The Freezer Door (An Excerpt)
by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
The dream of urban living has always meant a density of experience, that random moment on the street that changes you. But now, when people say increasing the density, they mean building more luxury housing for new arrivals who only want an urban lifestyle with a walled-off suburban mentality—keep away difference, avoid unplanned interaction, don’t talk to anyone on the street because this might be dangerous.
People talk about increasing this density as if it’s a necessity for the future viability of Seattle. But viability for whom? If our cities are only destinations for the wealthy or soon-to-be-wealthy, what is the point?
How did the city become the environment of locked-in space instead of the place where all the locks are broken? I’m on my way to Pony, and some fag wearing a backwards floral baseball cap tries to give me the straight gay attitude for stretching on her building. Let me be clear here, I’m stretching on the railing for the unnecessary stairwell leading down to the entryway of a building called Onyx. There’s nothing onyx—the building is grey, tan, and beige—it’s like Florida meets the supermarket. But they do have that railing, which is useful for stretching my legs, especially since my usual place, the jungle gym at Cal Anderson, was filled with kids playing.
But I’m trying to tell you about dancing, yes, dancing—the point is all this jumping up and down—that’s Thomas’s style but also it’s because he’s a lot taller than me, which is unusual, and I want to get up to his eyes. There’s so much joy in moving in and out of someone else’s moving in and out—we’re so close we could be touching, I mean we are touching, but it’s only our breath. I didn’t know I could have this much energy, sweat pouring down my face and I keep saying I’m going to stop, because I don’t want to get too tired, but then I keep going.
When I say that finally I’m ready to be a slut again, I mean I’m excited about sexual connection and its possibilities.
Maybe the next day, and I’m walking to the park again, I mean it’s night and I’m too tired to cruise but then I’m cruising and why, but then I hear something that sounds like a fiddle so I walk in that direction. It turns out the fiddler is packing up, but now someone’s playing piano since there’s one right here for Pianos in the Park. And watching the way the piano player moves is way more fun than watching the way the people cruising will never move me. Eventually it’s just us—he’s playing for me, and I’m dancing yes dancing—it’s not like Pony, but still it’s dancing. And then he’s singing too—straight love songs, or straight not-quite-love songs, and I’m almost in love with him, especially when he stops, and says: I love that you’re dancing.
Nothing about him leads me to believe he’s not straight, except maybe the moment when he says why are you here? But I’m not sure I want to leave this moment to go to a moment that probably won’t become a moment, so I stay.
When I moved back to Seattle three years ago, I wrote about my blue overcoat hanging on the knot of a tree in the park while I was getting fucked—cobalt blue, the color I saw for years on women's coats and then finally I got my own, found it at Goodwill in San Francisco and I wasn't even looking for a coat, that's the best way. Actually I found it on the same day I found two others, all of them wool—the big puffy-shoulder magenta ‘80s one, and what was the other one? Oh, the long red coat that flares at the bottom like The Sound of Music.
The blue coat is the warmest, maybe even the warmest of all my coats—no, there's the large plaid one, but that's a men's coat so I don't like the cut as much except it's better for fitting more layers underneath. I got that coat when I lived in New York, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t wear it once during the entire decade I lived in San Francisco afterwards, but good thing I saved it because it was definitely useful when it got really cold in Santa Fe—no matter how many times you tell people that Santa Fe is a four-season town, everyone still thinks it's always hot and dry, but sometimes in the winter the high would be 8 degrees and that’s about 40 degrees colder than the coldest day in San Francisco, so I wore that plaid coat a lot.
It turns out I need that coat in Seattle too, even though the last time I lived here the warmest coat I had wasn’t even that warm, but I guess I wore two sweaters underneath. When I moved back three years ago, I wrote about the rain yes the rain and how sometimes it’s noon and you still feel like the sun hasn't come up, will it ever come up, will it? But at night, walking in the rain and oh the air is so fresh. Walking in the rain and there's no one or everyone and the trees yes the trees and how they get so tall, everywhere—something that would just be a little shrub somewhere else, towering to the sky between buildings.
It’s raining today, but the sun will come back, it will come back because it’s August—and I need at least two more months of sun, right? And those nights of wearing nothing but a tank top and shorts, and now you know I’m in the park again. I could tell you about the guy who says he’s safe because he was married for 20 years and now his wife is going back to Mexico, but I say no, let’s use a condom. And then he wants to take me to his mobile home on Queen Anne—are there really mobile homes on Queen Anne?
So he’s fucking me under the main cruising tree, and I’m thinking about how this lack of pain still feels like a dream, a dream I barely imagined, and then I feel someone else’s hands on my head, his knees right up against me, so I’m grabbing the back of his legs as he’s getting harder and I think I’m probably going to regret it when I look up to see his face but then when I do it’s porn when porn finally means something.
Walking back, there are people trying to get out of the tower—they got locked in, and one of them climbed the gate to get out, but the others are still stuck, their friend went to call the fire department. I yell do you need anything?
I don’t know how to pick locks, and I don’t have bolt cutters but they say thank you anyway, ask me my name, and then I realize I’m yelling right next to everyone else cruising like no one’s stuck in any other way. Some guy comes over to me, and he’s really tweaking—I say sorry, I just got fucked in the dirt. Then I’m walking down the hill and I think: Finally I’m ready to be a slut again. Maybe that sounds strange, because I’ve been a slut the whole time, but I’m ready to be a slut and feel it.
When people say something like oh the youth or oh the elders, I really just want to laugh because it’s not like anybody’s doing a good job of anything. I pass a neighbor on the street, and he turns abruptly to look at a cement wall. I’m always confused by anyone who says they’re not depressed, but when someone says they’ve never been depressed, this is frightening. Apparently this shrub is known as America’s Living Fence. Also, there’s a dead fence behind it. But I love it when a bush grows big enough to cover a NO TRESPASSING sign.
It used to be that whenever I saw someone wearing sunglasses in the rain, I thought: What’s up with that diva? But now I’m that diva, trying to avoid another migraine. I mean it’s always there, but I’m trying to keep it in the background. Should I tell you it started when I went to a meeting for a new queer activist group, a meeting that promised a scent-free space, and when I got there I noticed a really strong paint smell. They said it was in the hallway, so we opened the windows and then there was a breeze blowing through so it felt better. But then the huge heating mechanism went on and made all this noise and someone closed the windows and then I could feel a headache starting but still I looked around at everyone else and thought oh, no one else seems bothered, so it must be all right, it’s a scent-free space.
When was that meeting? A few year years ago, I think. And I’ve had this headache ever since. There’s the trauma from the people trying to harm you, and then there’s the trauma from the people trying to help.
It’s a rare day of thunderstorms, and I’ve just walked an hour in the rain just to walk in the rain. Or just to walk. I mean I walk an hour every day, rain or shine it doesn’t matter but today the rain is particularly dramatic. Up ahead there’s someone wearing a tank top with the solar system on it, cute, and he gazes up at the house painted like a Buddhist temple, then steps up the stairs on the little building next door that I’ve always liked, four apartments with a doorway for each one right at the top of the stairs—kind of like a lot of buildings in San Francisco, I guess, but not a Victorian. Then he looks back, do I see his eyes yet? I mean how beautiful they are.
He says I like your coat.
I say I like your tank top, what’s your name?
So I step up the stairs, and into casual conversation—do I kiss him hello right away, because of the way he’s looking at me, yes, I think I do. He’s visiting from Boston—he’s lived in Seattle, and India, but he always ends up back in Boston. He’s telling me this because I told him I don’t like Boston. He likes the rain here right now, the thunder, it’s so beautiful. That house, he says, I was looking at that house, and then I saw your coat, and will I see you again?
I can give you my number, I say, and he takes out his phone. It’s a landline, I say—I got rid of my cellphone. That’s great, he says.
I say we can make out now too, if you want, and that’s when I’m kissing him, his phone is ringing and then my voicemail picks up and we’re kind of laughing but still kissing after the phone hangs up and it’s incredible the way we’re both so present in the moment yes this moment—maybe this is what I’ve been working towards, to see the look in his eyes and to know that comfort. To go there, to allow it all to overtake me, to exist in my body, my body right now.
When I say that finally I’m ready to be a slut again, I mean I’m excited about sexual connection and its possibilities. The experience of desire in everyday interaction —wasn’t there a time when my sexual practice matched my ideals, I mean my ideals for connection, and I’m ready to go back there. I’ve been ready for a while. But now I’m ready to make it happen.
When suddenly your tongue develops its own sense of space, the softness of this cheek, teeth another way to pull softness closer, why stop when there’s no stopping no don’t stop his hands on the back of my neck so tender I don’t know if anyone has ever really described making out. I’m pushing him up against the wall yes the wall there are no walls except the ones that will support us. When we stop he looks me right in the eyes but we’re so close I can’t focus—I say you seem so present in your body, how do you stay so present?
What’s important is that I’m saying what’s in my head no I mean heart, yes I’m saying what’s in my heart, and when I’m telling this story to Randy later he laughs at that part because that’s what makes people nervous I mean it makes me nervous and that’s where I need to go. Sleeping a lot, breathing, eating well—these are the things Charlie’s telling me as we’re making out, things I already do but even if we never see one another again this is perfect because I’m completely here. This isn’t desire that just happens to me, it’s desire that’s an active choice. I can no longer handle the practice of promiscuity without the potential. I can no longer handle the separation of my life from my sex life.
When I say that finally I’m ready to be a slut again, I mean crossing the line between acceptability and an embodied truth. Refusing the boundaries of societal scripts—expressing desire as a form of accountability to myself. I’m ready for laughter to be part of my sex life. I’m ready for my sex life to be part of my laughter. I’m ready for my sex life to feel like life.
The Freezer Door
by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Semiotext(e), November 2020
264 Pages, Paperback
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the author of three novels and a memoir, and the editor of five nonfiction anthologies. Her memoir, The End of San Francisco, won a Lambda Literary Award, and her anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform, was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. Her most recent novel, Sketchtasy, was one of NPR’s Best Books of 2018. Her next book, The Freezer Door, which Maggie Nelson describes as “a book about not belonging that left me feeling deeply less alone,” will be out from Semiotext(e) in November.