if my mattress could talk

Thirteen-and-a-half years. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,800 nights. Two live-in boyfriends (C and Ernie). Inestimable acts of onanism perpetrated with my own fingers and countless toys. A healthy handful of hot and heavy make-out sessions (the barista with the stinky feet, Cat Dude #1, the Ice Storm guy, the movie-fingering man, and others I’ve regrettably lost to the white wash of time). Many, many acts of fellatio (Cat Dude #2, the pity blow-job, and other now time-eroded faceless cocks). And, of course lovers a’plenty (Donny, certainly, but also long ago the dumb model, later the Goat Gatherer, the Best Boy, that British dealer in roulette tables with the rather large cock, Dave #3, Tyler, the sad Scorpio, and others who will certainly bump around in my memory like poltergeists until I exorcise them by writing them into corporeality).

And one threesome.

My mattress has seen its fair share of hott, hott triple-XXX action.

It has also seen many nights of sleep both restful and restless, bouts of flu, a couple of episodes of food poisoning, one very memorable spate of pneumonia, innumerable evil colds, and some strep throat.

All of it—spit, puke, sputum, spunk and sleep—will take its toll on a $300 mattress, and today, I’ve tossed it, tossed it all, relegated to the rubbish heap the whole biological hazard that is my old, tired, broken and besmirched mattress. In paying two short men of color to carry off my broken, bone-exposed mattress, I have today, 21 February 2007, begun anew.

It is the end of one epoch and the start of another.

My old mattress, shiny-blue and slick roses, the one that now sits at the bottom of my stairs near the trash room, was the very first mattress I ever bought for myself. I purchased at 31, when, having moved out from Will’s apartment, and having chosen to end my vagabondage, my peripatetic couch-surfing, I rented the world’s tiniest bedroom in the East Village apartment of an acquaintance.

I had no bed. I called 1-800-MATTRES (I left off the last “s” for “savings”) and a couple of hours later, some guys carried my bottom-of-the-line Sealy into my newly mocha-and-fox painted jewel-box bedroom and plopped it on my new antique bed frame. I paid them cash, being that I was stripping at the time, awash in money and tan skin and long shiny Breck-blonde hair. That night, I slept the sleep of the newly emancipated in my new bed.

It was a bit of shiny blue heaven.

At that moment thirteen-and-a-half years or so ago, that new mattress, its new Barbie smell, the strange shadows of unfamiliar urban landscape poking through my one new window, the shady, hazy shapes of my new antique furniture, all of it, but mostly my mattress, glowed with a “you’re gonna make it after all” promise. I felt like Mary Tyler Moore, if MTM had been a sexworker rather than a television news producer. My new mattress and its soft foam buttressed me into unquestionable optimism.

It was the wind beneath my wings. I could have tossed my tam into the air with unabated joy.

That winter, the winter of '93, I’d just left Will behind me. I had broken up with him for once and for all, and I had broken too with my best friend Becky. I felt very alone in the big city, but somehow, the fact that I could and did buy my own bed held a strange psychic power. Its happy solidity seemed to prove to me that I could provide for myself at least two of the major four human necessities: shelter and sex.

It was a brief and halcyon period, and as shiny as I remember it, this time from around the holidays to around May of my thirty-first year, it felt shaky, too. As if I didn’t quite trust my giddy machine-tan joy. I made buckets of money. I took a trip to Puerto Rico and took up briefly with an eighteen year-old surfer. I seemed to inhabit a strange and alien planet wherein I couldn’t talk to a man without his falling in love with me. I felt like I was trailing stars and glitter as I walked.

It would not have surprised me if birds had circled me and carried the hem of my gown, or at least my groceries and my cigarettes.

This brief sparkly period ended when I met and fell in love with C. We would move in together. We would live together in this apartment, the one I’m still in, and we would paint it over and over again, as if we were color restless. During this time, my bed would go in to storage. Then he would move out. I would then take my mattress, my vintage furniture, my things out of storage and into the bright light of day.

I would live alone again with this mattress that I had bought when I found myself living alone. Who was the first man I ever fucked on my mattress? I think that was the dumb model. Who was the first man I fucked after C? I think that would be the very bad date, the man who had a dick just barely bigger than my thumb. I like to remember firsts; I’m not entirely sure why. They reassure me, somehow. I can control the past in calling up the first this, the first that, the first, the first.

I tend not to remember lasts.

My mattress, my old mattress, saw wide expanses of unrequested, unrequited celibacy. It saw too the flame of SlutFest 2004, though I just as often did the sluttish acts in places other than my own bed. It saw acts of shiny latex-wrapped debauchery. But it also saw the lie-back-and-think-of-eighteenth-century-England sex I had with Ernie. It saw him masturbate next to me in the morning, his short-fingered tossing heaving the bed irritatingly. It saw me try to sleep while my boyfriend masturbated. It saw me seethe with anger.

It never said anything.

It saw me weep with inconsolable loss: the loss of C, the loss of the legendary Spencer, the loss of other men, and the aching old losses left unrecognized until I started therapy. I have cried a lot.

I’ve read a lot too. My bed has watched me read, which was undoubtedly as exciting as it sounds. Cleaning under my bed in preparation of my new mattress’s arrival, I unearthed a treasure trove of tomes—everything from Gene Simmons’ memoirs to The Sociopath Next Door to The Princess Bride. Books have always been a more constant sleeping companion for me than people. I don’t like to sleep alone.

The pile of books now totters on the window sill next to my new mattress. It’s canary-yellow, covered in a plushy fluffy fabric whose nap reads intermittently “cashmere” and “Posturepedic.” My new mattress has memory foam. When I lie in it, it warms and softens like lover’s flesh. It conforms to me; it holds me in its buttery embrace.

I think I’m in love with it.

My new mattress was hideously expensive. The only thing I’ve ever owned that cost more was a car, a 1980 Volkswagen Sirocco in “champagne”; I loved that car too. The bank helped my buy that car; Donny helped me buy this mattress, this new mattress that spreads open before me like a great, smooth yellow vista.

Some night, not tonight, Donny will be this mattress’s first. I hope that he may be its last too, when twenty years or so down the line, this new mattress has come to the end of its days, and some pair of short, burly young men carry it wherever it has to go. Then this mattress too will have a tale to tell.

Tonight, though, its story begins. How it will end: I can’t help but wonder.

Comments

[tom paine]

Well, I remember my bed from NY that took up the entire bedroom. Many acts of love, several threesomes (one aborted at the last moment), one betrayal, and two cats.

[Stan]

I'm probably not the first to suggest this, but I'd guess you could have sold your old mattress on Ebay for a tidy sum. I'm sure one of your many minions would have loved to have it. ;-)

[Elle]

Its crazy how attatched we become to our mattress's. I recently upgraded from a twin bed (that I had since I was 8) to a double, and can totally relate to the wonderful possibilities that come with a new mattress. I hope this one continues to comfort you for many years to come. :)

[Chelsea]

Weird...I cleaned out under my bed last night, and I had a copy of The Princess Bride, there, too!

How dorky is it that that is what I thought of? ;)

[S.P.]

Congratulations, we hope it has both the firmness and the bounciness to serve you well for many years to come... (not unlike your previously-blogged fake breasts, perhaps???) (smile)

But inquiring minds want to know -- Queen, or King-sized???

[chelsea girl]

Stan, if some "minion" wants to make an offer, I'll happily sell. The mattress still sits at the base of the stairs, and operaters are standing by.

S.P., it's a full. I have a tiny apartment and Donny and I tend to sleep intertwined as Paolo and Francesca. It's gross, really, how cute we are, so I try to keep it on the down low.

kissykiss,
chelsea

[sweat shop sissy]

we bought a new one new years eve. (i blogged about it)
it's very comfy...not as many sore backs, but it squeaks. well actually it's the frame doing the squeaking. so we got a new frame and it squeaks also. we tried just putting it on the floor, but that feels to futonish. but it is very comfy. i hope you have many years of happy humping on yours!
cheers.
sss

[femmegyrl]

mazal tov on the new matress ChelseaGirl! May you enjoy an aboundance of joy in its presence! i just wanted to say that i love love love the way you write, i couldn't be any more blown away by you than i am, and hearing that you just got rid of the matress you first bought at 31, (my present age) makes me feel so much less behind then i was feeling yesterday, among all of my married, pregnant, rich friends! thank you on dozens of levels for being you and having the courage to write about it!

[Prince of Darfur]

Donate the old mattress to the Smithsonian Institution. Many sweet dreams and warm embraces on your new mattress.

[badinfluencegirl]

sss: i put a mattress on a futon frame... that works okay

chelsea girl i'm about to do this with an apartment but three years ago i got a new bed.

i almost cried watching my old mattress disappear but it was tears of joy because it was AWFUL a cheap 200 dollar monstrosity that died two years before i threw it out...

congratulations, you two will be very happy together your new yellow mattress and thee.

[chelsea girl]

P.o.D., Yeah, the Smithsonian could put big blue right next to Archie Bunker's chair, Dorothy's ruby slippers and Kermit the frog.

A small sliver of Americana, indeed.

cheers,
chelsea

[S.P.]

On a somewhat parallel track, last year I was sharing an apartment with my 20-something son, while in the midst of divorcing his mother. Upon moving, I had purchased a new queensized mattress for myself. A year later, through the discovery of new love and the associated rejuvenation of sexual adventuresomeness, I moved in with said lover.

My son asked if he could have my bed, since I was moving to an existing (and also recently well-utilized) king sized bed, and he was still dealing with a twinsize. So I sold it to him, cheap.

Not until reading your Mattress Missive did I think about either a) what he thinks about the sexual history of that mattress, or b) what's going on with it since I gave it up!