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Every single illustration is by Edith Zimmerman.
I had no bed for a couple years. Well, none of my own. I started out on a girlfriend's couch, then went to an air mattress, then went into a girlfriend's bed, then straight back to an air mattress once I moved out of her place for good. One time, in my new apartment on Bowery, I took methadone for a week and woke up with my face on the radiator, the air mattress half-deflated. My roommate saw me zonking there, woke me up, showed me the methadone bottle, and said "I'm throwing these away."
The air mattress had a rip in it, so I needed to get my own bed. I bought a mattress and a box spring off Craig's List because it was $75. It was a single, most likely an NYU college kid's bed who'd now moved on to a more grown-up one. I bought it, then I also paid a Man With a Van another $50 to transport it back to my place. It fit just fine, but it had no bed frame. I promised myself I'd get that later, but at least now I wouldn't have to sleep on the equivalent of an old trash raft.
Only problem was that the wooden box spring had a bee's nest inside it. I woke up with a bee in my shirt and it stung me in the armpit. So I got rid of the box spring and went back to just the mattress.
I moved out from there and bought my friend's old Ikea bed, that kind with a cheap wooden frame that looked like a kid's toy from, oh, 1926. That lasted a little while, but those slats were pretty flimsy and broke real quick so I was back to the mattress on the floor again. I got some of those gray bricks and that kept it off the dirty floor until I moved out again.
I moved to Philly for about a year, moved back to Brooklyn, and I think my parents bought me my next bed as a birthday present that year. I got it from 1-800-M-A-T-T-R-E-S, last 's' is left off for savings or shit, whatever. When the delivery people came to drop off the mattress it didn't fit up the narrow stairway so they had to take it right back. I slept on the floor for a week until a smaller one arrived and, once again, I didn't have a bed frame, just more bricks.
I was finally able to afford a grown-up bed – a queen mattress, normal box spring, and this beautiful bed frame from One Kings Lane –when I was 38. I also bought some fancy sheets and a brand new down comforter that was one of the softest things I'd ever touched. I even bought not one but TWO duvet covers for it. My bed game was gonna be tight from here on out, or at least that's what I told myself after I finally paid a Task Rabbit to put it together.
My new apartment also had a washer and dryer, so I no longer had to send out for laundry. Most of my time in New York, I'd wait until I was completely out of clothes before I took them to the laundry place. I'd drop it all off in an overflowing blue nylon bag full of underwear, musty t-shirts, and mismatched socks. It weighed at least 85 pounds and I'd struggle to carry it all back because the laundry ladies would always give me separate plastic-wrapped folded clothes that wouldn't fit inside the blue one, which now resembled one of those football tackling bags.
Once I was home, I'd set out the newly-folded clothes on my unmade bed with the bricks underneath it or the bees inside it, marveling at how nice my clothes actually were when they got cleaned.
At the new apartment with the washer and dryer, I did my laundry pretty consistently at first, but my druggie, idiot-brain beat me down so, once again, there was always a huge pile of dirty clothes on my beautiful fancy bed. I'd still sleep on the bed even if there were clothes on it, I'd just push them away with my foot to whatever side was more open. Sometimes I'd just sleep on top of them.
I barely changed the sheets. The duvet cover was never completely over the comforter. There were always dirty clothes stuck inside it, too. When I was in a rush to get someplace I'd take my clothes out of the dryer, half wet because I needed something clean immediately – if it was damp, that meant it was clean, right? – and fuck it I'm out I'll deal with the wet pile later.
This went on for years, even after I moved on to the next fancy apartment, right up until I had to move out because I could no longer afford it anymore. I forget who I sold the bed to, or if I just had someone take it and haul it out to the trash, or who disassembled the bed frame, but the night before I finally moved out from that apartment I was sleeping on an air mattress again. The next day I packed up the air mattress and was about to throw it away, but my friend convinced me to keep it because it was a good one and, also, he reminded me, I may need it again someday. I think he still has it stored in his basement, just in case.
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All done. See you Tuesday. Take care, guys. Do the Inverse Pitching. Oh and tell all your sleazy friends to visit The Small Bow.
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