On Sleeping With Many Normal Men
I have a great deal in common with the men I sleep with. For example, we both want to be here; we both want to do this.
Every year in the late fall I become tremendously insane for anywhere between 18 to 45 days. I remember each September that my annual fit of madness is approaching, and intend to prepare for it, but by November I forget, and happily, involuntarily descend. On this date last year…on this date four years ago…on this date eight years ago, my brother came to my house and spoke to me in a reassuring, sensible voice to tell me that he was a pedophile, and that he and the rest of our family had a marvelous plan for keeping it a secret from everyone else in the world, and that they expected me to join in this confederacy. And so I go mad again.
I resume smoking cigarettes, I avoid all things friendly and wholesome, I tremble, I begin telling small and inconsequential lies, I pick quarrels, and generally grow worse and worse until clarity and sanity are both returned to me in the same terrible instant, and I come back to my own mind like Seneca’s Hercules, asking,
“What place is this? What quarter of the world? Where am I? ‘Neath the rising sun, or where the frozen Bear wheels slowly overhead? Or in that farthest land whose shores are washed by the Hesperian sea? What air is this I breathe? What soil supports my weary frame? For surely have I come again to earth…I speak with shame: I am afraid.”
It’s not all bad, this season. My partners Grace and Lily are particularly kind to me around this time of year, speaking slowly, making no sudden movements, and holding very little against me. I sometimes emerge with a new hobby or acquisition that I still like after I have recovered my reason, or to find that I have moved to New York City. Afterwards, during the tidying-up phase, I sometimes find I wish to reintegrate this new acquisition into the remaining eleven months of my yearly life, which serves as a reassuring little project.
Sometimes I suspect I unconsciously put off certain decisions for November on purpose, trusting that I will act more boldly under the veil, and leaving my more timid self to make any necessary adjustments and arrangements afterwards. Last year, for example, I began sleeping with men again for the first time in almost a decade. There was no reason for me to make a production out of it. It’s perfectly legal to sleep with men, if you’d like to. Nobody really frowns on it. No one had any interest in trying to stop me from doing it.1 I have two wonderful partners, both closer to lesbians than otherwise, who have always encouraged my interest in men in the same way I might encourage our dogs Bon-Bon and Gogo at the dog park: lightly baffled, affectionate, pleased at the alien pleasures of someone you love. That’s not how I might choose to spend a free afternoon, but as long as you’re having a good time and clean off before you come back inside the house, then go crazy.
After some time had passed I began to do the work of finding a non-insane way to sleep with men while also maintaining a family, a day job, a writing career, in keeping up with my correspondence, et cetera. There are only so many hours in a day, after all, and I also wanted to continue sleeping with men in a relatively ordered, right-minded fashion.
