"Maybe I
could live with you?" he said hopefully and tentatively. We were still new
and didn't want to frazzle the magic of it all with the mundane nonsense of
domestic life. I fiercely valued my privacy and jealously protected my
independence. But the Lover was special. Different, beautiful, tolerant and
busy. We both worked such crazy hours that I couldn't see him stepping on my
toes. Life really wouldn't be any different except that there would be more
man-stuff in the shower and I wouldn't feel guilty when he washed up. Perhaps
some man food in the fridge. Ben-the-housemate only ever kept mars bars and the
odd beer. Sometimes tuna bake. "Fuel" he would say. He was a
messenger, a bike courier, and we kept completely different hours. His love
life was complex and tangled and he seemed to put up with my general
annoyingness and lush behavior.
"Bit of a
strange arrangement wouldn't you say?" I had to ask with a quizzical and
cheeky grin "What about our son?"
"Ben won't
mind." The conversation ended in the affirmative. At least I thinks that’s
how it went, because I also remember a completely different conversation in
which I suggested the idea and plugged its many virtues. Either way, that is
how I came to spend last weekend at Ikea.
I walk down
Murray Street Mall most lunch times on weekdays. I have seen the varying shades
of humanity that also inhabit the area, loitering or lumbering at 2 kilometers
an hour, cigarettes jammed down their pants, strollers in tow. So on weekends I
traditionally try to avoid the bovine masses. On this particular weekend it
could not be done. After a rip roaring yoga session at Cottesloe and a couple
of strong coffees ("with marshmallows in the latte please." Raised
eyebrows. Weren't they use to me by now?)
we rolled up to Ikea.
"Can I
have some meatballs please?" I asked.
"Not now.
We have work to do."
Yellow bags in
hand, pencils and paper tape measures in our mouths, we measured various book
shelves, picked out cupboard doors and analysed space. "The integrated
storage solution" we were calling it. He, being and engineer, needed to
conceptualise it. I, being a lawyer, needed to name it. We collected and paid
for our planks of wood, nails and intellectual property with regards to how to
put it all together. It went in the back of his enormous car with bags of all
the other nonsense one tends to pick up at Ikea with the lofty and offhand expression "while we're
here…" Pot plants, napkins, all of it. We assembled furniture late into
the evening and transformed the space.
I do not
regret the Lover moving in. I do however regret not getting my filthy mitts on
any of those meatballs, in all their magical glory. Those meatballs alone are the sole guaranteed cure to
the type of hangover that only occurs
the morning you know you have to move large and unwieldy pieces of furniture.
