Gates

I fantasize about eating foam. I have since I was about eight. You know the thick, yellow foam that mattress pads are made of? That stuff looks like it would feel amazing between your teeth. I can imagine tearing it apart in hunks, like a starving lion.
I had an anxiety about sleeping in my own bed that lasted until I was about fifteen. As far back as I can remember, I always parked myself on the family couch. For whatever reason, my mom was accepting. I slept on the floor of my parent’s room until I was ten, which is where the foam-eating came from. I slept on egg crate mattresses, three or four. They were the most comfortable bed I can ever remember having. I would stuff the corners of them into my mouth, sheet and all, and try to hold my breath. The sheets were always clean and tasted warm, like fresh bread and dryer sheets. I tried to make myself as little and quiet as possible to hear what was going on in the house besides my parent’s snoring.

I stopped sleeping in their room when we moved in 1991. In our new house, my bedroom was dark brown with wood paneling. My bed was the same white day bed I had owned for years and my mom got me new sheets- I think they were dark blue. That room was a little cave, cozy and private, but I still slept on the living room couch. My bed remained perfectly made and littered with books and tapes.

When my sister moved out years later, I took over her room, which was larger and had two windows. I got a new bed, the same one I have now, made of black iron. I still thought about the foam mattress.
I don’t remember if I had nightmares, I’m sure I did, but I continued to sleep on the couch in the glow of late night television. I was kept company by Nick at Night, by horror movies on USA, by public access. When the channels turned to static and cable lost its appeal, I would sneak outside. We had a pool in our back yard and I would creep out there and dunk my feet while I read aloud softly from The Scarlet Letter or Titus. In warm weather I would sit on the top step, half submerged in the peaceful, black water. No one else ever came out, not even when I screamed the time a raccoon startled me. I stayed up so late, my young brain spinning with insomnia. I did math homework and watched movies, toasted bagels at three a.m and called free chat lines just to hear someone else’s voice. I hardly ever fell asleep before four. My wet, chlorine bleached nightgowns would be slopped over the patio furniture and I would sneak, naked, back into my couch bed.

The couch sleeping stopped after I started having sex, probably because I snuck boys into my room. My ground-level window was ideal. Some nights I would open the window and wait for the phone to ring, hoping my boyfriend had been able to hot wire his parent’s car for a late night visit. More often than not, I just stayed awake listening to the radio and tracing the patterns of my hair on the pillow. The nights he would come over I would curl up like a cashew against him, staring at my Ian Curtis poster, listening to his unfamiliar breathing. I didn’t even sleep when I was being held, I clutched his arms like a little owl with her talons out and listened to the hours tick away on his wrist watch. I’d wake him around two or three and kiss him out the window. Then I would shower and paint my toenails. I’d fall asleep stuffing my pillow in my mouth, missing something, tasting sea salt in the back of my throat. I was invisible.