MY MATTRESS: SEX LIKE IN THE MOVIES

 

i remember that junior year at Berkeley, i've never felt that way since. i could do anything, go anywhere, go outside, i was invincible, i was Spider-Man, i was FREE!!! free to walk the sidewalk at midnight to go to school. free to peruse a zine at Amoeba at 3PM when everyone got off school. free to donut-run at 4AM with the stoners who hadn't fallen asleep since they got their syllabi. free to watch the whole hour of ER alone. why? because i had my own mattress. yeah. my own flat mattress on the grey-carpet floor of my tiny shoebox apartment overlooking Telegraph Avenue. that was my bed. see if you have your own bed, you can have a life. a bed away from your parents, thousands of miles away, your own cave, your own sanctuary, your own hole of QUIET. your own PLACE. a place to rest your weary head because your weary head is not required to talk to anyone anymore. if you don't have your own place, you got nothing in life.

Georgia Kernell: i would agree. college isn't fun unless you meet the right man. and i am not dating a man without his own mattress. it's a nonstarter, you know? humans need to be QUIET together to get meaningful things done. i mean that's why i started noticing you in English lecture, because i heard you had your own mattress.

me: a mattress to call my own, finally, away from my family drama, a mattress in a faraway city, in an unknown corner of dust.

Georgia: that's why i invited you to Soup N Nuts and started feathering your arm with my finger during borscht with CornNuts over top.

me: i thought that was the wind.

Georgia: that's why i gave you your first kiss!!! that's why i gave you your first fuck!!!

Mark Consuelos: on Dreamcatcher the English-language-course soap-opera i was on, there was a scene where i eat a banana with a fork and knife.

Kelly Ripa: but you don't speak English, you speak Spanish. when we make love you don't speak at all, you grunt.

Mark: New Jerseyean isn't a real language, it's just mangled Italian.

Gelman: i eat my bananas whole with the peel on like a cartoon gorilla.

Mark: when i signed up for this marriage i really wasn't thinking i'd end up being Regis.

Regis Philbin: i remove all the bananas in my Runts box then eat the remaining candy. i save the bananas for later...

The Fisher King.

Robin Williams: for once I don't play the suicidal character...

I can't blink without pain: when I read the National Enquirer.

Snap! "I've Got the Power": why is this song in EVERY movie trailer?...

Monty Python holding the Grail: not funny.

Jeff Bridges: save the action for the SeaWorld parking lot, not those poor whales. the Thrifty ice-cream girl? they negotiate love moments.

yuppies: like The Cure...

Jack putting Joker makeup on his face: i hate my life. you see it's this earring i wear...

Jen R: this is so New York City, the dingy VHS movie-rental shack that's actually the lobby of the dingy apartment-ghetto tower above.

Jen: remember in the '80s when you'd ask the clerk a very obscure question about a movie recommendation and he'd know the trivia? back when people still cared about stuff.

me: i hate people but i never got to be with Mercedes Ruehl in gold skintight pants.

Pinocchio: you're the bungled and the botched. don't you feel better knowing you're part of a group?

me: thanks, Pinocchio.

Robin Williams: ditch the yuppie Old Navy shirts but take these BM pills, it's impossible to stay regular in New York. varlets go wayward in the city earlier and earlier these days...

Jen R: a good bowel movement is better than sex. BM: Bowel Mystical. Thorazine cured my hiccups...

me: the Mercedes Ruehl God/Devil speech, that finally explains me in sum total. Satan created me, i always felt i was part of the underworld. that explains the lifelong hex put on me that seems to have come from a past life...

Jen: women are attracted to bad boys for biblical reasons.

Hunter College: where dad should have taught as a professor. 

dad: ...and shaked Carl Sagan's hand.

Robin Williams: it's not like that, i'm a smitten stalker.

Amanda Plummer: i knew my jaw was there for a reason...

Red Knight: i'm not from Mortal Kombat...

Brenda Frazier: i know it's the Great Depression, but i'm a debutante this year...

Mother Teresa: i didn't retire, i just really needed to get my bikini'd ass to the Bahamas for some R&R.

Terry Gilliam: that pizza was for the crew...

Tom Waits: quitting time.

Michael Jeter: the world went to hell because we stopped doing singing telegrams. that was a better tribute to VHS than that Com Truise song...

Georgia: under the pretense of getting better soup at your place.

me: yeah sorry about that, all i had was a broken soup-heater that was really just a large silver square. and one can of Campbell's chicken noodle. and a fire-hazard sparkplug-on-a-wire, i'm a college student.

Georgia: we college students do a highwire act daily. a man with his own mattress, a mattress not connected to his mother. not his mother's mattress, you know? you should put a cup of water in there with the can of soup. we ate JUST the can of soup WITHOUT the water, it tasted gamey...

Charles Nelson Reilly: where'd you put my loincloth?

Richard Dawson: in the garage.

disappointments: make you disappear...

It's a Living.

Barrie Youngfellow: my name sounds like i'm a hobbit. i was always a Borg guy, John McEnroe couldn't grow long hair. my heart SANK when the Enterprise exploded. why was our chef replaced with Odo?...

Jen R: i love that GIANT CIRCULAR SILVER STAINLESS-STEEL UFO HOLE OF SALAD the waitresses get the salad from.

me: that one community coin-payphone in the ladies' lounge.

Jen: and the bunwarmer.

Jacques Pepin: offal is not awful.

Leslie Sbrocco: how do you talk to a blonde stranger?

Monica Pro: have you talked to yourself lately? because you need to.

Leslie: what would be a line that would work on you?

Monica: "where are the Teddy Grahams?"

me: i need you two mellow.

Talia and Trinity: to mellow? more catnip cat treats please.

As Time Goes By: the British Wonder Years...

Mara from Progressive: new to the big city? i'm Mara.

woman: hi.........i'm not telling you my name...

Medusa: yeah i hung around Legends of the Hidden Temple for a spell. then Kirk Fogg dumped me for my mother so i left after Season 2.

Missy Davis, crying: this game show fucking MATTERED to me. my real name is Misty, why isn't my nickname Missy? why don't i just use the name Misty as my name, it's the cooler name...

David Foster Wallace: my publishers were PISSED OFF when they had to make millions of Infinite Jest, just one Infinite Jest is 1000 pages, it was a waste of paper, a waste of trees. see this was back when books mattered...

Bulma: i don't have my own house...

God: humanity does not reflect well on Me. why are humans so dumb?...

Paul Kreppel: i was the Larry of It's a Living...

Chloe Kelly at Penalty Kicks: *Super Mario jump*

anime: is the show good? doesn't matter, is the girl hot?...

Super Coke: let's make this happen...

me: that sex was cinematic.

Georgia: you're standing tall in the shoebox apartment naked like a Greek god. well not really godlike, you're too skinny to be musclebound.

me: i'm holding my fully-erect cock in my left hand. that dick is SWEATING. i can feel my naked toes squirming.

Georgia: i'm naked with my knees on your bed on the floor, your cum on both of my shoulders. nice aim. you know i had to test your cheap-ass dirty mattress with my finger, i had to push down, press play, it was surprisingly springy and spongy. men with mattresses. men with beds.

me: my butt is naked for all the outside world to see, a view from the aft bay window for the jet set and an askance view from the starboard bay window for the college street. i'm like the fucking Statue of David or something. 

Georgia: golden rays of sun peer outlining the room with a yellow haze. because you lifted the Rear Window Venetian blinds like a bad film-noir...

me: but you know, in this moment of ecstasy, i feel nothing. because i'm not in love with you.

Georgia: i know.