SoMa Literary Review - So Many Ways to Sleep Badly

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So Many Ways to Sleep Badly

By Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

City Lights Publishers

256 pp

Editor’s note: If you’ve never experienced Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, you’re missing out on a remarkable San Francisco storyteller. Her live performances are exciting, edge-of-your-seat grit about The City. She makes it seem like some effortless random stream of consciousness, but don’t be fooled – this is a genuine, thoughtful rollercoaster of joy and pain, provocation and hilarity. Mattilda’s newest book So Many Ways to Sleep Badly is published by San Francisco’s City Lights Publishers, the same legendary press that brought us the Beats. Here’s an excerpt from the new book. And don’t miss Mattilda in person during this year’s Litquake festival in October. --Kemble Scott, editor, SoMa Literary Review

“Layer Cakes”

Asked on the BBC how she feels about the sniper who shot and killed three people in the D.C. area, a Virginia woman says: I don’t think he has any regard for human life! Benjamin says make sure you quote me—but honey, you already asked me to change your name! News bulletin: Thai food that I’m not allergic to, and it's right across the street! A 3 a.m. screaming fight outside, and three cops arrive within ten minutes—how charming. This guy on the phone sex line wants me to stick my cock inside his foreskin, he’ll be over in ten minutes. I watch the strippers in velour jumpsuits pick up their cars at the parking lot across the street, bodyguards on lookout. After I come, I just feel terrible—maybe I shouldn’t ever do that again.

I wake up crying because is there hope—there is hope—or is there hope? Talking to the stuffed animals Jeremy gave me, and I try not to look at the picture of us hugging. Forget about that bitch—I’m at the Gay Shame demo, we bring a Haunted Shantytown of cardboard shacks to Gavin Newsom’s posh Marina district. We’re protesting his ballot measure known as Care Not Cash, which would take away homeless people’s welfare checks, and replace them with—“care.” We make a sudden decision to march up the hill into ruling class Pacific Heights because the cops won’t let us stay in the Marina —it’s such a beautiful moment, pushing the sound system up and taking our festival further. The cops won’t let us into the temple where Gavin’s speaking, even though it’s supposed to be an open forum. We circle the block, and when we return in small groups there’s news: now we’re too late to attend.

The Chrissie Contagious update: at the Castro Street Fair, she’s breathing fire and the crowd is cheering, the next thing she knows there are six cops tackling her. 24 hours in the padded cell and then 24 hours in the psych ward. It was just a waste of time, she says—I haven’t been partying and playing as much. Just partying?

I get out of bed thinking it’s late, but really it’s only 11:30—that’s what I get for stopping myself from looking at the clock. On the radio, they say it’s the biggest anti-war demo since Vietnam , over a hundred thousand in the streets but I can’t get up this early.

It’s going to be a great day—the only thing I have to eat is barley, which I’m allergic to. I end up going to the anti-war demo, late. I wasn’t going to go because those big demos always feel pointless, but the news coverage gets me excited. The best thing I see is an older woman with her daughter, or maybe grand-daughter, hand-painted sign that says WAR IS SO LAST CENTURY. And a bus with a Jean Cocteau quote: “Film will only become art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.” A few thousand people are left, at least things feel better than usual.

I’m telling Jeremy about Kirk’s cat, and I feel like my sister—how excited she gets about cats. But I don’t like it when Jeremy tells me about sex—stomach pain. I drag him to the beach in the darkness and cold, the cops shining their lights into everyone’s cars.

Seeing Jeremy makes me feel like a little child, wild with anticipation and vulnerability, but lonelier afterwards like it’s all just empty. What does he give me back? A hug, just one hug—my kingdom for Jeremy’s rug! My trick is a sloppy drunk, he keeps whining: you don’t want to fuck me? I don’t want to fuck you. I walk all the way to the Castro for the parking lot orgy area by Collingwood. The gate is locked.

I sit on the stone bench outside Starbucks, and this guy asks me if I’ve seen the moon tonight. On the beach, there wasn’t any moon—new moon? No, he says. I stand up to look: oh there it is, a tiny sliver, a shiver—delivery! The pizza place across the street is crowded, I guess they’re open ‘til three.

Later, my feet hurt! But the political funeral is gorgeous, torches on Castro Street —what more could I ask for? Well, that everything burns down, but at least everyone is screaming and pounding drums and I almost start to cry right away, so why the fuck do I stop myself?

Jeremy opens his door to look out, but activism isn’t about hating ex-boyfriends who don’t join you. We march to the police station; the cops are scared. Later, Benjamin calls to say she woke up to turn the heater off, and started crying. She had two conversations with people who were at the action—they wanted to protest for Gwen, a Latina teenager strangled and beaten to death after she was exposed as a tranny, but not for Jihad, a black man shot to death at point-blank range by the SFPD. Jihad was waving butcher knives, does that mean it was okay to kill him? Benjamin says I’m worried that we might not have gotten our message across.

In my dream at Fontana West, the apartment is so large that the floors move like elevators. Andee calls, I say I was just singing a song: I miss him, I hate him, I miss him, I hate him. Andee says that’s not a song, it’s a broken record. Chrissie says I think I ate a fly, I didn’t know what to do—it was in my soup. Says she has an infected spider bite on her arm and it’s swollen up, maybe she was in the woods or something. Oh no—are you going to get an abscess on your arm again from shooting up, another week in the hospital?

Don’t work my nerves unless it’s working for you. If you’re working for my nerves, then you’re still working. Everybody hates work. If it’s you’re wife, then at least it isn’t your life, turn. It’s all about 11:37 p.m. Alex says I heard your walk and I looked upstairs—there she is!

Why do I always know when Rue’s going to drink? It’s not like I’m clairvoyant. If she wants to lie to herself, that’s one thing, but don’t drag me into it. At least tonight she doesn’t get totally smashed. She and Benjamin—who is smashed—ride the BART back with me and they’re having one of those earnest conversations that’s half as smart as it would be if they weren’t drunk. They’re saying: fags are so awful—no, people are awful. Benjamin needs a blow job and Rue is sick of sex.

We get back and Rue gets off with us, he’s going with Benjamin to some sex party—honey, why don’t you go home? She says she’s not going to drink anymore, she’s just going to get sex. I lose it—bitch, why are you lying to me? She starts to rationalize. I say will you stop arguing with me unless you don’t think I’m right. Rue doesn’t know what to say, Benjamin’s there so Rue sort of defends himself. We’re downstairs from the party, Jeremy’s upstairs so smashed that he can’t walk, and having sex with everyone around him. I say I can’t be seen here. We kiss goodbye and my runway is beyond high hypoglycemia, it’s pure solid polar ice. Before global warming.

Sure, I’m wired in bed at 4 a.m., but at least I have the most amazing orgasm ever—it’s all about my finger in my ass and running out of bed to turn on the lights and watch myself. I don’t eat my come because it’s too late at night to digest protein. Afterwards, my whole arm hurts from sticking that one finger in my ass. See, masturbation will kill you.

Every Sunday, I want mail. In my dream, my mother introduces me to Gretchen—we’re in Russian Hill or some San Francisco postcard, Gretchen lives in North Beach and pays $3,200. She shows me her book, it’s the same publisher that did Memories That Smell Like Gasoline, I thought they went out of business. I open it up—two dirty bandaids—is this part of the book? Gretchen says yes, pulls at the bandaids—AIDS—and there’s a whole tower that falls out, all the people who have died. Each of my cries is a cross between a shriek and a whine, my eyes like two water bottles upside-down and then squeezed shut. My mother goes to look at other books, I’m just downpouring salt water in gasps and then when I wake up, my throat is so dry, legs almost too heavy to walk.

Waiting in the lobby of the Emeryville Holiday Inn, I’m staring up at the ‘60s chandeliers—upside-down castles, sixteen of them—or layer cakes. The hotel is playing really bad overwrought elevator music—I guess it’s lobby music because of the overwrought part.

Beforehand, Jaysen said what do you think he looks like? I said I don’t guess about that. Later, I tell her: he’s six feet and maybe 250, ruddy or drunk, receding hairline with a long brown ponytail, goatee and scratchy beard. There’s a sweetness about him, and I want to give him love and beauty and so many other abstract things like maybe even hope.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is an insomniac with dreams. She is the author, most recently, of So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights 2008), from which "Layer Cakes" is excerpted. The book launch will take place Wednesday, October 8, 7:30 p.m. at City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue at Broadway, San Francisco. Mattilda will be touring this fall -- check her homepage for details.