Mattresses I Have Loved
Good sleep is worth whatever it takes.
For years, I slept on a mattress that was gifted to me by a departing roommate. “It’s very comfortable,” she assured me as I wrestled the sheets onto the far corner. “We paid a lot for it, but I’m glad you get to keep it.” Maybe it’s gross to sleep on a mattress that someone else has certainly had sex on, but I was young and mattresses are expensive.
The mattress she gave me is still the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept on. When I moved to New York from San Francisco, I looked into shipping it across the country. Instead of spending $1,000 and more on shipping a used mattress, I left it with my then-boyfriend. We dragged his old mattress out of his room at his parent’s house, put a notice up on Cragislist and waited. It was gone within a half hour.
“Don’t worry, the mattress is always here,” he told me. We moved to New York together and broke up a year later. He still has the mattress and sometimes, I miss it more than my family.
The last time I bought a mattress, I walked into a Sleepy’s on my lunch break from my first real job in New York and laid down on three stiff, uncomfortable floor models in my winter coat while a salesman in a loud tie watched from the corner. After arranging my limbs into an approximation of the embarrassing way I sleep — face down, a leg bent at the knee, hugging a pillow — I stood up, fixed my hair and selected the cheapest option. Making a decision that seemed as life-altering as that one in an hour felt impossible, like a task best left to someone with a real understanding of a 401(k) and the wherewithal to comparison shop.
It cost $700 and came with a free box spring and one of those terrible metal bed frames on wheels that make a lot of noise when you don’t want them to. It was delivered to my apartment, set up in minutes and served me well.
The cat lives in the box spring when the vacuum cleaner comes out of the closet and the mattress started to sag in the middle after a while. Sleeping on the edge of the valley was like sleeping at the top of a very short hill; every morning without fail, I’d wake up deep in the middle. After six years, I gave it to a roommate who was grateful for it
A few months ago, at an old job, a PR company sent me an email asking if I wanted to test out a mattress. “It’s like Casper, but different,” the PR rep told me. “You can test out the mattress yourself, if you want. You can lay in it and see what it’s like.”
The mattress came from a company that promised to customize the mattress to my sleeping habits. Customization sounded luxe and expensive, but the understanding was that I got to keep the mattress for free and so I went to the showroom and let two earnest men intent on disrupting the sleep industry tell me about their mattresses.
I answered a questionnaire that caused me to think more about my sleep than I ever have before. Then, the men moved foam pads and adjusted pillows until the mattress matched the answers on the printout. I rolled around on the mattress, grabbed a pillow, really settled in. Pretending to be asleep while others are watching you very, very intently is as awkward as the gynecologist. Each adjustment to the mattresses makeup was imperceptible. Laying in the bed, in a showroom made up to look like a very nice Airbnb, I stopped lolling long enough to pick a configuration. To be honest, I couldn’t really tell the difference.
Three days later, the mattress arrived, stuffed in a box I feared would crush me were it to fall as I pushed it up the stairs of my apartment. The mattress unfurled slowly over a few hours. “Let it breathe,” the instructions read. It expanded slowly, emitting a faint smell of latex. I cracked the windows. The cat and I fled the room in terror.
It’s a fine mattress. It’s more comfortable than most. I’m glad it was free.
My best friend is a doctor who live in New Orleans. Her hours are long and for as long as I’ve known her, she’s loved sleep. She bought herself a mattress like the kind you see on TV: entirely adjustable, like a hospital bed, made of memory foam, and extraordinarily expensive. The feet and the head of the mattress are adjustable, so that you can jacknife yourself if you see fit or raise it so that you’re sitting at attention. The entire bed vibrates too, lulling you to sleep like a giant cat. I asked her how much it cost the last time I visited, laying with my legs elevated, letting the memory foam envelop me.
“It was a lot of money,” she said. “But it was worth it.”
