The Beds in My Life

I am reading Patrick O’Brian’s rollicking biography of Picasso, and one
recurring theme in the book has me thinking back over my life --
O’Brian continually mentions how Picasso slept in until noon for
most of his busy artistic life. How does a man do that, stay in his
bed until lunchtime? Picasso must have had some beds as beautiful
and alluring as his mistresses. I’m not so much interested in the
carnal side of a man’s bed here, of my own beds, but of the kind
of bed that can hold a man until the day is half over. I’ve rarely, if ever,
had that kind of a bunk.

Try as I might I cannot recall anything about my childhood bed, except
that I often fell out of it. This is not a comic exaggeration. I was a
thrasher. First I’d kick the covers off; then my pillow would fly off the
bed from an unconscious thrust, and then I’d roll off and continue my
uneasy repose on the carpeted floor -- usually winding up underneath
my bed by cockcrow.

I shared a bedroom with my two sisters until the age of twelve, when
my older brother Billy moved out of the house and I inherited his room
and his bed. That’s when I discovered the unalloyed pleasures of
reading in bed at night. My parents did not care if I stayed up half
the night reading -- it beat having to keep tabs on me during school
nights. I delighted in the Bantam paperback adventures of Doc
Savage and his muscular band of do-gooders. I developed a
taste for inexpensive Signet paperbacks of fusty classics. Such
as “Oblomov”, by Ivan Goncharov -- about a Russian guy who
takes fifty pages to get out of bed and go sit in a chair. I thought
to myself then, as I think to myself now, that must have been
some bed. I thrilled to Jules Verne’s “Off On a Comet” in the
cheap Dover reissue -- the pages started to fall out and litter
my bed like autumn leaves.

But of the bed itself where I read “The Groucho Letters” and
“Erehwon” I can recall nothing. Like the kitchen table and the
faded but well-padded furniture in the living room, I took it all
for granted. Many years later when I rented a bungalow in
Thailand stocked with unupholstered rosewood chairs and
low benches my aching hams compelled me to look back on
my childhood home as the very sine qua non of comfort. And
since most Thais prefer to sleep on bamboo mats on the floor,
or in a hammock, they had no idea how to manufacture a proper
mattress for a proper bed. The fiendish contraption I had to
make do with on my bedstead was first cousin to a sandbag.
About five hours was all I could take at one time.

I have often written with great affection about my murphy bed
on the Ringling Circus train. I had to step out of my cramped
roomette in order to pull it down. The mattress was thin, but at
least it was stuffed with cotton or kapok or something soft. And
when the train rushed through the night to our next stop, the
swaying motion and insistent clicking of the passing rails
underneath were a potent lullaby.

With other circuses, my bunk was not as cushy. I shared a
motorhome with a heavy smoker on one show. He ran the
concessions and so was higher up on the social scale than
a measly clown; he took the main bed for himself. I got the
slide-out doodad that functioned as a padded bench with a
table during the daytime and then slid out into a three-section
torture rack at night. In theory the three sections should have
aligned into a straight horizontal plane, over which I would spread
a sheet -- but in practice each section was skewed and lumpy.
I woke up every morning with a second hand smoker’s cough
and incipient scoliosis.

On another show I had a bunk bed in the back of a semi that
was too short for my five-foot-eleven frame. Unless the door
were left open at night there was no ventilation; so I either
roasted or froze.

After my divorce I gave up keeping my own home for a
number of years; instead crashing with family and friends
on hideabed sofas that inevitably had a sinkhole in the middle.
But a divorced LDS man who does not quickly remarry to regain
respectability is often made to feel superfluous by the Mormon
pecking order, and I figured I probably deserved my disagreeable
sleeping arrangements.

When I moved out to Utah in 2014 I discovered La-Z-Boy rocking
recliners for the first time. Even though I had a perfectly good bed
with a three-inch layer of memory foam overlaid for decadent
snoozing, I prefered tilting back in my recliner with a volume of
“The Discourses of Brigham Young” of an evening and reading
myself to sleep. With Brother Brigham’s heavy preaching, it didn’t
take long for Morpheus to come knocking. Or if insomnia paid a
call instead, I could click on a YouTube series of old radio shows,
like Fibber McGee and Molly, to lay oil on my troubled sleep while
I rocked away the middle watches of the night. I save my traditional
bed for bouts of the grippe or mild sciatica.  

But a bed where I could snuggle under the covers until noon?
Even now when I’m retired and have no appointed rounds to
make for anything or anybody, the robin’s early chirp finds me
awake and restless to get on with the day. Perhaps it’s because
I know that after lunch I will close the blinds, turn off my cell phone,
and fall into a heavy doze in my recliner. Something I thoroughly
enjoy as I contemplate the many many friends and family who
are still working a steady job and are not allowed to take forty winks.

But still, I envy Picasso his remarkable bed. If I had a bed that
enticed me to embrace it until noon I bet I could be a painter, too.