lucky
It’s two thirty in the morning when he comes home, and he tiptoes through the apartment like he thinks I’m asleep.
I’ve just finished the latest masterpiece, a collage that speaks of broken homes & limited choices, broken glass glued in a mosaic shaped like a gun. Paper money falls like ash from a volcano, like fake snow. “Took longer than usual?” he asks me in whispers, kisses me on the forehead. “Why are you still awake?” I look up at him, standing above me expectantly. “I’m tired of trying to sleep,” I say, my voice a heavy rumble against the quiet. “Sleep can either find me or fuck off.”
At five forty-five a.m., I am laying down, watching the wall get brighter and brighter with the threat of sunlight. His snore-like breathing is soothing; it makes me love him even more. How he can sleep like a baby, how comfortable he is around me.
At six thirty I realize that if I don’t sleep, I will hit the area of my brain that forgets what is and isn’t real. Several months ago, I went on a no sleep binge and ended up writing the most frightful stories, full of poetry and bad daydreams. My sister had started crying when I kept repeating, “We are on the side of death. If you are on this side, you have missed out on life.” It seems like my life is one big art performance, except art cannot contain a real person’s life. Too many varying perspectives; too many empty moments.
Even though I hate it, I know I need it, so I grab a paper cup of vodka with a few splashes of orange juice, and get back in bed. In my drawer, I pull out this tin my mother gave me before we stopped talking, one her mother gave her from some Austrian market in the 50’s. We stopped talking because she thought I lived in sin, and all I told her was that I was surviving, and if I needed sin to survive then so be it. She thought I was being smart and now avoids me whenever possible. I get back at her by still using her tin, stocking it with sleeping pills my sister the Nurse says are so strong, they don’t usually give them out anymore. Only to the most hopeless.
I take out two, and swallow them down with the screwdriver. You might think I’m trying to kill myself, but I’m not. If I was, you really think I would just take two?
At four in the afternoon, I wake up to shaking and heavy breathing. My baby is jerking off beside me, working hard for an orgasm. “I’m sorry,” I say, my voice hoarse with sleep. He’s so close to his goal, so he ignores me and keeps going. “Ahhhh, ahhh, shit!” he cries and stops, cums all over his own stomach. I lean over and kiss his shoulder, grab tissues and start cleaning him up. “I’m sorry, so selfish,” I quote Bright Eyes lyrics, and he just shakes his head. “What do you mean?”
“I took my pills too late, and now the day is almost over,” I sigh. “Plus I feel like your hand does all the work I should be doing.” He smiles, wide and perfect, like he always does. “Don’t worry about anything, baby,” he assures me. Lately, my sleep pattern allows for incomplete conversations. Before I know it, I’m asleep again.
At eight twenty five p.m., I wake up to smells of cheese, pasta, and bread. “Baby? Is that dinner?” I call from the bedroom, hoping he’s been anticipating my arrival. He pokes his head in, his smile a constant. “Yes, are you hungry doll?” he asks, “I was just making some Bagel Bites and Spaghetti-O’s.” We eat like children, but smoke like chimneys.
It is Saturday and I haven’t slept since Thursday. I have sat on the couch for the past several hours, writing furiously. So furiously, the ashtray has become my partner-in-crime, and doesn’t mind if I ash beside it, around it, or anywhere but in it. So furiously, I had to move from the bedroom because I woke him up twice and I felt terrible. There’s nothing worse than your own fucked up life fucking up others.
At around eleven thirty, he comes from the bedroom, decides that he wants to make me breakfast. “Aren’t you hungry?” he asks me, and I nod enthusiastically. “This is my dinnertime though,” I correct him. “But eggs and toast are still fine.”
Every time he cooks, he likes to put on a record, and today is no exception. The familiar crackle begins and then the record starts. I love him so much, I’ve started to love his music and I begin to sing along to one.
You told me that you wanna die
I said I’ve been there before, more than a few times
I go back every once and awhile
You called me lucky. You
Called me lucky.
You said tonight is a wonderful night to die
I asked how you can tell,
You told me to look at the sky.
Look at all those stars,
Look at how goddamn ugly the stars are.
“What does that mean?” he asks me, “Why would the stars be ugly?” I think for a moment, and then hypothesize, “Maybe you realize its time to die because you think the stars are ugly. Maybe when you realize that you can no longer see the beauty of life, you don’t deserve to live it.” I scare myself though, as I realize that sometimes life is a big black hole that I feel I’ve been sucked into against my will. Maybe tonight is a wonderful night to die.
I get so depressed thinking that I need to just hurry up and die that I overdose on my pills and end up asleep for several days. At nine thirty a.m. on Wednesday, I wake up to a bright room and my sleeping boy beside me. “Don’t you ever get bored of me?” I whisper to him, and he turns over, whispers back, “No.”
“Why not?” I ask after a few moments. “I sleep so fuckin long, and when I come back you are always there, just living your life. I feel like I’m not even around anymore. How can you want someone as terrible as me?”
“You’re not terrible, you’re amazing,” he whispers, holds my cheek with his hand. “You are a watercolor painting, a short story, an album – you are my work of art.”
It is love at first sight when someone reads the inside of your mind and tells you exactly what you wished you were but thought you really weren’t. I kiss his warm hand, his eyelids, his nose, and then finally his lips. And despite the sun-filled room, or the fact that I just slept, I snuggle up to my baby, sans vodka and pills, and I fall asleep. And we sleep, together.