In an apartment I rented some time ago, there was this chair.
A beaten-down tabouret devoid of back support, its once off-white upholstery now dimmed towards a sad greige, a sickly stain spread out on its left side. It fit so well in an apartment with mold between bathroom tiles and brick dust under the sink.
I spent two years there, enough to intimately discover its nooks, corners, and hidden pockets. The chair I found in the bedroom, under an Ikea desk, hidden as though ashamed of its present looks. I couldn’t help dragging it out, prodding it, testing it. It was the most comfortable thing in that house.
I often worked remotely, and for sanity’s sake I decided to relegate various aspects of my life to discrete physical spaces. The bedroom, its desk too crammy for my taste, remained for sleeping only. A couch the size and smell of a dog party in the rain made the living room unusable. By far the largest remaining space, the kitchen table became my bastion. I trisected it: the left for dining, the center for work, and the right—where the table was within hugging distance to a corner of the room—my writing nook. In here, because nothing else would fit so well, the chair found its place.
Squeezed between wall, laptop, and table, I began receiving complaints: my back ached, my right leg fidgeted—violently enough sometimes to send my knee flying into the green wood above it—and my elbows chafed from the roughness of the table’s texture like a nose blown too much during a cold.
Yet my creativity flourished. Some of my greatest pieces were born in that nook, on that chair. The fact that I was so fenced in had on me much the effect of a cardboard box on a cat. I felt held, protected. More than that, I felt grateful. That forlorn chair had been integral to the creation of my very first writing space. That its previous owner had neglected it had not diminished its value. Had, in fact, immeasurably increased it. It could as easily be lying in a landfill somewhere, its repudiation perfected. Yet here, against all odds, it still was.
With time, the psychic link between the chair and my right hemisphere only increased. When I was not on my pathetic throne, it might as well not have existed. But when I wrote, we merged.
This reflected an overarching theme within my life: developing affection for the things I own or use. Some last with me, like a certain moose figurine I got from Germany as a kid. Mostly, though, these relationships are fraught with impermanence, and parting with a beloved thing is never easy. The brusquer the separation, the stronger the feeling, and the more it lingers.
I don't think anything has ever been more forcefully removed from me than this chair.
You see, my landlady was a close friend. One afternoon, I discovered she’d cheated me out of some money. I confronted her, and rather than confess, she tried gaslighting me, getting me to believe I was at fault. I decided I couldn’t stay.
I didn’t think to put the chair back where I had found it. No notion of it having existed anywhere but in the nook remained in my brain. I left it there, closed the door, walked on.
A few days later, she texted. On a post-Andrei inspection, she could not find the greige chair. She did not state it, but the implication was obvious. I suggested she should learn her home better before placing blame, and promptly blocked her.
Months, the anger held. I considered really becoming that thief. Break the lock, tiptoe inside, drag out the chair, and put a spotless new one in its place. The house would lose its soul. But I’d reclaim mine.
The feeling faded. I habituated to the new place. No longer felt like punching walls. But I still missed that damned chair. The Mario-like way it bounced you if you dropped on it too hard. The confidence it gave you, like it had been storing it up for you.
I know nothing of its fate, but I like imagining it escaped. Found someone better. Someone who knew what to do with it. Because things too deserve a life of their own. A full one, not an interlude, like what the chair had with me.
From the archives:
T-Shirt Talk - What my favourite T-shirts say about me.
Wall Sockets - Our fascination with power and its link to growing up.