I Never Met A Man Who Didn’t Turn Mean About His Sleep by Emily DeYoung

I. Boothbay

I contemplate my bad habits as I gaze over a harbor in Maine at a glowing cathedral, floating on the third day of a booze high and letting the scarce appearance of the sun turn me soppy. I figure Jesus probably knows I’m worse sober. When I’m sober, I notice things like the sorrow deep inside the blue-collar working man who pulls a pizza slice out of the gas station rotator with two hands, akin to a child with no other option. I’m trying to vindicate everything somehow- the running lifestyle, the man in all black I’ve come to meet. I ask if he thinks the church might be the last thing to reflect the light, wishing it to be for the sake of my justifications. I catch a flicker of similar hope in his eyes. We both forget to watch and suddenly, it’s dark. I nudge his leather, pointing to the steeple. 

It’s in the shadows like everything else.

He grunts and leans over the motel deck, letting some of the leafy paper from his crumbling cigar drop into the water below.  

II. Bar Harbor

I walk across a land bridge toward an island. There’s about three hours to trod the exposed sandbar before high tide swallows it again. I don’t look back to see the whereabouts of the man in all black. I know he’ll follow at a distance. I know if I wet my Doc Martens in search of shells, his Luccheses won’t cower to meet the sea. If I risk a broken bone climbing across the fallen trees along the cliffy shoreline, he’ll watch safely from the ground, ready to collect a shattered girl into his arms. I’ll enjoy myself either way. He seems to understand this. I pull the sleeves of my large, camo coat down over my freezing hands. We’ve come to the east coast too early. The sailing companies I call each morning in the different port towns tell me that they’re “getting ready” and “gearing up.” I politely say thank you and don’t tell them to fuck their euphemisms. Closed means closed. Unavailable. Inaccessible. 

Still, we find useful things to do, like ferrying to an island and renting a golf cart. The rental boy drops the keys into the man’s hand, saying, Usually I brag about the oceanic views you’ll get on the loop, but today you’re in for a nice, ominous ride.

Each afternoon, the man in all black and I walk around in the fog and rain until we cave from the cold and duck into the nearest pub for the healing heat of vodka and spicy tomato juice. I wonder if there are any Irish pubs where you don’t have to go down into the basement for a piss. 

There isn’t much to do besides tell each other secrets that we half hope might scare the other off. We keep the hardest ones. I think he keeps more. No use falling in love at this age, when teenage magic has faded and the bold hopes of the early twenties are beginning to go jaded. I’m not entirely sure why I came. 

He drinks chocolate milk in the mornings while I sip coffee. He smiles when my knuckles crack under his large fingers and I protest dramatically. He calls me Sweetheart as a term of endearment, with the inflection of a concerned uncle. He buries me in his large, heavy leather jacket when I shiver on the deck. We buy matching lobster slippers in a tourist shop and watch The Godfather with a box of greasy pepperoni pizza. I tell him he’s my weekend Vincent Vega. 

An afflicted man walked into Paddy’s last night, where we were having our last supper and listening to an old-school Irish band pluck strings. I whispered that he looked physically pained, but the man in all black reckoned it was mental agony, possibly from his own wickedness. I countered that suffering usually comes to the innocent. That’s why the good die young and so many people are always mad at God. Maybe none of us realize how far we’ve fallen, and the torments are warranted even in regards to the best. I’ve never met a man who didn’t turn mean about his sleep. 

A few drinks later, the ailing stranger approached our table. He was tall, skinny and slightly jaundiced. His eyes bore into mine. He told me bluntly that he would like to take me out on a date. I glanced at both men. The one in all black was watching, unflinching. Afflicted or not, the skinny man had balls.

Thank you, but I’m leaving tomorrow. 

The visitor kept staring. No help offered from the next stool. I grabbed the man in all black’s hand. 

I’m with him. 

My words tasted like a copout- a century old game in which I was the property. Territorial  language does not go over men. This statement, the visitor accepted and slowly walked away. I took back my hand quickly and gulped the rest of my wine. 

I know the man in all black by his pen name instead of the one his mother gave him, but I’m not sure that matters. Either way, I’ll find myself praying to my young, dead friends and Saint Christopher for a safe journey home. That’s how it’s always been.

III. Gate 8

I lean my heavy head against the airplane window. The past week’s empty glasses have granted me the kind of crystal tunnel vision that can haunt someone for a lifetime. There are rows of heads down my line of sight. Dark brown pulled into a bun, fake blonde twirled into a clip, cropped chestnut with a sprinkling of silver, and a half-baldie at the front. I always notice the details of the limited, mortal forms that we’re granted more clearly when I’m seated among so many in the small cabin of a tin bird. 

About an hour ago, we were trying to wash our souls one last time with Bloodys at the only pub in the small Portland airport. Red is only good for cleansing when it’s a woman’s time, and even that purification had skipped me this month. 

I sipped my poison and leaned into a large, black-sleeved arm one last time. 

I think I’m killing myself with this stuff. 

He squeezed my hand. 

I don’t feel too hot myself.

I asked about a tiny hole in the stone on one of his rings. He said a silver star fell out of it when he punched a guy in the head for being disrespectful. He took off another and showed me its warped band proudly. I wonder if any man is really honest when he tells a woman the reason he got in a bar fight. 

The man with the age-dusted chestnut hair in the row ahead of me wears a beaded bracelet next to his expensive watch. It sticks out like a sore thumb from his business clothes. There is no evidence of violence stamped on any of his accessories. I figure he left the country once and took a guided hike that changed his life. I consider the implications of my own near-fatal mountain summitings and endless border-crossings and wonder why I judge the man or think I have any more right to reverence. 

A girl who spends her life hunting some un-uttered covenant and trying to find the words to write it is undoubtedly worse than a man who becomes so grateful for an experience that he buys a bracelet to commemorate it. My sanity is the falling matter in a timer that was flipped when I started running, and the years gone by have really started piling up. 

I’m unsteady, and the girl next to me is acting politely pissed that I accidentally spilled my coffee between us. I apologize profusely, even though most of it is on my pant leg and only a drop reached her peacoat. She eyes me suspiciously. She is dressed to peak feminine style and adorned with a sparkly diamond ring. I always secretly liked the sentiment of a man decorating a woman’s person with gems and jewels as some boyish promise, to express his knowledge of her rarity and beauty and profess a commitment to cherishing it. I think a few great men have loved me more deeply than most of the men who buy rings can love a woman, but I’ve never been adorned. 

This makes me think about how the man in all black and I discussed fashion as a means of distinguishing someone’s identity at a pub a few days ago. I praised his boldness to wear snakeskin boots and long, shaggy coats. We watched the people passing and questioned their lives by the merit of their dress. He glanced with amusement at my camo jacket, mint green track pants and yellow beanie and said based on my style, he’d peg me as a car thief. Now I contemplate the idea that if I dressed like 15B and played the part a little better, I might just be claimed by gemstones and promises. 

When we hit the road this morning, he navigated and didn’t make any comments or show any fear while I drove with my knees and dug with both hands through my bag in search of Chapstick. 

48 miles left on this stretch, he directed.

48 miles to my favorite kind of heartbreak.

48 miles to one more Bloody.

Let’s finish this god-forsaken bender strong.

We had both clearly been hurt by the opposite gender. I defended the villainous women in movies while he searched for victims in the men. Despite this, we bravely offered what we could to the other in front of a society whose rules we did not care about. I threw my legs across his lap on a whale-watching boat, where we huddled below deck, freezing. We laughed at the guide’s cheesy narration and sipped beer. In some distant way, we had known each other forever. Maybe it was the innate bond of two rambling elegists acknowledging the vessel-for-truth capacity in one another, as well as the shared agony resulting when said potential isn’t executed. Sometimes the muse falls into the shadows before you can get its full essence down. 

In a more immediate and tangible way, we naturally gravitated toward the role of shoulder-devil for each other, encouraging certain outlaw behavioral tendencies, like running and self-anesthetizing and romanticizing. We had seen the lines of possible destruction. We each had scars from lingering in those places before, and tried to proceed with something like half-ass caution. 

When I told the man I loved to dance and found it hard to associate with those who didn’t while twisting on the disco floor of Bubba’s Sulky Lounge, he seemed to understand what I meant. Most situations in this world get painfully twisted up, unless each party truly understands Grace. And Grace is a very soft spoken lass in a crowded tavern on the eve of Armageddon. 

IV. Judy’s

They were playing “Manic Monday” at Judy’s diner. There was a large, tacky painting of a deer drinking from what was meant to be a serene pond as a centerpiece on the wall. Everything was wood-paneled. The booths were ancient. Kielbasa, eggs, potatoes and toast ran you 8$. A regular sat down at the bar and the waitress sauntered over. 

You want coffee?

I’ll take the pot.

Fake sugar?

Hell no, real sugar.

Good girl.

As I stabbed chunks of polish sausage with my fork and dragged them through dark yolk, I glanced over at the waitress portioning ground coffee into bleached filters on the counter while two local men sipped their morning beers in her work station. I was connected to women like her. I had been seeing them everywhere. Hell, I was probably on my way to becoming one. They called me “Honey” in motel lobbies and toll booths, speaking in the same, familiar, gruff way to everyone. They’d seen shit and didn’t care if their hair turned gray. Might not be such a bad future. Better than faking. Those women were needed, reassuring whatever space they occupied, and when awakened in the dead of night, I knew they’d be ready to spring into support, not ferocity.

The trio discussed a drug bust being reported over the antique radio. I had an eerie feeling that I had fallen through time and there might be freedom riders and war protesters coming down the street past Judy’s. Social injustice and bloodshed seem to die hard. I pictured dust flying, fists clenching, mouths opened wide in cries of protest, eyes filled with lightning. All the while, Sam Cooke singing gospel in the background. 

The man dressed in all black sat across from me, shirt unbuttoned to show a bit of barrel chest, eyes blue and steely. We surveyed each other, trying to discern how our lives might feel in a few hours, after boarding flights to very different parts of the country. I think we grasped a matched, excelling proficiency in the art of this kind of departure. He told me that he gets all of his characters’ names from gravestones and street signs. So we slid out of the booth, paid for breakfast up at the bar, and with our last hour before departure, drove to Mount Hope Cemetery and picked out a few good ones from the hill. 

We hugged at Gate 8, since I was out of  7 and he was out of 9. Before I disappeared into the jet bridge, I looked over for the black cowboy hat one last time. No trace. 

I don’t know his given name, but I know he spits blood every time he brushes his teeth, blue Crest foaming crimson.

Emily DeYoung is a world traveler from Michigan. Her debut poetry book, How the Wind Calls the Restless won first place in the Writer’s Digest 30th Annual Self-Published Book Awards poetry section. When she’s not reading or putting together new manuscripts, Emily loves staying active by running, dancing badly to punk rock, climbing mountains (or active volcanoes) and jumping into large, cold bodies of water.

13 November 2025