bag of three different kinds of poppers. He says: shit, I left the thing in my car—the thing. I’ll be right back. Can’t I just go back to bed—street cred: hole in my head? In my dream, Ralowe has the heat on and I’m sweating, there’s a plant in a glass jar inside of another plant’s pot—it needs company. In real life, I talk to my mother’s therapist—no kidding. It happens because of that time when my mother said something about her therapist not understanding her relationship with Dad. I said I could tell her a few things.
So—really—I tell my mother’s therapist a few things. And it’s fun, until the therapist starts talking about how my parents are crushed, destroyed by what they did—the therapist wants to talk about the four of us getting together. I say first, he has to acknowledge that he sexually abused me—that’s the first step—it’s been seven years since I confronted him, and he hasn’t even taken that first step. I think the therapist realizes she’s pushed the wrong button, but then my trick arrives. I have to go.
It’s summer out, but I’m still cooking for winter: beans with root vegetables, collard greens, teff. I feel like hell. Zero says sorry I haven’t talked to you lately; I don’t know what my problem is. Ralowe tells me the nerves in my ears will die if I don’t put the headphones on a certain way. He’s playing his music for me in the Indymedia room at the Redstone Building, distorted craziness and when I get bottled water across the street, it tastes like flat 7UP. It’s the brand of water that’s owned by 7UP. Ralowe says maybe there was a strike at the factory.
I go on a date, yes really a date—with that boy Jonah who I’ve thought was cute ever since I met him when I got out of jail after the Center escapade. We go to see The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie at the Castro, everyone gets gunned down at the end and then we walk out to these kids forming a crowd around one kid beating up another. In seconds, the cops arrive to drag people off—they know who they want, and everyone else leaves. These fags say: does this happen every day? We’re from Portland, and nothing this exciting ever happens there.
Tourists have so much insight. Jonah and I make out in the kitchen and it’s fun, the best part is just rubbing my face against his. He says he wants to take things slow, and that’s fine. What do you think—I’m a slut? Rue calls on the hottest day, he says it’s awful, Mattilda, it’s awful. I get wired, decide to walk to Rue’s house, but she says it’s too polluted out. I walk up to Russian Hill in the new shoes I accidentally bought on Haight Street, seized by the demon of consumerism and they’re not even as comfortable as I thought. My pinkie toes start to get chafed, but I keep walking. I’ve gotta get some kind of cardio exercise. Fifty minutes and I’m back in my apartment, it wasn’t as hot as Rue said—there was a nice breeze—but it’s later now, and I’m not in the Mission. There are big blisters on my toes—these shoes don’t even fit right.
Eric says: did you have your date yet? I say yeah, it was fun. Eric laughs—you didn’t tell me about it, I’ll have to keep bothering you. Andee runs into Zan in Berlin again, he says one thing we agree on is that it’s scandalous you’re not drinking cocktails—you don’t really feel any better? After two miraculous success stories, the Power Exchange is back to normal—everyone I’m hot for isn’t interested. I can’t believe I stay until closing, it’s so depressing and I don’t even get a good orgasm out of it, just light trails in my eyes. When I get home, I smell, even though I barely touched anyone—the cooties probably jumped off and landed on fresh meat. Matt calls to say are you ready for court tomorrow? Yeah, I have to bring a measuring tape this time so I can measure the fluorescents in the hallway ceiling and then replicate all that beautiful light.
Of course the judge isn’t in the courtroom, so it’s time to watch the Hall of Justice runway. My new boyfriend is working the Brooklyn Italian thug look, but today he’s got on a three-button suit and his shoes are freshly shined, burgundy shirt, and his eyes keep looking in my direction. I know he just wants me to hold him in my arms while he sobs heavily and I say: I’ll visit you in jail. For some reason, though, he won’t sit on the same bench as us. His suit is slightly wrinkled, even though it fits right, and that’s how I know he’s not used to wearing it.
The sweatshirt with half a word written on one side of the zipper—and the other half written on the other side—is very popular today. FRI-SCO makes several appearances, and baby-phat spends her share of time in the ladies room—lines? It’s all about stripes and solids for the formal set, patterns are a rarity, though Ms. Sausalito ’78—or maybe ’82—when did Sausalito go from counterculture haven to tourist trap? Ms. Sausalito is wearing lots of turquoise jewelry and a silk pants suit with yellow palm trees on blue, and the extra-extra-wide belt cinching it all together. Apparently, she needs to powder her nose quite often in the privacy of the bathroom. When she comes out, she leans over to us and says: are you driving the getaway car? Did she just come from the Weather Underground movie, or did she do her own time underground? Eleven a.m.—two hours late—and the judge has still not arrived. Ms. Sausalito asks me if I’m the judge. I say yes, everybody is dismissed—and she leaves.
THE NEW TOASTER
I play Diamanda’s “My World Is Empty Without You” for Rue, and I keep having to rewind it to the point where Diamanda goes from a growl to softness. I close my eyes and yes, I think of Rue dying—and whether my world will be empty without him. I know that’s dramatic, but we are listening to Diamanda. Then I play David Bowie’s version of the Jacques Brel song “Amsterdam,” because I’m a sucker for any ridiculous song about hookers. What’s the line? Something about giving up their bodies for a thousand other men.
Rue says a thousand—I think I’m up around five thousand. And five of them were fun. Later, there’s a report on NPR about tourism, 17 million visitors to San Francisco is down to 13 million, seven billion dollars is down to under six. Did they really just say seven billion dollars? I go to see Party Monster, where Macaulay Culkin plays club kid Michael Alig chopping up Angel the drug dealer and dropping him in the East River. It’s supposed to be the early nineties, but they’re playing Stacey Q and Miss Kittin—fuck that shit, I want club kid realness! Plus, we only get a few shots of the outfits—it was all about the outfits, right? And drugs, of course, which of course I start to crave, even with some of the worst acting combined with a script written by a not-so-creative ten-year-old.
My trick at the W wants me to stay over—when I tell him I’ve got to go, he says what, there’s someone else? That’s the funny part—play-acting—but then his personality suddenly changes, he says: you’re stupid. Why am I stupid? Because you’re not staying here, in the Heavenly Bed. That’s the bed’s official name, I remember that from another trick. The trick starts patting the bed, he says come over here—you haven’t done enough for me to pay you yet.
It’s a totally different culture out there in the East Bay, luckily Jaysen picks me up at the BART and we go to New World Vegetarian. There are two burn-outs from Burning Man counting out six hundred dollars in ones at their table. They got spotted by the feds smoking pot, and were issued a four-hundred-dollar ticket, but then they made six hundred in an hour of panhandling. Jaysen says he’s been working all the time, but he’s still broke. And since he started doing massage at Eros, his sex life is totally tied up with work, since he meets guys in the steam room on his break—he doesn’t like it. I say: I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
I come home and my whole apartment is filled with flies—where did they all come from? Ralowe scans the BAR and spots a new sex club—333 Linden—the ad shows a guy with his clothes on! Ralowe thinks that means it’ll be extra-bourgie, but I’m just looking for any new place where I can have bad sex.
Ralowe calls me in the morning—he actually went to 333, there was no one there, but the guy working sucked him off. Actually, Ralowe doesn’t say that much, she describes the setting but not the sex. What did the guy
look like? I don’t know. What did you do? Stuff. Was it fun? Yeah—it was great—but not worth ten dollars.
Actually, I go to 333 two hours before Ralowe, at night the alleys in Hayes Valley almost feel like alleys. I hear the house music and see the steel mesh door, when someone exits I ask him how it was. He says there’s no one there, but the guy behind the counter is nice. And you know what—I think of going in and asking that guy if he wants me to suck him off. But Ralowe will be ready soon, and I’m not horny anyway. The walk home is endlessly filled with fatigue, not to mention this sketcher who follows me for three blocks—Hey mister! Hey mister!
Mister Mary, Sir! I call the phone sex line—maybe I should be asexual. The new sea salt is not nearly as salty as the old, I just keep piling and piling it on until maybe there’s a little food with my salt, thanks. Would you like some fresh-ground pepper with that? Chrissie calls, she says I bought my plane ticket, and I’m leaving next Tuesday for West Virginia—I’m gonna live with my godmother for six months and get off drugs, then I’m gonna apprentice as a chef with my mother’s cousin in Vegas; I haven’t seen my godmother since I was four—and I’m not sure I’ll see another fag for six months—so I’m kind of nervous.
On the phone sex line, this guy doesn’t believe I haven’t come in a week—he says don’t you masturbate? The next guy wants a magical time, but then he’s worried that he knows me. I guess I care, because I study his voice for clues. I talk to some guy, who’s supposedly bisexual, but by the end it’s full gay porn talk—he wants to breed me—I come anyway.
The new toaster is amazing. Not only is it red, but I don’t have to flip the toast over three times—and I can toast two pieces at once, pure luxury! But what is going on with my sinuses? It’s like New York all over again—collapsing on stoops, gazing at any hot guy thinking maybe he’s the one to drag me out of all this pain. Staring into space, I’m so tired I want to kill myself just for being alive.
I think about cruising craigslist, even though I’ve banned myself—how am I supposed to have bad sex without craigslist? I try Lafayette Park—it’s the first foggy night in months, and there’s some crazy shit going on. I’m staring at what looks like someone’s bags on a bench, but when I get closer I see it’s this guy lying down with no pants on, boots sitting on the ground below his feet, ass in the air, jerking off. He’s got long gray hair and a beard, kind of a lumberjack type and the vacuum cleaner salesman standing next to me smells like a closet full of moldy laundry and moth balls.
Then there’s the guy on the tennis court, sticking his dick through the fence, and a guy outside the fence sucking him off. The guy’s really pumping away, I come closer to get a good look—he’s the same guy I ran into on one of the benches in the clearing, a black guy with a white hoodie that obscures his face. When he sees me, he pulls away to button up. I say you don’t have to stop, and he grunts—he’s got an aggressive limp like a straight guy who gets in fights, but what kind of straight guy would be working that faggotty jailhouse fantasy?
Then when I circle around again, the lumberjack guy has moved to a different bench, but same scene. Something’s really weird, because then I spot the guy from the tennis court, on the other tennis court, and the same guy is sucking his cock again. There are some drunken straight guys in the dark above me, just standing around waiting—I’m wondering if it’s some bashing scenario because I think I hear them say something about faggots. I stand there below them, trying to figure it out. Then I walk around the circuit, there’s a homeless guy on a bench who sits up and says: I couldn’t get a taxi I couldn’t get a taxi.
When I’m back around, the bashers are down below, where it’s even darker, standing there sort of swaying because they’re so drunk but not touching or saying anything. It’s really eerie. I figure I better go home. As I turn to walk through the tennis court, some guy hurls something into the trashcan with a loud boom, and walks quickly towards me. I walk faster, trying not to look like I’m running away. But I’m running away.
THE LABORATORY
When mice chew, they sound like someone’s cutting my nails. Or maybe that’s the sink dripping, the hot water screeching, the ceiling caving in on my sinuses. It’s the anniversary of September 11, a Korean rice farmer and labor activist stabs himself to death on top of a police barricade at the WTO protests in Cancún, yelling WTO KILLS FARMERS. I’m stretching on the floor, collapsing into sobs as the Mexican government spokesperson says they may deport the Korean contingent for conducting a singing vigil at the site of the suicide.
My trick smells like that combination of liquor and cigarettes that everyone I used to sleep with smelled like—kind of rotten and not quite comforting. Sort of makes me want to vomit, but not nearly as much as earlier, recovering from the oil in the vegan pizza I ate at Rue’s last night. I thought that for some reason the oil didn’t affect me—a miracle—until I got out of bed and had to shit seven times. Then I went out into the heat, all nauseous and shaky.
Karoline’s showing me around this mall where the front is posh stores, but then you step into the back and each story is half as tall—and there are yoga studios and daycare centers. In the front, Karoline says, it’s rich fags and yuppies, but punk kids live in the back. Only in Santa Cruz, I think, and then I wonder where the ocean is. I’m wandering around in the stairways, but I can’t figure out how to get to the front. Finally, I find a door that leads outside, but into an old crumbling graveyard with lots of little kids and tourists. I don’t want to step on the stones or the plants or the kids, so it’s hard to walk.
There’s this really steep area of just slate that feels like it’s going to crack, and when I get to the top of that, there’s a café. An old woman is smoking so many cigarettes that she has a silver football helmet full of ashes and butts. She pours the helmet over her head, laughing, and then drops it. When I reach over to hug her with my legs, I notice a spider on her head. Then I look closer, and it’s maggots. My father’s somewhere. When I wake up, it’s so hot that I’m sweating under just a sheet, something is terribly wrong.
I’m not sure how much of the mouse problem is my imagination, and how much is theirs. I finally figured out that the nail-clipping sound isn’t the rats eating my walls, but the pigeons talking. Now I’m thinking that all the noise is the pigeons in the ceiling, not the rats under the cabinet, but what’s that scampering across the floor? My wrists burn, but before the mall or the maggots or the rats, there’s the parking lot. I’m waiting for my sister in the car, and I decide to move it, only I’m not at the wheel and I almost hit all the homophobic kids screaming at me. There’s a huge headless man on top of a truck, asking for change, but then I realize that he’s not headless because he’s got his head in his hands. He’s a machine that comes out to chase me, and I’m trying to move the car. I leave my bag on the side of the road, that’s how we know dreams are just like reality.
I wake up with a beautiful cool breeze blowing the curtains up almost to the ceiling—honey, that’s no breeze, that’s a windstorm! Whatever it is, it means the heat wave is finally over and I don’t ever want to move from this place of wind in my covers. When I get up, I realize I should have stayed in bed—because I’m still in bed in my head. Eventually I go on a walk, to avoid a terrible nap.
I decide to try the Turkish restaurant with Magdalena because otherwise I’ll have to get steamed vegetables at the Thai restaurant again, since everything else makes me feel like I’m crashing from acid because of the MSG, or shitting non-stop because of the oil. I bite into a stuffed grape leaf and at first it tastes great, then my head’s so stuffy I can’t even open my eyes. I’m serious—it’s like someone just gave me a sleeping pill. On the bus, there’s this big straight guy in leather pants, grabbing his crotch, actually he’s just scratching there. He’s leaning back and staring at the women in the front or maybe out the window, pumping his crotch up into the air a few inches, over and over. This goes on for at least ten blocks—I’m totally enthralled—is that real
ly his hard-on pointing back towards me? He’s not cute, but I can feel myself getting hard anyway. Just as I’m about to get off the bus, I catch the eye of a woman behind me—she’s got the same perplexed look I have on my face. She meets my eyes and we start laughing, I can’t stop laughing, across the street and into everyone’s eyes with giggles.
So I feel good for a few minutes, then it’s back to the usual. When Chrissie takes off her sunglasses, it looks like someone hit her, and the bruises aren’t wearing off. She says no, it was makeup, but I guess it’s just the color of her skin: too many bones poking through her face. Black marks all over her knuckles, and she asks if she can shoot up in the bathroom; I can’t tell if she’s serious. I say: me first.
I ask Chrissie if she’s going to quit everything—she says well, of course I’ll go out on the weekends. I say you’re just going to West Virginia to get to the source, your own bathtub of crank and pretty soon you’ll own the whole town. She says it’ll be like three farm boys in a movie. She means a porn movie, but I say I hope it’s not Boys Don’t Cry—don’t end up like Brandon Teena, honey—well the tina’s a given, but skip the beatings, the blood and the bullets.
Chrissie has taxi vouchers, so we head over to the Tibetan restaurant, but they’re closed because it’s Monday. We’re in the Marina with nowhere to go—it’s like the Connecticut suburbs, right in the middle of San Francisco—four tiny blond women in waistless khakis love my pants, no they really love them. Thanks.
So Many Ways to Sleep Badly Page 17