My Year of Rest and Relaxation

by Ottessa Moshfegh

If you’re smart or rich or lucky Maybe you’ll beat the laws of man But the inner laws of spirit And the outer laws of nature No man can No, no man can … “THE WOLF THAT LIVES IN LINDSEY,” JONI MITCHELL

This was the beauty of sleep—reality detached itself and appeared in my mind as casually as a movie or a dream.

Men our age, Reva said, were too corny, too affectionate, too needy.

“I’d rather be alone than anybody’s live-in prostitute,” I said to Reva.

I could count the number of times he’d gone down on me on one hand. When he’d tried, he had no idea what to do, but seemed overcome with his own generosity and passion, as though delaying getting his dick sucked was so obscene, so reckless, had required so much courage, he’d just blown his own mind.

OH, SLEEP. NOTHING else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness.

“You were blue when they cut me open and pulled you out. After all the hell I went through, the consequences, your father, and the baby goes and dies? Like dropping a pie on the floor as soon as you pull it out of the oven.”

I wanted to hold on to the house the way you’d hold on to a love letter. It was proof that I had not always been completely alone in this world. But I think I was also holding on to the loss, to the emptiness of the house itself, as though to affirm that it was better to be alone than to be stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldn’t.

Maybe I’ll ask my dad for money to pay a matchmaker.” “No man is worth paying for,” I told her.