Gadabout Town: What’s On Your Bedside Table?
Thou Hast Left Me Ever, Jamie by William Bell Scott
For our summer 2026 issue, in the midst of sticky humid heat waves and and smoky hazardous air, we forewent dreamy philosophical questions and got a little nosy.
Scroll for sly snapshots into the private lives of some gadabouts, who agreed to write about what they keep closest to their beds.
Keara Sullivan, standup comedian, darling writer, woman about town
Look, I know that some of you will have just seen the above photograph and are now
thinking, “Hey! I thought this was an article about bedside tables? That’s NOT a bedside table!
That’s a bedside desk and built-in shelf! Cheat! She’s a cheat! Let’s get her!”
But what is a desk if not a type of table? A type of table that just so happens to be
standing at my bedside? That’s what I thought.
Now that we’ve gotten that cleared up, here is a numbered list of notable accoutrement on
my bedside-desk-and-built-in-shelf, which I have carefully laid out for the reader’s convenience
and will now explain in order from left to right, more or less:
1. A pink, college-ruled composition notebook that I use as my personal journal and write in
on a daily basis. I say “personal journal” instead of “diary” only because I want to sound
less like a tween and more like an intellectual, but it’s basically just a diary.
2. My standup notebook, which is the B6 Wirebound Notebook Plain Beige from MUJI. I’ve
gone through five of these since starting standup comedy back in college and if MUJI
ever discontinues this product, I will burn everything to the ground.
3. My smaller standup notebook, from the brand MIDORI. Useful when on the go!
A reporter’s notepad given to me by my mother, a veteran journalist of 40 years. I mainly
use it at night when moonlighting as a private investigator.
5. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, a satire about Russian peasantry and the book I’m
currently reading.
6. A comically large plastic figurine of Mary, Mother of God. When I ordered this on eBay,
I thought it would be smaller. Much, much smaller.
7. A miniature horse figurine that my roommate gifted me.
8. Ice Breakers Sours, which come in handy when you’ve run out of chasers as they
completely eviscerate any lingering taste of alcohol from your mouth.
9. A stamp of the letter K, which I use when signing political manifestos and the various
treaties that come across my desk.
10. A sad, half-used tube of Aquaphor. My lips have been chapped for a week and it’s hell.
When I look in the mirror and behold the red, irritated halo around my mouth, I feel like
the greasy, incel version of Harry Styles in Don’t Worry, Darling.
11. A Tide-To-Go stick, which has saved me more times than God.
12. Nicotine mints that I don’t use but really should.
13. A rotary phone paperweight thingy that is mostly just for show.
14. A mugful of Irish Breakfast tea, sensibly placed on a coaster because I am not an animal.
15. A coin jar, a little over halfway full. In an earlier life, this jar used to hold pasta sauce, but
I knew it was destined for greater things and converted it into the coin jar you see now.
When the coins reach the top, I cash out with at least $80. Cha ching!
16. My weekly planner, which I keep open on its stand at all times because I have ADHD
and thus the object permanence of a baby monkey. #Lifehack!
17. A vintage bankers lamp purchased from ebay.com. Let there be light!
Alice Evelyn Yang, author of A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing
Recently, my bedside table has expanded, becoming a vertical ecosystem. I was sick the weekend of fourth of July and decided to spend my time creating these shelves, using samples from the local hardware store. Blue Skies and Cowboy Boots. (Very Americana, though I was channeling Limited Too.) Coat after coat, suspended in a hallucinogenic state: a result of the heatwave and my antibiotics.
On my bedside table proper, I have a vanity mirror that once used to belong to my mother. This was the mirror that once sat on her bedside table, and I used to secretly try her makeup and preen in it as a child. My mother noticed anyway, and it’s belonged to me since middle school. I’ve carted it to college, to the West Coast, to every apartment I’ve lived in so far. Next to the mirror is my makeup bag and a sunrise alarm clock, which purportedly is good for those with ADHD and delayed circadian rhythms. (I haven’t noticed a difference, but then again, I could sleep through anything.)
On my shelves I’ve placed some books (Emergency by Daisy Hildyard and North Woods by Daniel Mason) I’m reading as inspiration for my second book: a speculative and weird eco-lit novel. I have some bracelets, some jewelry, a hair clip, and some knickknacks, but I’ve left room for the space to grow and settle.
Emmeline Clein, author of Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger & Harm
I don’t use a bedside table but I do have a fabulous nook in my headboard containing:
––Books I’m reading or re-reading—currently, we’ve got the escapades of an eccentric anecdote-prone southerner, screeds against the downtown scene at midcentury by one of its most charismatic minor figures, and the second novella in a triptych following nonchalant french freaks navigating industrialization in fictional rural areas
—Detritus of my mother’s decoupage addiction (this one is humidity themed & features a fan but her magnum opus is the staircase to my parents bedroom in my childhood home, the risers of which she decoupaged according to the theme “decline and fall of the british empire”)
—One frame of a Thematic Apperception Test Set—apparently, a therapeutic modality developed in the thirties demanded patients stare at a set of images and invent their backstories. I found a folder of these in my grandmother’s closet (she studied psychiatry in her youth) over a decade after her death along with a key describing what mentally healthy people imagine upon gazing at them. Great fodder for a fit of severe insomnia.
—A vaguely avant garde lamp left in my apartment by my beloved cousin and former roommate, which I masochistically refuse to move despite the fact that the metal shade is prone to toppling off and almost concussing me
—Hair ties for when I need to wake up & go ‘throw her hair in a messy bun and HANDLE it’ mode (aka experience inner turmoil in front of my laptop & eventually type)
—The shell of the best oyster my grandfather ever ate, which he of course had mounted on a slab of black marble
––Capsule bottle containing medication for a niche uterine condition and a bottle of botanical scents intended to soothe me…very important as a woman who would have been diagnosed with female hysteria in the victorian era
––Remote for my precious air purifier because I have air quality hypochondria despite smoking
––A bracelet with a backstory that is not fit for public consumption but dm me if you think you deserve the tea
Grace Byron, author of Herculine
My bedside table is a mess. It's tiered and the bottom is full of gizmos and detritus. But on the actual topside I have a little organizer where I keep all of my lip products - glosses, stains, lipsticks, balms, and so on. I also have my prized Tiffany's-esque glass lamp, some hair scrunchies, pens, earrings, loose medications, a lip balm, and usually a book or two. It's not the most organized situation. I also have a teacup my boyfriend gave me with chickadees on it that I occasionally burn incense in.
Rax King, author of Sloppy: Or: Doing it All Wrong
Real talk, my plan was to pretty up my night table before photographing it, and then I figured I'd have all kinds of cool and edifying stuff to say about whatever way I ended up staging it, and then two weeks went by. Now we're going the exact opposite direction instead. Forget staging this table, I didn't even wipe it down.
First things first, the table itself is a real piece of shit. I mean it does store objects which is sort of the classic entelechy of a table, so I guess it can't be that bad, but it's ugly and wobbly and in all the years I've had it I've never managed to make it smell or look any better. I scooped it off a Bushwick stoop a decade ago figuring I'd replace it when I could afford to, but why replace a perfectly functional night table when there are more amusing things to spend money on? And then I thought I'd at least take a power sander to this thing and repaint it, but why bother, when the whole lifespan of this night table and indeed my own lifespan represent such pointless blips of geologic time? Huh. I might have depression.
Focus up, Rax. Okay. On the uppermost penthouse tier of this ugly-ass table, you'll find two empty sample cases of contact lenses from a very fine Bay Ridge optometrist who agreed to refill my prescription without dilating my pupils. It doesn't look like the prescription strength is visible, but I'm hoping this is a safe space to admit that I wear a -12.00 in my right eye and a -10.50 in my left. My vision is so bad that I can't even really wear glasses, though there's a pair sitting on the empty sample cases — I stumble around when I use them, and they make me look like a mothman, so.
Aw, one of my empty contact lens containers is blocking my rubber ducky, and here I was so excited to brag on him! You can sort of see his soccer ball print in front of my alarm clock, I guess. No big deal but my trivia team Women in STEM did win him. He's a third prize, though, so like, really no big deal.
Can you see that my alarm clock is set for 6am? If not, I want to announce it anyway, because being an early riser makes me more virtuous than everybody else. No, I'm kidding, it's just that since I gave up cocaine I go to bed around two in the afternoon.
More contacts on that uppermost shelf. Jesus, why is a good two-thirds of my night table dedicated to my vision? (I almost wrote that this was eye-opening. Ugh. Please believe that I would never pun you, certainly not in the comfort of your own phone or whatever device you're using to read this. It would have been an accidental pun, and I have repented for it.) Caffeinated migraine pills — okay, here we go. We're getting into my Compulsions. I cannot begin my day without caffeine, and not in a cutesy Maxine-comic way. It's really fucked up my life that I have to wake up, pop two caffeinated aspirins, close my eyes, doze for thirty minutes, then make coffee, and then consume even more caffeine. Don't tell me my business, any of you. I already know this is going to shred my organs. Man, I'm going to be mad as hell if my AA sponsor reads this. I'm sober from the demon rum, and now here I am selling my soul to the much less fun demon Excedrin. Also on this shelf: an ancient vibrator. It's the only one I've ever found that I actually like, and it eats batteries like a WALL-E. I might have been in college when I bought it. It's the longest running sexual relationship in my life.
One shelf down we have our Chaotic Array of Half-Read Books. Well, okay, I've obviously read the Lisa Carver book one million times and am well on my way to absorbing it into my bloodstream, as anyone who's read me after reading her can attest. And I just last week picked up the Edward P. Jones (a fellow Washingtonian!), so we don't need to give me too much shit for not finishing that one yet. But between you and me, I just cannot get through the Amy Hempel, and it is in no way her fault. I struggle to read short story collections. I like to encounter short stories in magazines or on websites, but something in my brain short-circuits when it's facing an entire book of them. I end up reading the first three stories, enjoying them very much, putting the book down, and picking it up again ten years later. Man. Has it been ten years yet? I feel like I wanna read three more Hempels.
Also on this shelf: Barry the Bison. Two years ago, my husband Sean had four strokes. (Pause to smugly absorb the horrified hush that always descends on people hearing this for the first time.) He's okay, he's his old self again! He's better than ever, actually, because being in the hospital with brain damage for three weeks is a great way to quit smoking. Anyway, I brought Barry to his bedside for the nights I wasn't sleeping in his room with him. He ended up being still in the hospital on Thanksgiving, pause to enjoy the appalled astonishment that people always respond to this part of the story with, and so he and Barry and I all piled into his hospital bed to watch The Last Waltz on my laptop. We're really cute. Anyway, Barry is my prisoner forever now, and Sean will never get him back.
Finally, pictured just behind the night table: two long stains of unknown, possibly sinister provenance. Did a slug commit suicide on my wall or something?