So Many Ways to Sleep Badly

by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

  Kid Koala rescues me from oblivion, with that crazy maudlin moaning and groaning only possible with amazing feats of turntable madness. Wait: is it maudlin or melancholy? I don’t have a clue what he’s doing, but it sounds like a trumpet, and one of those big string instruments, mixed with a foghorn in the rain, I love the foghorn.

  But then I’m sad, just like that—the sentence ends, and then I’m sad again. Should I still go out for a walk? Okay, now Kid Koala’s got dogs barking into violins as the records skip and the melody becomes a marching band in tandem with horror soundtracks backwards. Anything is possible, until my stomachache—well, that’s what you get for eating beans at 2:36 a.m. On NPR: America is one of the most complex and vibrant brands I’ve ever met—someone actually says that. She’s a former State Department official—or something like that—her job didn’t work out because she moved in right after 9-11, and no one liked her. The best part of the Medea Project performance is this dance number one woman does, falling and collapsing in high heels—I want to gasp, but I almost can’t breathe it’s so good, reminds me of what I would want to do if I wasn’t so injured. Afterwards, there’s a dyke who moved here from Chicago, talking about looking for the other black people, and she didn’t find many until she worked at the jail: there they were—San Francisco natives, all of them.

  I wonder if I’ll ever find exercise that doesn’t hurt. Rue comes over and I have a breakdown about everybody’s inconsistencies, then we go on a walk for seven blocks until I’m completely exhausted. At least it’s fun to lie in Rue’s arms, and hope to be saved. An NPR reporter on the BBC: I still think of England as Mother England, we’re all English in one way or another. Pledge drive—it’s only 33 cents a day to support Mother England. Peter Ustinov died today—he won his first Oscar for training slaves to fight as gladiators in Spartacus! James Bond says: when Peter and I fucked, it was like a train hitting Mother Teresa.

  The U.S. government admits to killing two Iraqi journalists: we regret that we didn’t like what they were saying. Ralowe’s strung out from eating too much sugar with the hipsters yesterday, she keeps saying I don’t know why I went to that party—you said you’d be there. But I never said I’d be there, you should have called me. She says: why did I think you’d be there—it’s the sugar, I have to call people and warn them about the sugar, everybody just lives that way, Mattilda—is there any hope?

  We go wheatpasting, which is fun, except that when I get home I feel good for about one-and-a-half minutes and then I get the full fibromyalgia drama—everything aches, from jaw to heels. Writing checks hurts more than just about anything else—I guess I should stop paying bills. For some reason, I get up at noon—I think it’s the earliest I’ve been up in about a year. There’s a whole different variety of radio programs. I don’t like any of them. I go back to bed. Ralowe thinks maybe he was a crack baby. Sure, why not. Because I was adopted, he says: is there a test I can take to find out? Maybe you should call your parents.

  Ralowe realizes he was born in 1975, that’s too early to be a crack baby. Then he drinks a bottle of kombucha tea, and starts twisting his body side to side, and shaking his head with his tongue sticking out and his hands in the air. Well, if you weren’t a crack baby then, you certainly are now. But it’s okay—Ralowe and I are gonna move to LA and meet the woman who made so much money selling Avon that she started Hairless Cat Magazine, just to do something good for the world.

  Benjamin calls, she says I was having sex with this guy and he turned to me and said: you remind me of the guy that gave me HIV. Speaking of romance and death, I go over someone’s house for a hot internet hook up, and here is the lovely response I get: “I think we’ll pass.” Pass me the machine gun and I’ll give you a facelift.

  I walk to Lafayette Park, and some guy who I’m not attracted to gives me a terrible blow job, but first he asks yet another romantic question: is it clean? Walking down the hill into the lowlands of Pacific Heights, I’m screaming I HATE THE WORLD, which makes me feel much better.

  I always thought that people who became celibate were a little crazy, but now it sounds awfully appealing. If only someone would pay my rent! Even though I used to feel more despair about life in general, I did feel like I belonged to a sexual culture of faggot freaks who loved and hated and dated one another. Don’t get me wrong—we would never have used the word dated. We cultivated sluttiness and painted our nails, hung out with dykes because we scorned the larger world of fags, which we were also a part of. But we didn’t think so.

  We believed in dreams, even if we didn’t think they’d come true. My heart is still broken from the first guy who didn’t call me back—we met at an ACT UP meeting, he was from Pittsburgh. Benjamin leaves a message: I think I called you recently, but I’m not sure why. Ralowe comes over to help me with my life, and I’m having trouble getting off the floor: do you think everything’s getting worse?

  As Easter approaches, we take a look at the historical uses of crucifixion as a means of execution. But what about the price of oil? Some pigeons are beautiful, with bright eyes and shiny feathers, then others look like they’ve been through a car crash. But they all hang out together, preening and poking each other during the quiet moments.

  I read Samuel Delany’s Heavenly Breakfast, about living in a commune in the East Village in 1967, and it’s too distant in tone and even content until the end, when the commune collapses and I’m left with tears in my eyes, trying to figure out how to cope. Also, thinking about their commune—twenty people in three rooms—and how I could never do that, I wonder what I’m missing out on.

  Earlier, I was thinking about what drug addicts have that I don’t, or what I have that drug addicts don’t. I got confused.

  I wonder what would happen if I met someone who was the head of Football Research at Liverpool University—marriage! But what would I wear? How ’bout a dark blue cap with the BBC lettering, it looks so official that I could get into 3Com Park for free—I mean a 75-dollar pledge. But sweetheart—that’s U.S. football.

  The April Fool’s Day Pro-America Parade turns out well—everyone in their red, white, and blue finery, and I have to admit it is awfully fun to scream U-S-A like a frat boy and then yell KILL KILL KILL. The climax is the smashing of a cardboard cow in front of Neiman Marcus, as red paint pours all over the sidewalk, though it does end up getting people arrested. For some reason, the organizers didn’t plan legal, media, or police negotiation. A sixty-year-old tourist gets knocked over by charging cops, and four people get arrested. Everyone’s in panic mode as someone rides off with the sound system and the genuine police billy club I’ve snatched from the ground. A tourist screams at the cops, with cocktail in hand.

  After people get dragged off, a police officer tries to talk to us about why he’s right. I go to Macy’s to use the bathroom, they’ve got a Marc Jacobs shirt stenciled with something about rock ’n’ roll—$160. Though I prefer the vinyl jacket for $865. Outside, everyone’s still there. Some people go to the police station; I go home and try not to lie down.

  Chrissie leaves me a message: I need to end our relationship because I’m tired of hurting you, and tired of being hurt by you. What is she talking about? Benjamin watches some TV show about ecstasy. What do you think about ecstasy therapy, she says—I’ve never done ecstasy, do you think it would help?

  I did plenty of ecstasy therapy. It didn’t help.

  BACK TO THE FAMILY

  There’s a fire across the street, I go out on my fire escape in the cold—yes, it’s cold again, really cold. The air smells charred, which is strange because there’s so much of it between here and there, so the fire must be large—or somehow the charred air is getting stuck on my fire escape. I go back inside. Ralowe says she likes the new awkward delivery of my answering message. But the message hasn’t changed. My sweatshop-free organic underwear finally arrives—it’s not so stylish, but it’s awfully soft. On the radio, Jennifer Stone says: the cross is a weapon of mass destruction, imagine wearin
g an electric chair on a string around your throat.

  I go to a movie at the Castro, where I run into Hektor and Mark at exactly the same time. Mark’s just walking by, he’s working in corporate something or other, which I guess he tells me so I’ll be scandalized. But I already know. Hektor and I go into the movie with his friend who seems sweet. The movie is hilarious—it’s not supposed to be, but I can’t stop laughing. The main character clutches his heart at the end, on the bridge where he picks up guys, and then he just collapses into heaven—everything’s bright and he can finally feel intimacy. I’m cackling and almost choking—I think the audience knows it’s funny too because no one says anything. I can’t breathe, I get a pain in my belly from so much laughing, but it’s worth it—afterwards, I have so much energy that I even think of going out.

  Meanwhile, there’s pot smoke blowing through the walls and into my apartment, but I can’t stop thinking about Tom Cruise’s hardest break-up ever! Huge roaches on my counter—they went away for a while, but they’re back from a healthy trip to neighborhood restaurants, maybe they even ate the rats. Several people have revealed their deep fears of roaches versus rats to me recently, maybe when I’ve opened a cabinet and a prime specimen has tumbled to the counter—oh, there you are.

  Now that I know it’s the pigeons in the ceiling, and the pipes that make the screeching noise, the only time I worry about the rats is when I hear that weird tapping sound while I’m in bed, it sounds like the rats jumping down to a lower level in the wall. Sometimes the electricity flashes a little, so maybe it’s the refrigerator—except the refrigerator isn’t in the wall.

  It’s a freezing, foggy night and I go on a 3 a.m. walk. I decide to figure out where Polk Street stops being Polk Street, and it’s not until around Washington, which is pretty surprising, actually—that’s fully Nob Hill if you’re over a few blocks. I’m having such a good time looking at all the old buildings and neon signs, some on and some off, the people crowded into the 24-hour donut shop. A lot of scary, speed-destroyed faces on the way back, and of course the cops, but it still feels calm.

  Around Sutter, there are these two white guys hanging out in an alley, one of them points drunkenly my way and yells hey, you fucking faggot—get away, I need to get some pussy. I turn around—bitch, I live here, you don’t. Then there are a couple groups of weird straight guys who aren’t white and aren’t as interested in me. I wonder why all these straight guys come to Polk Street on the weekends and walk up and down, like me I guess. It’s not the yuppies who were in the bars earlier, it’s an entirely different, rougher crowd that might be scarier in the physical violence way, but it stills feels better than yuppies. Especially now that the last sketchy dive bar on Polk Street, Katie’s, turned into Blur. I think that really might have been the last one. Except the Rendezvous, with a lease that runs out in May.

  Though what are straight guys getting from Polk Street? Speed, I guess. Or they’re supposedly pimps. At home, I feel better. Doctor says: more walks. Actually, doctor says more sleeping pills—they’re not addictive—just take more. I don’t think so. It’s the next night, I get in bed but I’m wired. I get out of bed—maybe tomorrow I’ll actually take the sleeping pills, but tonight I’m going to read the newest autobiography in my ’70s radical explorations: this one is H. Rap Brown, who says, “there’s only one party in America and that’s the party of white nationalism.”

  On the phone sex line, this guy who announces he’s 100 percent Italian tells me he’s gonna pump five tablespoons of come down my throat when I’m not looking. Florence calls to alert me to the fact that the real estate market in D.C. is hot, she’s only selling properties in her building but that keeps her busy. She tells me about the condo my parents bought, and how if I’d just make up with them, then I’d have a great place to stay—you’d love the restaurants in the neighborhood, and oh the furniture stores—though the condo won’t be ready for a year because it isn’t built yet. She says: your life would be so easy if you’d just make up with them, think about it that way—will you think about it?

  Then Florence wants me to think about getting new clothes. She doesn’t mind if they look gay—just none of that flea market look. Will you think about that? I think about whether my beans are ready. Florence wants to know if I got the invitation for Rose’s art show. No. Well, she said she sent you one. I didn’t get it. Well you should call her, she’s home today and she was asking about you. She hasn’t called here to ask. Well, you’re so hard to reach.

  I get up from not sleeping to realize I was sleeping. I know because I was thinking, over and over again, that I needed to make it to the meeting to plan some sort of ’70s covert action that involved elaborate wigs and an endless array of maps. When I wake up, it’s not the ’70s but I am in some flashback state, not a world of bell-bottoms but a world where the holes in the toast are scaring me. I have to turn on all the lights to make sure no one’s behind the shower curtain, in the closet—and then I shield myself from the brightness, eat the holes in my toast, get back in bed.

  In Ralowe’s dream, he goes to Golden Era at 9 a.m. and runs into me, he says what are you doing up so early? I say I don’t want to talk about it; I’m having a confusion attack. Someone on the 9-11 Commission starts his questions to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by saying: thank you for your fulsome testimony. I look it up, but yes, I was right—fulsome means offensively insincere. Ralowe and I listen to President Bush’s press conference on the radio—Bush can’t even answer the simplest questions, I can’t believe he hasn’t figured it out yet. Someone asks if he’s made any mistakes. He pauses, stutters, says: I wish you’d given me that question ahead of time.

  I need a real dictionary; I’m still using the one I borrowed from Kinko’s in Boston nine years ago. I call Rose, she wants me to get the operation for carpal tunnel. But I don’t have carpal tunnel. What do you have? Fibromyalgia. Oh that’s terrible, I wonder if there’s a cure. So do I.

  Of course we’ve already talked about fibromyalgia, but this time Rose thinks maybe it’s because of my earrings. She just wants me to take them off. Then she asks an interesting and thought-provoking new question: when are you coming back to the family? Chrissie calls: I love you!

  I say: I love you. Chrissie says: did you get my message? I say yeah, was I supposed to call you back? She says just negate it—I was going through my process.

  Benjamin calls from downstairs—sorry I didn’t call first, but I’m having an emergency, can I come up? Turns out she has a trick at the Days Inn on the corner in five minutes, but she has to call the guy and her cellphone just went dead, she doesn’t have the number ’cause it’s on her phone—can she charge her phone? I’ve always wondered about that Days Inn, because I’ve never had a trick there. Sure, it looks sketchy, but there’s a huge clock you can see in the notquite lobby, and the best thing about the hotel is there’s a portion that’s just the frame of an old building, in the middle of two sections that are ’60s modern rundown ugliness. There’s some kind of balcony on the other side of the old façade—like it’s an amphitheater, and I’ve always been curious about the view from inside.

  Of course the trick’s flaking on Benjamin, and she’s upset about the trucker cap she’s wearing to look like a man. Plus, her electricity got turned off and this was the trick that was going to pay to turn it back on. We need to start a club for all the people who wake up at 1 p.m. and can’t face the world—we can talk to each other on the phone until the radio makes us cry at the same time. But Benjamin doesn’t want to cry. Advice for skipping stones: to get it to skip a lot, you need a flat stone about the size of your hand, and you need to throw it hard, down as well as out. A can of tuna doesn’t work as well as a bagel. Anger helps.

  I call Andee. For an hour, I’m a mess and she’s talking, then all the sudden she’s a mess and I’m talking. My headache takes over. My hands hurt. On the radio, I hear about the law that went into effect banning the killing of baby harp seals for fur, but it defi
nes seals older than three weeks as adults—so much maturity before a seal hunter bludgeons you into someone’s hat!

  I get my first trick in weeks, just after Ralowe and I go on the internet to place new ads—maybe it actually worked. But no, it’s from an old ad—the tragic thing is that I’m actually looking forward to it, because I haven’t had sex in so long. This changes when I arrive—the looking-forward part—the sex happens, I can tell he wants to get me off because his dick isn’t going anywhere. I lie back. Afterwards, I walk home, through Union Square and then up Geary. The weirdest thing is the new café that’s going to replace a Tenderloin gay bar with hardly any windows—the Hob Nob—yet another gentrification casualty.

  Vocabulary from my dreams: a Montenegro cocktail! It all happens in Provincetown, each house on Commercial Street has a cage that rises behind it like a stadium. I try to go to yoga—a huge building of packed rooms—I accidentally knock someone over who’s doing final relaxation on the top of a door frame, then step on someone’s hair in one crowded class. Needless to say, everyone hates me. I find the teacher I like, but then lose her in the hallway, and when I get to her class I’m trying to explain my injuries, but then that class is overflowing too.

  Crying, I go outside, onto a beach filled with redwoods until some punk kids are screaming WATCH OUT—Montenegro cocktails—and the cops, drinking cocktails in a boat-size Hummer with glass walls, are hurling gallon-size bottles of gasoline into the woods—Molotovs might have started the Russian Revolution, but Montenegro started the First World War! Somehow, nothing is on fire but I’m running far and fast. When I wake up, the bottoms of my feet hurt.