I don't really deserve nice things because I tend to destroy them. When I was in middle school, my mother bought me a new pair of green Nike running shoes, but when I didn't properly lock them in my gym locker, someone stole them. In high school I ripped off the back bumper of my car during a parallel parking snafu and totaled it a few weeks later by rear-ending someone at a traffic light.

During my junior year of college, my boyfriend at the time gave me a silver Tiffany bracelet, which I wore everyday, even after I broke up with him - that is to say, until I misplaced it somewhere in Atlantic City over spring break. I've destroyed at least two expensive cell phones by dropping them in toilets. I successively ruined five of my old roommate's garbage cans by throwing up into them - and although the garbage cans were not necessarily nice, they were not my property, and if I can't be trusted to respect someone else's property, how could I be trusted to respect my own?

I broke my old digital camera by spilling beer on it. One afternoon I bought a brass coffee table worth hundreds of dollars and then drunkenly scratched the glass top with a bottle cap later that night. (Hmm, I see a trend here.) Even non-material things I tend to take for granted: relationships, my body, other people's feelings.

And so I wonder: Do I truly deserve something as luxurious as a brand-new, queen-size mattress, with crisp, blindingly white linens and hypoallergenic latex pillows? For years I've slept on a previously used full-size piece of shit, which, at the time of purchase, seemed almost indulgent, compared to the horrid futon that came before it. But in recent months I'd grown to resent this mattress, with its lumpy core and embarrassing moans. Perhaps, I thought, it was time to accept adulthood and purchase a sleep system suitable for a human being.

Which is exactly what I did. But already the mind reels with possibilities; I figure the odds of my destroying the new mattress are 2 to 1. The most obvious and likely method of destruction would be to vomit all over it. This certainly would not be unprecedented. There’s also the chance of my setting it on fire. I no longer smoke cigarettes, but doesn’t that seem like something I’d do? After a long day of doing absolutely nothing, I’d unwind in my new bed, breaking out a stale Parliament Light simply for a change of pace. I’d chase the first drag with a handful of Lunesta, and no more than 15 minutes later would all of Adams Morgan be engulfed in flames.

I am forgetting one critical source of destruction: self-tanner. During the summer months I am the guido equivalent of Pig-Pen, known best for the orange film that trails behind me wherever I go. My last boyfriend would not allow me to sleep in his bed unless I was fully showered, for else his white sheets would suffer questionable brown smears come morning. And I think we all remember the incident in which I thought my arm was bleeding. So, to preserve the integrity of my linens, I will use the new white pillowcases for my decorative pillows and the old, self-tanner-colored (seriously) pillowcases for my latex pillows. That way, I can pass out at night without having to first wash my face.

I will take a picture of my new sleep system when my digital camera comes back from Canon. Yup, I somehow managed to break that, too.