The sinking sensation
when someone drowns thinking, "This can’t be happening to me!"
—John Ashbery
Another week of impossibilities. The Murphy family
and their incessantly recurring in-laws, sandwiching
themselves one on top of another as if mattresses
that are excruciating at first, then there are a few
moments of extreme comfort before they smother
you to death. Only these deaths are just dreams,
and you are the Sysiphus who every night has this
same thing happen all over again. Oh, Murphy,
my Murphy, I intone hotly so muffled that the perpet-
rators cannot hear me. The mattresses might as well
be bone-saws, and I might as well be screaming my
bloody lungs out in the process. Nothing can stop the
repeatedly tedious ways in which the Styx is absurdly
crossed, night after night; night after night. Even
during this routine, which seems to go on for decades,
I can dream sometimes. I think these dreams are often
about the better life I had before this, these seeming
decades of smothering beneath mattresses. But I’m gen-
erally not sure, as I awaken, as if being punched in the
ribs by a dying matador’s bucking hoof, and I do not
remember any of the details of these dreams. Which
seem at times to be all I have left of the diminishing
dream of who or what I might have been before this
daily exercise in murder by mattress. However, last
night there was a change. I tossed and turned some-
how able to move my limbs among the piling rectangles
being thrown upon me, the perpetrators left a bit early,
and somehow, somehow, I was able to climb to the top
of the bed. I found myself in a little box of a room ta-
ken almost wholly up by the green plastic and cotton
mattresses (as if they weren’t certain I wouldn’t pee
my pants or need the ounce of comfort that the cotton
might bring momentarily to a sweat-soaked cheek or
my crushed rib cage). This is where I reside. Where
I am is, after a while, simply residue. Until the hotel
staff puts me back together again for the next day.
Which, as it always turns out, is identical to the day
before, and the day before that. It is all the same.
All the same. Except for this night, when I sleep
for most of it atop the mattresses piled nearly
to the dull ceiling thinking, of all things, about
the original New York School of Poetry, of which,
until all of this tragedy, my favorite of their individ-
ual collections of work, my favorite, had been the
poems, correspondences and journals of Jimmy
Schuyler. How affected one can be by another’s
art, especially by that of nearly an entire collection
of their life work in a certain totality. It means
they are no longer with us, which has generally
never been an issue since I’ve been so close to so
few who have passed, much less artists, poets,
those to whom I feel now such a connection that
this web of connection sometimes pulls from
deep within the insides of my heart, outward,
toward the sky; or downard, toward the curb.
Things change. Friends who are also heroes die.
Dare I say that if you’ve had such generosity
in this life to become friends with some of these
people, your favorites of all favorites, made even
more favored by virtue of your actual engagement,
by a genuine friendship, whatever bond that
might entail.... But with one you’ve never met,
it’s easy to disregard it as tragic, use it more
as an excuse to reacquaint, or to finally acquaint;
to now place your head into your hands, which
are upon her. Spending too much time with the
tragedy of life turns out less to be about dying
heroes or loved ones of any kind than fraud. A
fraud in which you are the victim. You watch your
finances going down a drain because you believed,
thanks to a commitment you made years ago with
someone who decides there never was a commit-
ment. And maybe there never was. Someone who
doesn’t have the guts to tell you, disappears, and
when this the subject is brought up in general con-
versation by you, the victim, among a singular ac-
quaintance or a cadre of friends, each of them be-
come former friends, and you begin to understand
tragedy in a much truer sense. Certainly nothing
that hasn’t been experienced throughout eterni-
ty. You wonder, is it a mental illness that needs to be
nurtured out of its ailment. If so, is that even poss-
ible, this nurturing of oneself to health standing alone
among the blank spaces where once stood friends.
Or you Uber a few passengers until your rental car,
on which you’d spent your last hundred dollars, gets
towed. Before you have even had a chance to have
that first paying passenger, and when you get a few,
say five or six in a two day period, you think you are
finally adquately learning the ropes, so to speak, you
learn that when driving someone who needs to be some-
place at some specific time, or even driving an arguing
couple out to a bar, one might complain, and then you
are out of a job, despite glowing recommendations
according to all of your emails and mixed messages
from everyone you talk to on the company telephone
(never able to talk to the decision-makers, of course,
as they are not to be bothered; in fact, you, for many
years have kept the general public at bay, away from
the decision-makers, so that the bosses were almost
never bothered by such nonsense). I’m a charity,
not a non-profit. Non-profits have to make profits,
unlike charities. I am a rental car with a few weeks
left to look into its rear-view mirror; the odor of the
shit I stepped into directly before I got into the car
in which i accept passengers, and therefore spend
the last two dollars on an odor-reduction method
product, which replaces the smell of shit for another;
much like a bobby pin or a hair clip or a small chip
clip onto one of your air conditioner (or heater)
vents in your rented car so that everyone can get a
headache while smelling a distinct odor of shit and
Fabreeze (linen- or lilac-scented). One can be an
Executive Assistant by trade for well over twenty-
eight years and have plenty of time to take over
additional tasks, like working for a govern-
ment office on aging and adult disabilities
while living on the streets, or recovering
from pneumonia for a month in a top bunk
in the middle of a room around which a hundred
or so men also sleep each night. You, barely able
to move, are of course of the belief that no one
even knows you are there, until you wake up
and realize your wallet has been taken from
the back pocket of your bottom layer of pants.
I was in the business of personally transporting
passengers for two days, a total of eight hours.
One year, thanks to my ordering cars to trans-
port VIPS one spot to another spot just a few
blocks away, I racked up an invoice that came
to something like $200,000. Twenty years later,
I get a check for $144. Because I was driving.
Not ordering. Because I was let go after two
days without an understandable explanation
(“you received a small complaint but other
than that you have got a five star rating, one
of the highest in your city.”). I believed this
to be my new profession, or carreer, as I
called it, which would get me even more
in touch with the city I love. I only dis-
covered briefly the massive changes,
enough to bring my curiosity down onto
a sensitive brake pedal for a passenger,
no physical damage done. Yet. Until at
the gas station after I’d finished delivering
my two half-days worth of passengers
before filling my gas with the $30 given
to me by a Catholic Charity in town that
after about 35 calls I received via rec-
commendation. Because this was to be
my weekend of finally getting financially
caught up enough to feel human again.
Sisyphus. I am better off now under
these deadly mattresses than I have
been in all of my days of standing,
with or without others standing
nearby. I know this because I am
told this over and over again as I
am having these heavy mattresses
tossed over me, in a tone very like
the innocuous tapes we’d put under
our pillows to learn new words while
we dreamt. I am better off now than
I have ever been. A better person.
A better human. We are evolving.
This is a beautiful thing. There is
nothing wrong with me. I ask my-
self daily, during the hours when I
am Sisyphus, “What is wrong with
me?” Nothing. I know this now. I
say to myself during the day, when
I am Del, “Why am I a failure?” I
not a non-profit. Non-profits have to make profits,
unlike charities. I am a rental car with a few weeks
left to look into its rear-view mirror; the odor of the
shit I stepped into directly before I got into the car
in which i accept passengers, and therefore spend
the last two dollars on an odor-reduction method
product, which replaces the smell of shit for another;
much like a bobby pin or a hair clip or a small chip
clip onto one of your air conditioner (or heater)
vents in your rented car so that everyone can get a
headache while smelling a distinct odor of shit and
Fabreeze (linen- or lilac-scented). One can be an
Executive Assistant by trade for well over twenty-
eight years and have plenty of time to take over
additional tasks, like working for a govern-
ment office on aging and adult disabilities
while living on the streets, or recovering
from pneumonia for a month in a top bunk
in the middle of a room around which a hundred
or so men also sleep each night. You, barely able
to move, are of course of the belief that no one
even knows you are there, until you wake up
and realize your wallet has been taken from
the back pocket of your bottom layer of pants.
I was in the business of personally transporting
passengers for two days, a total of eight hours.
One year, thanks to my ordering cars to trans-
port VIPS one spot to another spot just a few
blocks away, I racked up an invoice that came
to something like $200,000. Twenty years later,
I get a check for $144. Because I was driving.
Not ordering. Because I was let go after two
days without an understandable explanation
(“you received a small complaint but other
than that you have got a five star rating, one
of the highest in your city.”). I believed this
to be my new profession, or carreer, as I
called it, which would get me even more
in touch with the city I love. I only dis-
covered briefly the massive changes,
enough to bring my curiosity down onto
a sensitive brake pedal for a passenger,
no physical damage done. Yet. Until at
the gas station after I’d finished delivering
my two half-days worth of passengers
before filling my gas with the $30 given
to me by a Catholic Charity in town that
after about 35 calls I received via rec-
commendation. Because this was to be
my weekend of finally getting financially
caught up enough to feel human again.
Sisyphus. I am better off now under
these deadly mattresses than I have
been in all of my days of standing,
with or without others standing
nearby. I know this because I am
told this over and over again as I
am having these heavy mattresses
tossed over me, in a tone very like
the innocuous tapes we’d put under
our pillows to learn new words while
we dreamt. I am better off now than
I have ever been. A better person.
A better human. We are evolving.
This is a beautiful thing. There is
nothing wrong with me. I ask my-
self daily, during the hours when I
am Sisyphus, “What is wrong with
me?” Nothing. I know this now. I
say to myself during the day, when
I am Del, “Why am I a failure?” I
am not a failure. I know this now
as the mattresses bend my ribs
into my heart and lungs. I perform.
My performance is I not only can do
this, but I will do this. Some sort of
perfection of which I know I am always
capable. I’m feeling “Look at me, what
a life, I am living!” I am a boy. A bo-
hemian who is gracefully starving. Once
I chose so deliberately not to be that kind
of artist. Look at me now. Embracing
each mattress like a first love. A second.
A third. A fourth. And then the fifth one
that kills you in your sleep. Now I embrace
the morning. I stay up all night despising
sleeping, beds, mattresses, pillows and
bed bugs. Roaches are fine. They are
beautiful to me. I embrace it all as if
it will bring back the embraceable me,
my youth, the box springs I slept on
as a child, unable to allow anything
but me to live in its vicinity. The
sheets under which I was able to
lift my bread from the oven and
eat before anyone else could
catch the aroma of what we
used to call a meal. Embracing
this is the thing that will help
me put an end to all of the
tragedy that this life, like all
lives, have found, Automatons.
Engines on steroids. Bunnies
on Jupiter. Wings of cicadas
which will never vibrate the
drums of ears again. This is
truly the life. And it could
go on like this for many
glorious years to come.
as the mattresses bend my ribs
into my heart and lungs. I perform.
My performance is I not only can do
this, but I will do this. Some sort of
perfection of which I know I am always
capable. I’m feeling “Look at me, what
a life, I am living!” I am a boy. A bo-
hemian who is gracefully starving. Once
I chose so deliberately not to be that kind
of artist. Look at me now. Embracing
each mattress like a first love. A second.
A third. A fourth. And then the fifth one
that kills you in your sleep. Now I embrace
the morning. I stay up all night despising
sleeping, beds, mattresses, pillows and
bed bugs. Roaches are fine. They are
beautiful to me. I embrace it all as if
it will bring back the embraceable me,
my youth, the box springs I slept on
as a child, unable to allow anything
but me to live in its vicinity. The
sheets under which I was able to
lift my bread from the oven and
eat before anyone else could
catch the aroma of what we
used to call a meal. Embracing
this is the thing that will help
me put an end to all of the
tragedy that this life, like all
lives, have found, Automatons.
Engines on steroids. Bunnies
on Jupiter. Wings of cicadas
which will never vibrate the
drums of ears again. This is
truly the life. And it could
go on like this for many
glorious years to come.
