room and bored

S was here this weekend for a visit, and in addition to watching the perfect sunset over the Pacific and hiking the steep green hills of Sunol and eating bibimbap naked in a Palo Alto backyard, we enjoyed yet another activity that makes the San Francisco Bay Area so uniquely pleasurable, couch shopping for a Brooklyn apartment at a national upscale furniture franchise. My dear S commandeered my car-driving and bag-holding services and bullied us to the SoMa outpost of Room and Board, where couches are given human names, where she sat on one couch after another, declaring each one more suitable than the last, praising most excitedly a pink tweed sofa that felt like a lady's coat and forced the sitter into an alert, upright, secretarial posture, and where I struggled valiantly to stay awake but eventually succumbed to catatonia on a giant, pillowy brown couch reminiscent of a country mother's ample bosom. Other bored children exiled from the adult's showroom literally kicked each other off pumpkiny ottomans next to me as I half-dozed, half-died. Though I had chosen my own exile, my imperious girlfriend nonetheless saw fit to decree an order ("Now stay there, and don't move," she said, piling her crap at my feet) before she headed, nearly salivating, to try a couch named Eugene in a fabric called "Titan Putty." In my stupor, I heard two people pause in front of me; one declared, "Now THAT looks like a comfortable couch!" and they walked off gaily, tittering like piccolos. After ten minutes, I rose and wandered from room to room depressing cushions with the toe of my shitty sneaker, and eventually saw S approaching the spot where she had left me. Her body language said, "I told her to stay right there!" Huff! We wandered around together for ten more minutes until it came time to request fabric swatches from a frowny-faced saleswoman surnamed - not making it up! - Rath, at which point I found myself in front of a showroom laptop simulacrum, which looked like a PowerBook but was hollow inside, typing a Dear John letter to my lover, Couchzilla. She was apparently undaunted by the message, for she kept on fingering the fabrics and saying, "Yessss, I would like a sample of Tatum Spice, and a Xanthelasma Barley, and a Thrush Spot." For her camera, I modeled reading a book in a supine position on that coat of a couch and noted with delight that the title of the showroom book I had chosen described exactly what I was doing: "Laying Down the Law."

S's sofa-fever was only overcome by her need to get on a plane and return to her apartment, which shall henceforth be known only as the mortgaged space surrounding Eugene, a trusted expensive friend whom we take turns sitting upon.