So Many Ways to Sleep Badly

by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

  More blood: I know that’s what I’m going to hear about if I turn on the news. In the morning, it’s cloudy! Even if it’s humid and disgusting, I’m just grateful there’s no sun pouring into my poor apartment and making me sweat. Oh, wait, I can see blue sky getting ready to erase the clouds at any moment—same old San Francisco story—just give me some rain to help with all my pain! I know it didn’t help in the winter, but maybe there’s something about the reverse nature of the cosmos with respect to weather expectations. That sounds like something Imelda Marcos would say: when it’s 12 a.m. in New York, it’s 12 p.m. in Manila, the sun never sets in the Phillippines!

  I remember—it must have been years ago—when a few drops of passionflower tincture would settle me down for sleep, endless sleep. I never felt rested, but at least I felt like bed was a place to go where I might get something—Hummers weren’t on the market yet, so it wasn’t the new low-carb Hummer C2. What was it? Something about lying down and getting up feeling better, right?

  So here’s the problem about seeing my mother: I keep thinking about her, even after I just fucked this trick and my legs hurt, actually they’re shaking when I stand up but I’m still thinking about my mother, how I hate seeing her because it makes me feel so desperate, like I’ve done something wrong by not letting her lie. And then letting her.

  Andee doesn’t come to visit—he doesn’t have the money, and his mother doesn’t want to pay. She has cancer. Maybe I could pay, but I’m too annoyed at Andee for getting so close and not making it work. On the radio: telepathy. The story of my life—I’m no soft mattress, but I sure am caving in. One bite of food and I rush to the bathroom to shit—it was just kale, dinosaur kale—why are the dinosaurs getting back at me, poor Mattilda with the weak digestion? Then this trick comes over, he looks a little like Dick Cheney, only shorter.

  There are lots of demeaning jobs, and sucking Dick Cheney’s cock is definitely one of them. Everything he does is annoying—the way he scratches my rashes, sucks my cock so it bends against his throat, pokes me with his hands. I don’t actually suck his cock, because of that smell. He wants me to come on his face—no way!

  Blake goes to the hospital for a urinary tract infection that won’t go away, they keep giving him antibiotics but it’s still there. The doctor looks up at Blake and says you don’t have to worry, men don’t get urinary tract infections. Blake says I’m a transsexual. The doctor leaves the room to talk to a nurse, rushes back in and says WHAT DO YOU HAVE? Blake says um, I don’t know—what do you think? The doctor says no, do you have a penis?

  Everything starts itching when I put on clothes—I’ve already changed detergents three times, all of them hypo-allergenic, so I’m not sure what to do, other than go to the clinic and listen to them tell me they don’t have a clue. Oh, no—the toilet’s clogged again. I plunge it over and over, with no effect—except that my hands hurt, arms burn, neck feels broken with plants growing in the cracks between my bones then pulling the tendons tight, tighter. Everywhere on my face it feels like there are bruises like stones, groans, loans, lost retribution, pollution, articles of dissolution: my head, and everything that’s below; my feet, and everything that’s above.

  But let’s take a break: I’m on the bus, this woman enters with the full Madonna Material Girl look, and eyes filled with pure disgust or drugged-out bliss, depending on how you interpret it. These mod-’80s fashion kids are watching her, I figure maybe they went to high school together, and when she gets off the bus, one girl says: you know who that was, right? And then I can’t hear what she says.

  Were they former friends and current enemies, or was the Material Girl an honest-to-dishonest celebrity, a star inside some enormous constellation of bright light and fright tights? I listen carefully for their conversation, even think of asking them: who was it? I look outside to see if I can recognize her pale blue eyeliner with a hint of silver glitter pouring into the sidewalk and leaving a glimmer of rope. She’s gone, and my stop arrives.

  Here’s a snapshot from my glamorous life. This trick shows up at the door, smelling like the cigars that I love so much—how sophisticated! I notice immediately that the whites of his eyes are red, and gooey at the bottom. Death has entered my apartment, and I am ready. For the first time, I notice the words to the song I always play when tricks come over: “from happiness to loneliness . . . you realize that love is gone . . .” I always thought it was a happy song.

  Death suggests that we take off our clothes. I can see his bones, poking out oh-so-luxuriously. I know I’ve been in the Bay Area too long, because here is what I think: maybe I can give him some kindness. He wants me to fuck him, and somehow I manage—though his ass is so bony that it hurts my pelvis. When we’re done, he says: here is 150, unless I can give you less.

  Maybe I’m in love, and love gives you desperate images like throwing tricks off the fire escape, into the abandoned shell of the laundromat, and getting up early every day just to watch the decomposition of the bodies. But luckily, exactly 12 hours later, I have a manic moment with Ralowe just before she’s whisked off in a taxi. I’m re-enacting a devastating Boston k-hole on the stairs, then I’m touring the 3 a.m. joys of Polk Street.

  One guy’s tagging ERASE, over and over again on the bricks of a building, while down the street his friend does something more elaborate. Lots of pimps are out talking on their cellphones about bitches. Someone has glass. Another guy is tapping his syringes against a wall—this is the line, he says, the line is here. He’s pointing to the building that’s been demolished for condos, only the façade is up—a false pretense of livability.

  One trannygirl yells to me from across the street as I’m heading back—hey, girl! I like that. No cops for the entire walk and it feels like a different world, still a dark and desperate world, but one—for a half hour, at least—with a little more hope. Until I get home and my whole body aches, it feels like someone threw me against a wall when I wasn’t looking.

  Eric says: I forgot to tell you yesterday’s big news—about my little brother, who’s a Marine in Iraq, the one who I always thought was gay—he came out to me yesterday, in a series of emails. It was very traumatic; it’s a little surreal. I keep thinking: did that really happen? So I go back and read the email.

  Nuruddin Farah says: interpreting fear is a very difficult thing because when you are completely afraid, you become a completely different person. In Florida, a man receives a twenty-five-year sentence for taking Percoset for chronic pain—mandatory drug sentence minimums. Now he’s hooked up to a morphine IV in jail, he says: they wake me up to eat breakfast, and then I go to bed—they wake me up to eat lunch, and then I go to bed. They wake me up to eat dinner, and then I go to bed.

  But how do you choose a really nice baseball cap? One that feels good and looks even better, especially on the new twenty-dollar bill? Andrew Jackson, the great Indian removal hero—shaking his maxed-out track-suit in the wind, blowing into a twisted eagle seal. Ralowe says: now I have fantasies of becoming a self-contained unit in my apartment, creating my own language, and when I get SSI I’ll have an internet hookup and I can sit inside all day, talking online to everyone who already won’t speak to me, and trying out new words.

  An ode to the Power Exchange: Oh beautiful, for specious guys, with amber loads of pain . . . for creamy fountain travesties, inside thy brain’s disdain . . . Power Exchange, Power Exchange, God bred his grace in thee . . . And pound thy good into brotherhood . . . through seed of desperate need . . .

  The kids in the hallway are playing with new guns, these look like machine guns instead of the usual ones with longer barrels. What kind of guns are they? Ralowe says: I don’t know, but they look like toy guns. And can you believe that the prescription sleeping pills have a warning label that says MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS. You mean, I’m going to take this shit and it might not even cause drowsiness?

  People on cars: this guy jumps in front of his mother to point excitedly at the new Kia. I can’t hear what he says.
Cars on cars: this huge truck almost slides into a tiny fake-old car, pounding on the horn instead of trying to avoid an accident. Cars on people: an SUV full of screaming black-and-white guys, I guess they’re screaming at me to move, FAGGOT. I’m too hypoglycemic.

  Ralowe and I argue about trip-hop. Ralowe: trip-hop is what changed the face of hip-hop, giving artists new freedom to experiment with mismatching sounds and uncomfortable juxtapositions, the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique made it all possible. Me: what are you talking about? Trip-hop was some stupid marketing trend that lasted two years. Ralowe: trip-hop opened up the idea to mix dissonant sound textures and layers of beats with different time signatures to create subterranean soundscapes. Me: that’s what djs do, any good dj mixes layers and layers of crazy things that don’t make any sense together, until you can’t even figure out what’s going on and if you have to die right then, then it’s okay. Trip-hop is just some over-produced crap that uses dj techniques in the studio.

  Ralowe: maybe I haven’t listened to enough djs, but I didn’t say that part about Paul’s Boutique making it all possible, I said it exposed new techniques to the mainstream. Me: I don’t care what you said, actually it was something even grander, something that sounded like a music critic and now I can’t remember. But the point is that trip-hop was just some marketing gimmick. Ralowe: I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. Me: I don’t understand what you’re saying, but maybe we just need to go out and listen to some good djs, that was one of the first things that we planned to do together. Not that there are any good djs here anyway, or not that I know where to find them, but maybe we should look.

  Ralowe: I don’t like dancing. Me: that’s what you said the first time—you don’t have to dance. If it’s really good, you can just sit there and let your eyes roll back. I can’t dance anyway because of all my pain, though maybe I would have to start dancing—so maybe we shouldn’t go out. Ralowe: I don’t like djs anyway.

  No, this isn’t a joke about car salesmen, a Harley and a handgun, some bubblegum for the run. But I don’t chew gum anymore, it’s been years full of tears—seven, to be exact. You remember that myth, right? That the gum stays in your stomach for seven years. I used to eat pack after pack of Juicyfruit—packed with corn syrup—then later Trident packed with saccharine, but see—I feel great now!

  Activist Tourism Syndrome (ATS): everyone’s talking about going to the Republican Convention to protest. Speaking of revolution, there’s a rumor that Tracy Chapman sold her house on Liberty Hill and moved into the old antique store at 17th and Folsom, the one that used to be a police station. The original Power Exchange was right across the street—it was called the Playground and they had a gymnastics horse, see how things have changed?

  An interesting question from the BBC: will terrorists sell moon rocks to fund their next operation? Rue goes to a brunch that turns into a cocktail party that turns into a Sunday at the Eagle that turns into frozen pizza all over his hallway. He says: I knew I dropped it, but I thought I cleaned it up.

  But what about our plans? On the radio: progressive patriotism. The building manager is pouring that awful carpet deodorizer all over the halls again—he’s not even the building manager anymore, he moved to a building in Pacific Heights. What is he doing interfering with my airspace? In my dream, I’m trying to escape a woman in a bright yellow vintage convertible who speeds towards me until I’m doing that flying-in-the-air-by-flapping-my-legs thing and I’m just above the woman’s head. All this happens after I leave the outdoor market, where Jeremy hands me running clothes. I hit the woman in the face with my bare feet, but she just looks annoyed. I hit her again, but somehow I can’t hit her hard enough. When I wake up, the 9-11 Commission Report has finally been released. They say: it was all a failure of imagination!

  But I’ve got a special offer on non-restorative sleep. That’s right—one size fits all. One night, or the rest of your life. You want it—we got it.

  I call Allison at her hotel, to see if she wants to go to a dance performance. She hurt her foot, so she’s been walking around all day hoping it would get better. Now she’s worried it’s broken, she’s not sure if she should go to the hospital. She says: I hate going to the hospital, I’ve been there four times this year and they always tell me it’s nothing—they’re not nice, it takes forever, and all I do is sit there in a sterile room.

  I meet Allison at the hotel—it’s the Hilton, in case you’re wondering. She got it discounted on Priceline. She says I wish I’d picked the boutique hotels instead, I knew I should have, but I was worried that I’d get the wrong one—I don’t like it here, there were stains on the sheets so I had to get them changed and the housekeeper was really annoyed because she’d just changed them and I know she’s probably making less than minimum wage.

  Allison and I go to the Tibetan restaurant. Just when I think we’re never going to talk about incest, she brings it up. She says I have to be honest, I believe you but I can’t understand how it happened, I love Dad and I can’t imagine not having a relationship with him. But she was in that house too—suddenly we’re crying together, I’m trying to talk about memories—knives and cut-up animals and curling up in fetal position inside burlap sacks—but I don’t know how to talk about any of it. Allison holds out her hand, and that’s when I start crying and then she’s crying too, it’s scary but nice.

  I say: I have to admit that I have this feeling of loss, because there’s only one person who was there at the time, and in the same position as me, and that was you—and I wish we could talk about it together. She says I don’t remember anything at all, I don’t know if I want to remember anything—it’s easier to have both my relationship with you and my relationship with him. I start telling her about other memories, like in therapy that one time when I became a little kid and what was I saying . . .

  I start crying again, and it’s too hot in the restaurant, we go outside. We take a cab to Fisherman’s Wharf to check if the sea lions are out at night. There are a few, but they’re too far away to see, really. At home, why does it smell like shit in my kitchen? I hope it’s not rat shit, though maybe that’s what I’m allergic to, what gives me sinus headaches in the morning, what ruins my sleep and leaves me yearning to slam my head into something else.

  Allison’s boyfriend, Allen, somehow manages to drive from LA to San Francisco in five and a half hours, I don’t know how. We visit the sea lions—there still aren’t too many because it’s their migration period, but we study them. Allen says: do you have an animal fetish too?

  I never get to tell Allison about that time in therapy when I became a two- or three-year-old, saying: they do things to me, but I can handle it—but what about the baby, the little baby so scared? She was that baby, I’m so scared. Eric drives me to the fibromyalgia doctor in Marin. The doctor tells me he wrote the first book on fibromyalgia in 1985, and now there are 500 books on Amazon, but his is still the best. He says: you should go to my clinic—I’ll give you a referral—and here’s a prescription for trazodone, it’s the only thing that works.

  But why do I disobey my own rules again, yet again, and cruise craigslist? I take a cab over to this guy’s house to suck him off, and when he shoots his load in my mouth, all I can think is GROSS. It’s what I wanted, so I come anyway. Afterwards, I can’t find a cab until the 90 bus rescues me, I forgot it came down Potrero. Ralowe calls, he says do you know they’re gonna reinstate the draft?

  But I forgot to describe the new cure: trazodone. Rue warns me against it, but I try one 50 milligram pill, anyway. Soon, I feel a little loopy and light-headed, staring at myself in the mirror until my legs feel rubbery, my eyes burn and my throat starts closing, but at least I fall asleep. I wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I’m going to vomit. I drink some water and get back in bed. When I get up again, I have the most amazing headache, amazing because it’s pounding evenly on all sides of my head at the same time, like a metal vise. When I move, I feel dizzy and shaky and nauseous. I
sing a song: now I know I’m not alo-one—now that I got my . . . trazo-do-one.

  Ralowe says it’s trazic, and he’s right. This trick wants to know what my ass is like—it’s like a bridge over troubled water. NPR takes me to Coventry, Vermont, waiting with all the other Phishheads for the final Phish show, after 20 years, and there are 75,000 of us here. There’s not very much for me to eat, but the roadside diner is open 24 hours, and they’re serving carrot sticks—so I’m going to be eating a lot of carrot sticks, though I’m a little worried about the final show, because President Bush said there might be a terrorist attack. And I can’t digest raw carrots

  Ralowe wants me to count how many people I see wearing camouflage. There’s the baby in the desert camo fleece ski cap, the twin teenagers in matching pink camouflage overalls, and are those pink camo bandannas keeping their ponytails in line? Then there’s the art student with the discreet, computer-generated grey-and-charcoal camo shoulder bag to shelter his beloved laptop, and three guys giving old school: head-to-toe army green, but is that a hint of burgundy for Fall 2004?

  I pick up the phone: static. Everyone knows opportunity knocks, even if there’s someone on the other line doing lines. Listen, Mr. Cointelpro, a windy tunnel is always different than a tin funnel.

  Dry your eyes, honey—it’s only my demise. Looking out the peephole of my front door, I rarely catch anything, just the door across from me in some bad movie’s fish-eye lens. Opening my own door, I see a hallway just waiting for runway.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is an insomniac with dreams. She is the author of a novel, Pulling Taffy (Suspect Thoughts 2003), and the editor of four nonfiction anthologies, most recently Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal 2007) and an expanded second edition of That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull 2008). She’s also the editor of Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving (Haworth 2004) and Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients (Haworth 2000). She is currently at work on a new anthology, tentatively titled Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification and the Desire to Conform.