It's Not About The Sofa.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
I find it insulting that this quote gets attributed to Sigmund Freud. I’m not insulted on his behalf; I’m insulted by the assumption that we’re all naive enough to believe the founder of psychoanalysis ever wrote anything this simple. He didn’t. In college I read Civilization and Its Discontents and that thing is as dense as Dairy Queen. Still, attributing the quote to sex-obsessed Sigismund helps us understand its meaning — “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” and not a metaphor for your sizzling hot manhood.
While it’s true that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar (and sometimes melons are just melons and sometimes close-ups of flowers are just close-ups of flowers), it’s also true that human-beings love assigning meaning to the meaningless. When the down-on-his-luck leading man in a movie sees his handsome neighbor’s new sports car, we know that sports car isn’t just a sports car — it’s a reminder that our hero is sad. We know this implicitly and immediately because we’ve experienced such things personally. Your neighbor’s sports car is not just a sports car, but a reminder of their superiority over your Honda-driving ass. It truly doesn’t matter that you don’t even want a sports car — you still failed at owning one.
Recently, a sofa was not just a sofa. It’s been over 70 days since I moved into my apartment, and while I have a desk chair for working and a bed for sleeping, I have no comfortable sofa for just hanging. This recently became intolerable. I wanna have vaccinated guests over. I wanna buy an accent chair and a coffee table and a fluffy, sexy area rug. I’m ready to hang art on the walls. I’m ready to hang plants from the ceiling. I’m ready to set up my space so that it looks like an adult lives here. The second I find a sofa, I will finally, magically, and officially be a grown-up lady who’s got her shit together.
Perhaps I set myself up for failure when I decided my worthiness as a human-being depended on owning cute furniture. Nevertheless, that’s what I believed when I entered the Living Spaces in Panorama City. Masked up and on a mission, I walked around the store until I found exactly what I wanted: the Allie Jade Sofa. Blue upholstery, espresso legs; firm, supportive cushions that weren’t so deep my feet couldn’t touch the floor. I sat on the Allie Jade Sofa fantasizing about throw pillows and ottomans and all the other cute things I’d need to find next. Lamps! Beaded curtains! Oh my God, shelves!
I texted my mom to say I’d found a winner and then stood up to find the customer service desk. On my way there, the glow of a bright orange chair caught my eye. Ah. The Mercury Mandarin. I loved the color, the cushion, and the cost. This is it, I thought. I’m going to leave this store with indisputable proof that my life is about to change.
The lady behind the customer service counter paged for someone to come help me. A few minutes later, a tall man with a black face mask approached.
“Follow me and I’ll take you to someone who can help you,” he said.
“No problem,” I said. “Hello,” I added.
I followed him across the store where we met another tall, masked, and heavily-bearded man clutching a tablet.
“This is Shaun,” said the first guy. “He’ll help you.”
“Hello Shaun,” I said.
Shaun said nothing.
“There’s a couch and a chair I’d like to take off your hands.”
“Do you have pictures of the price tags?”
“No,” I said, wondering when that became a thing. “They’re both over there in that room behind —”
“Just describe ‘em to me,” he said.
“Ok, uh, one of them is the Allie Jade Sofa — ”
He punched a few keys on his tablet, and then he broke my heart.
“That one is sold out. We have more coming in, but it’ll be at least 35 days.”
His words were like a punch in the gut. 35 more days with no sofa? I’d die of inadequacy by then.
Despondent but not quite defeated, I asked about the Mercury Mandarin accent chair. He poked away at his pad and sighed.
“The system says we have negative 20 available.” I waited a few seconds before saying anything, hoping he’d clarify what negative 20 chairs even meant. He didn’t. He just looked at me like I was the one wasting his time.
“So, that means…”
“Basically we’re sold out, but it’s showing in our system that we have negative 20 in stock. I don’t know why.”
I wanted to ask him if he’d ever heard of a “SOLD OUT” sign. Instead, I took a deep breath and scowled with impunity behind my tiger-striped face mask.
“This has been enlightening,” I said. “Thank you.”
I rushed out of the store and got to my car and immediately texted my mom. I don’t typically text her every time I’m disappointed, but I knew she was waiting on a couch update.
“Well, I guess this Goddamn couch is sold out everywhere and they won’t sell me the display one.”
She responded within seconds.
“Fudge! Maybe there’s a plan b.”
“I’ve already left in defeat.”
“Aw. Do you want to talk on the way home?”
If I talked to her on the way home I’d tell her how I really felt — like I can’t have nice things because I never choose nice things. I choose wrong. I make bad choices and I’m a bad adult and I don’t even deserve a sofa. I couldn’t burden her with all that; not on a Monday night.
“Not really,” I typed. “It’s just not my day.”
It only took a few minutes of sobbing in my apartment to let my guard down and call Mom. She listened. She empathized. She told me she’d had her share of furniture shopping fiascos.
“But you created the pink room!” I yelled.
The pink room in my parents’ house is so impeccably decorated it could be an Instagram destination. As a kid I wasn’t allowed to sit in the pink room because the pink room was for admiring and not for inhabiting. I didn’t understand this back then — “it’s called a living room for a reason!” — but now that I’m older I completely get it. If you’ve taken the time to hang Grande Odalisque above the piano and place an antique spinning wheel in the corner and track down a pink chandelier to tie everything together, you’ll be damned if some kid — especially your own — is gonna mess up that room. The Birth of Venus hangs above a tchotchke shelf covered in small ceramic shoes, for God’s sake. (Mom is, after all, a grown-up lady who’s got her shit together.)
“Stephanie,” she said, laughing, “the pink room was my frickin’ full-time job. I’d drop you kids off at school and then spend all day furniture shopping. You could do the same thing if you had that much free time.”
“But I don’t have any children,” I said, unwilling to let myself feel better. “I’ll never have children because I always choose the wrong man! I choose wrong!”
I ranted about my salary. I ranted about my celibacy. I ranted about the pandemic and how everything’s so “blah” and how I was an idiot for buying a cheap desk online. Sometimes a sofa is the furthest fucking thing from a sofa.
“How about I come visit you tomorrow?” Mom asked.
I was sitting at my wobbly desk when my mom arrived the next day. I let her in and gave her a hug and immediately started to blubber.
“You deserve to have a good cry if that’s what you need,” she said.
“I’m sick of crying,” I said. “I cried all night.”
She offered to take us somewhere to dine al fresco, but I didn’t feel like putting on shoes.
“I can bring us back some good pita and stuff from that place on Woodman.”
“Carnival?”
“It’s…you know. That place on Woodman,” she said. “Woodman and Moorpark.”
I pulled up their website and looked at the menu.
“I’m gonna have a huge shawarma sandwich,” she said with mischief in her voice. “Also, find out if they have Dr. Pepper. Coke is fine too. Just get three of ‘em.”
I called in our order. Mom was ready to go pick up the food the second I hung up the phone.
“Do you think it’d be quicker to take Ventura or should I get on the freeway?”
My mom’s willingness to drop everything and help me no matter what is something that will amaze me forever. If I so much as mutter about a hole in a sock, she’ll FedEx me her comfiest pair. I can’t leave her house these days without a bag of last-minute offerings — an avocado, a bottle of mineral water, three cold Modelos, a six-pack of Charmin Ultra Soft. She loves me so much I can hardly handle it.
“Where are we even gonna sit?” I asked.
“We’ll spread out on the floor,” she said.
A boat load of hummus and an afternoon with a person I love turned out to be exactly what I needed. Between bites of moussaka we talked about depression and how it’s best to admit when life sucks. We talked about the pandemic and how it’s really truly okay to not be okay.
“What’s going on with the people who can never say that they’ve had rough times?” Mom asked.
“I hate that,” I said. “They’re all just coping anyway.”
“I think your only problem is that you’re way too hard on yourself,” she said.
“I know,” I agreed. “I don’t know when that started.”
“You’ve accomplished so frickin’ much,” she said. “Let’s at least cross that off your list of shit to worry about.”
Before she left, she assured me she was ready and willing to help me find the sofa I desire. My automatic response when she offers her help is always a perfunctory, “You don’t have to,” but I knew I wouldn’t get away with that this time. Besides, only a fool would refuse the mastermind behind the pink room.
With the state of the world being what it is, I’ve probably been overdue for a crisis; I just needed an excuse to fall apart. I don’t know when I’ll finally find a sofa. I don't know when I’ll hang pictures or install shelves or buy a fluffy, sexy area rug. All of that will take a minute because all of that requires time, and time, alas, is famously hard to come by. I’m much more concerned about putting on my big girl pants and saying into the mirror, “You’re a grown woman with her shit together.” That doesn’t require time — that only requires being way less hard on myself. I’ll get there. Eventually. For now, it’s fine. I am fine. Now that I’ve cried it out and cursed at the world, a sofa can — here’s hoping — just be a sofa.