The Sleeping Man

The Sleeping Man

James Berg

There he was, a large man, sleeping on my porch. He had thick arms,
muscular, and a sagging belly. His hair was long and dirty. It draped
over his face. I'd just rented the apartment and all I wanted was to
step over his outstretched legs and get my boxes inside without his
noticing me.

But he noticed me.

"Hey," he said. Then he said it again. "Hey." I didn't respond.

His speech was slow, ridiculously so. He drew out this one word until
it became a chant, "Heeeeeyyyyyyyyy," lasting three or maybe even five
seconds.

He tried to lift his head, tried to toss the oily hair behind him. But
he wasn't strong enough, so his head bobbed in a slow circular motion.
His shoulders revolved too, and I was afraid he was about to go into an
epileptic fit.

I was still holding the box, dishes I'd carefully bound individually in
bubble wrap.

"Excuse me," I said. I'm not one to make trouble. I slithered over his
legs (fortunately he didn't try to trip me) and opened the door to my
new apartment. The stranger watched, still swaying in his lawn chair.
He gave me another rolling "Hey" and I entered the apartment and locked
the door behind me. I checked the lock. I checked it twice.

This was my new apartment - new city, new job, new everything - and I
spent the first night on a dusty hardwood floor, too scared to venture
past the sleeping man for my blanket and pillow in the car. The next
morning, he was gone and I unloaded the rest of the boxes from the
car.

Days passed. I began the new job, teaching sociology at a local
community college. The students were disinterested in history or in
current events. All they cared about were issues that related to
graffiti and marijuana. Two students plagiarized the first essay
assignment. The girls with children didn't bring homework and blamed it
on deadbeat dads.

My neighbor listened to rap and dance music. He turned the volume up
and sang along to the songs. He had a deep voice that penetrated our
thin plaster walls and he sang off key, especially when he was drunk.
Sometimes I heard him late at night - at two or three in the morning -
and when I'd wake up for work, he was still singing.

My music tastes are decidedly inoffensive. Music, for me, should be
fun. I like music that's peppy. I like Cracker.

Sometimes I wish I were Catholic. I don't know why.

I played Cracker as I prepared my first big dinner, baked potatoes and
lemon pepper chicken. The chicken had been marinated at the grocery
store. All I'd had to do was fry it, which I did, using my favorite
cast iron skillet. I graded papers while eating dinner. I'd steered one
student toward an essay about how the Internet has affected efforts to
legalize marijuana in the U.S. But in this, his second draft, he was
still arguing that pot doesn't impair his driving abilities.

I'd been trying to keep them from writing essays that argue for or
against a specific proposal, but I hadn't figured out yet how to
explain exactly what I want them to do.

"Analyze trends," I told them. "Study the ways that ideologies mature
and change."

I didn't know what I was talking about and neither did they. They just
stared at me, and I wanted to stop and ask if anyone could define
ideology. I wanted to get down to the basics, down to the rocks and
dirt, to find the little truths that everyone could agree upon and move
out from there. I wanted someone to define ideology for me, but I
wasn't sure that anyone could and then I'd be expected to do it.

The marijuana paper was complete nonsense. "The weed comes from a
seed," so it went, "and the seed is a gift from God." I skipped forward
to the end. "How can our government deny us the right to enjoy the gift
God gave us?"

I guess the essay gave me ideas because I ended up fishing through half
the boxes, which covered most of the floor space. I'd left paths, all
of which returned to the couch. It took a half hour, but I finally
found the box with the marijuana, a few dry clumps rolled tight in a
plastic sandwich bag. I formed a pipe from tin foil and choked as I
inhaled. I've never quite known how to smoke marijuana.

My neighbor next door was in a disco mood.

Voulez vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?

He was singing, badly, as usual.

I'm not a big pot smoker and I don't really know what to do after I get
stoned. I watched TV, bored, and ended up calling my soon-to-be
ex-wife.

"It's late here," she said. "What are you calling about?"

I said something about wanting to know if she'd received some photos
and when she asked, naturally, "which photos?" I had to make something
up.

"The ones of your friends from school," I said. "Remember? I just found
them in one of the boxes. I'll send them to you."

"You said you already sent them?" she said.

"Uh, no," I said. "They're right here. But I'll send them to you
tomorrow."

"Okay," she said.

"Yeah, okay. So, how are your parents."

"They're fine," she said. "I'll tell them you said hello."

"Great. Yes, tell them I said hello. It's been a long time," I said.
"It'd be nice to see them again."

"What are you talking about?"

"Um."

"Robert," she said, "you're not coming here. You're not, right?"

"Would you like me to?"

"I don't think that would be a good idea."

"Right," I said. "Okay, well, tell the folks I said hello."

"I will. Goodnight Robert."

"Okay, goodnight. I miss you."

She paused and sighed. "I miss you too," she said. Then she hung
up.

I guess I got a bit paranoid after that, dumping out boxes and making a
mess. I was looking for something that I could pass off as the photos
I'd pretended to have found. I was sweating and calling myself
stupid.

My neighbor banged on the wall. "Voulez voulez vous!" he said. I froze.
"Why you call yo-self stupid?" he said. Two seconds later, he was
knocking on the door.

My neighbor had spread his arms across the door frame. His hair had
been pulled back into a ponytail and he was wearing a ratty green
T-shirt.

"Heeeyyyy," he sang, "You're the guy!" It was the same chant he'd
offered that first night.

"Yes," I said. "Yes I am."

"Wow," he said, "you're gorgeous."

"Thank you," I said.

"Do you like my hair?" he asked.

"Um."

"I just bleached it."

It was true. His hair had been dark when I'd moved in. I remembered
that it hung in greasy clumps over his face. Now he'd washed it. It was
shining, and it had changed color. The sleeping man looked like a giant
drag queen.

"My name's Cecil," he said. "Voulez vouz coucher avec moi?"

"I don't think so," I said.

"Ah, you speak French!"

"Yes, a little."

"Voulez vous?" he asked.

"Voulez vous what?"

"That's all I know," he giggled. "Let me show you my apartment."

I didn't want to be impolite, so I followed him. He stuck out his big
ass and shook it as he walked down the hallway. His door led to the
kitchen, in which he'd placed a barber's chair.

"I'm a stylist," he said.

On the walls, around the light switch and the cabinets, he'd put up
head shots, glossy photos like they have in hair salons. He'd taped
them up on the refrigerator, the walls, even the ceramic tiles above
the sink.

"Look at that hair," he said. "It's all frizzy, and your neck looks
like a virgin forest."

I rubbed the back of my neck, instinctively, and Cecil began admiring
one of his hanging plants.

"Look at this one," he said. "It's like a big head of hair. Look at
this!" He laughed and patted the plant's leaves, bouncing them as under
his palm. "It's like you're hair, all bouncy and in need of a
trim."

I smiled and said I was okay.

"Oh, you're more than okay, honey," he said. Then he darted into some
other room, leaving me alone, and I waited. I waited for over two
minutes until I decided I was nuts to be standing there.

I'm a liberal-minded guy. I try to be accepting of everyone, but this
Cecil, I couldn't figure him out. The best I could tell, he was testing
me, playing the super fag leaving the room and just waiting to see how
far he could go before I freaked out. It was rude, really, when I
thought about it. He had invited me into his home and was deliberately
trying to make me feel uncomfortable. This is not civil. This is not
the way to behave with neighbors. I decided I was not going to feel
uncomfortable. I was not, not in my own building. Not in my own
home.

In fact, I was prepared to leave, but Cecil came back. He was wiping
his nose on the backs of his massive fingers.

"So," he said. "Who's your man?"

"What?"

"Your guy, man. Who's your man?"

"I don't have a man," I said.

"Really!" he said, grinning, and he licked his sweaty lips.

"I don't have a man," I said, "or any man. I don't, I don't like
men."

"Well," he huffed and swung his head, shifting his golden mane from one
shoulder to the other. It was grossly overdramatic, and meant to be so.
"There's always a first time for everything."

And then he offered me a pipe. As I've said, I hardly ever smoke
marijuana, and never more than once in one night. But something about
the way he offered the pipe felt like another challenge, the way he
extended his arm dramatically and batted his heavy eyelashes at me. He
was just about daring me to reach for it.

I took a hit and choked, naturally.

Cecil snorted. "You gonna contract your dick, honey. And then it ain't
gonna do none of us no good."

"Thanks," I said, passing the pipe back to him. I couldn't feel my legs
under me. It was surreal and scary, and when Cecil offered again to
give me a haircut I acquiesced and took the chair in the center of the
room.

For this buffoon, the haircut was a sort of ritual. Cecil rolled his
head, three hundred sixty degrees in one direction and three hundred
sixty degrees in the other. He messed around with some bottles on a
shelf behind me. He plugged in an electric razor and turned on the CD
player.

"Do you like Chaka Khan?" he screamed.

"Sure," I said, "I think I know them."

Cecil pulled out a tiny bottle from the shelf behind me. He cupped his
hands around the opening and inhaled strongly. Then he offered the
bottle to me.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Poppers."

"Okay."

There seemed to be a liquid in the dark bottle. I inhaled the fumes and
was shocked. The stuff went straight to my head. It was painful, like
nails attacking my brain. It was worse than sniffing glue.

"This is shit," I said.

Cecil continued sucking the foul fumes from the bottle. He turned the
music up even louder and began dancing. He ground his crotch into the
back of my chair, an electric razor in one hand and the poppers bottle
in the other.

He came at me in grand swooping motions. The razor was a clumsy weapon.
He attacked me with it repetitively and left a gash just under the hair
line. He was gyrating, swinging his hips with the music, and the razor
dug into me with each thrust.

I would have said something, but I was frozen. I couldn't think
straight. The noise and the drugs and this man were upon me. I kept
telling myself not to be impolite. After all, I was getting a free
haircut.

Cecil worked his thick fingers into my hair, pulling it back violently
as he danced. He took another hit from his poppers bottle, and then he
took his shirt off. Shaka Khan was blasting in my ears, the poppers
were stinging my brain and my neighbor was coming after me with a pair
of scissors, swooping down from behind me. There was no mirror and I
couldn't see him coming. He just continued to pull my head one way or
another until, finally, it was over.

Cecil grabbed a hand mirror from the shelf and held it in front of me.
My hair was short and spiky, fashionable.

"You're a hipster now!" Cecil said, pulling up a chair in front of me.
And with that, he lunged for my cock. He touched it, that much I know,
but he backed away after I screamed.

Oh, how I screamed, loud and long. I didn't know my voice could get so
high.

"Hey hey hey hey hey hey!" I shrieked. "Hey man! Hey! What, what do you
think you're doing there?"

Cecil seemed surprised. I don't think he'd guessed I'd react so
quickly. I'm not sure I would have guessed that either.

"Listen, you," I said. "Listen to me!" It was the first time I'd raised
my voice in months. "You know, I've got a shitty new job that I'm no
good at. The kids can see it. They're bored and disappointed and I'm
sleeping on the floor with boxes. I can't move because I'm up to my
neck in boxes. Do you understand what I'm talking about? And my wife
doesn't want to talk to me. She's fed up with me and I can tell she's
moved on and there's nothing I can do to change her. Nothing, do you
understand? And now you?you!"

I was out of words, spent. The music was screaming.

"Turn it off," I said.

Cecil seemed frozen.

"Turn it off!" I said.

He jumped. The stereo went silent and the music seemed to hang there,
echoing in my inner ear.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"No," Cecil said. "No, go on." His voice was stable, deep and
comforting. "You were saying something about your wife."

"Yes," I said. "Yes, I was."

And with that, the sleeping man was finally awake.

*********************************************
? 2003 by James Temple Berg

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