David Davis

an interlude on sleeping (together)

According to a novel I recently finished¹, Rembrandt said that artists shouldn't travel. Is this true? I have no idea, and a cursory online search reveals nothing. My discovery of this possible apocrypha happened to coincide with my first trip to Amsterdam, where I took in, as they used to say, the Dutch painter’s The Night Watch (1642), although I missed my opportunity to spend the night with it, as did the Rijksmuseum’s 10 millionth visitor back in 2017.

For the Dutch teacher who received said opportunity, it was, according to the BBC, the chance of a lifetime—as if sleeping on a hotel cot in a massive hall that’s either ticking with institutional static or silent as the grave is something the public has long been clamoring for. The urge to slumber beside a Yevonde Middleton or a Jonathan Lyndon Chase has never once occurred to me in my years of museum wandering (and in the case of artists, like, say, the eerily wonderful Ralph Eugene Meatyard, any urge I may uncover would certainly be headed in the other direction). What marketer came up with this scheme, and was its origin a session of Mad Men-style brainstorming, or was it actually something akin to organic—a pitch from a discreet, and possibly perverted, art-lover, the kind who’s barely able to suppress the instinct to lick the glass and fondle the clay?

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Perhaps artists shouldn’t travel, but sometimes we do anyway. I’ve enjoyed what little I’ve seen of Europe, as I’ve enjoyed spending time with European artists, who look upon America’s art infrastructure with a refreshing kind of horror. It’s bitterly validating to spend time with people who have enough distance to see how bleak it is here in the States, where even our most lauded artists are referred to as “content creators” and obliged to work four or five day jobs². If you’re really good, they’ll feed your book to the AI machine, maker of our supernumerary doppels, that’s gunning for everyone’s job.

But that’s what travel’s for, isn’t it? The contrast? The juxtaposition? The uniting of the unalike to produce new knowledge and unfamiliar sensation, like meandering walks along canals of dull green water, or timeless fucking in the wet gilt of a weltering sauna, or a starry night at the museum, humbly and narrowly bedded, perhaps in one’s real-life jammies, at the feet of one of the masters, trying to recall if Painter of Light belongs to him or to America’s very own Thomas Kinkade³?

The more I think about that Dutch teacher, the more I (grudgingly) grow to appreciate his moment in the spotlight. As someone for whom sleeping around is integral to how I socialize, particularly among other gay people, sleep around is almost always metaphorical. Although I often say that my relationship with Jade fixed me—domesticated me, even—sharing unconsciousness with another person remains something I rarely do, especially if we’re fucking. For years I only did it with her, acclimating myself, sometimes painfully, to another pulse and all its potential⁴. Recently, as I’ve slowly begun to sleep, really sleep, with someone new, I’ve been reminded of how patient Jade was, and remains; not long ago, she pointed out that I sleep best and longest when I’m with her, and as usual, she’s right. With her beside me, my body descends to depths I never thought possible, to places of cellular repair and spiritual revitalization that I don’t know how I survived without. She smells warm and fits well, her feet pointed like a Barbie doll, with shoes to match under the bed.

To sleep together is an intimacy without witness, let alone memory. The Rijkmuseum’s remunerative cringe aside, one begins to understand the impulse behind the PR stunt.

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1. Alan Hollinghurst’s resplendent The Folding Star.

2. I won’t complain too much. I’m not among the most-lauded, but I’m grateful to have a day job, which affords me the stability to moonlight as a novelist.

3. Neither. Apparently, that was J. M. W. Turner’s moniker until Kinkade TRADEMARKED it. Turns out Kinkade was from Placerville, CA, which really does explain a lot about his whole deal.

4. In my early twenties, I had a boyfriend that I slept with almost every night, but sometimes I had to wear all my clothes—a sweatshirt and jeans, even my shoes—or spend the night on the floor, because the proximity was occasionally unbearable, and because what if I had to run away?