Bed Time

Background

I find myself in bed. I spend a lot of time in bed. I read in bed, work in bed, eat and write in bed, fantasise about myself and others, and dream in bed. I take myself away from the world when I close the door and jump or fall into bed. My bed has always been on the floor — at least since I was old enough to decide how I wanted to sleep, or how I had to sleep. Sleeping rough on floors or borrowed mattresses, being homeless and going wherever I could find a roof and locked door. Beds in refuge shelters with one family per room; beds in public housing; beds on sofas or the back seat of a bus, beds I had to share to have one. Beds provided by friends who keep me off the street.

I found myself in bed, when I was 11 or 12, reading stories clipped from newspapers my father had used to wrap gifts he sent, stories of girls like me, reading them under the covers with a flashlight. I read in bed and drift off in fantasies of self. Fantasies that I pushed into the world until they became at least partly real. All the things I’ve done and thought and dreamed and wished for in bed, all the people I’ve been, all the people I’ve shared a bed with, my own, theirs, someone else’s, whether for money or desire or need, this is Bed Time.

Details

Bed Time is a hypothetical work in the future, in which I celebrate all the ways in which being in bed has been good for me. Even the nightmares.