November 24th, 2006
So Crappy Together
“Now Bobby — you probably don’t have any idea about this — but does Stephanie have the color scheme for your apartment?” In the weeks before the wedding I must have heard this question, almost verbatim, ten times from concerned aunts/female cousins/male friends who are gay, before they went shopping for our gift.
This was pretty amusing to me, on many levels….
For starters, it was always the color scheme. I mean, since we’d be married, of course we’d have a color scheme in our new dwelling, it was just a question of whether it has been set up yet. Like joint checking.
Also, the color scheme was a decree that only Steph could issue and that then should be passed on to them via me…. Hey, ladies, I’m a graphic designer. I went to art school. I know my primary from my secondary from my tertiary. You could ask me what our color scheme was. I’d know all about it. Women are always assuming that men, as a gender, do not understand the concept of color, and that words like “earthtone” and “pastel” meaning nothing to us. More of us get it than you’d think. I’m a guy and I bet I could choose a great color scheme for our apartment. (Of course, I never ever would, because I’m a guy. For the life of me, I cannot understand why the colors that adorn my home are so important. For example, if it were up to me, all our walls would remain stark white. I mean I’d hang some cool stuff on them to make them interesting, but I’d also use all those hours I would have spent drop-clothing and masking-taping and washing-out brushes to do things like drink beer and decide on a name for a boat, should I ever get one…. Why am I speaking my mind so freely here in the parentheses? Is some sort of soliloquy that only my closest confidants can read? “Hey, confidants, this is just between you and me…and the trillions of other people with internet access.” Ridiculous. I’m not even going to use a closing parenthesee. Let’s just continue from here.
Finally there’s the fact that…how do I put this delicately?…. This is Steph we’re talking about. The only color scheme she knows is “lots.” Lots of colors…preferably bright ones…all butted up against each other. For proof of this, take one look at the way she dresses. God help you if you are epileptic.
Please don’t think I’m complaining that I was asked about our color scheme, though. I appreciate that you’re trying to help us achieve a coherent look. As a matter of fact, I wish you more decorating-conscious friends and relatives would pay us a visit and help us out right now. Steph and I are both so overcommited and preoccupied that, after a month and a half of marriage, we’ve barely started unpacking. We live out of cardboard boxes and laundry baskets. We survive on doggybags from the times we’ve gone out and eaten somewhere.
Worse than our current quality of life though, is the possibility that Steph is going to find a free moment and start setting up our new place by herself. For as long as I’ve known her, Steph’s approach to interior design has been…unique. Many years ago, we got to know each other through mutual friends and one of the first times I ever hung out with her, we all went up to her dorm room. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Her half of the room was like a dense forest. Literally. She had huge tree branches she’d hauled inside, attached to the wall-mounted bookshelves, extending out into the room. Streamers and broken CDs on fishing line hung above her bed. I think all the posters she’d ever owned in her life were layered on the walls. All of this was draped with strands of Christmas lights. It was, I have to say, it was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I remember thinking to myself “I wonder if this person has mental problems.” Today I am married to her.
“Accumulate lots and lots of crap that you like, for any variety of reasons, place it in the first available space you find, and leave it there forever.” This is feng-shui, Steph-style. And I know, I know, it sounds whimsical and eccentric. And it is. But don’t mistake it for its more elegant and pragmatic counterparts. This is not “Eclectic” or “Thrift Cool” or “Shabby Chic” or “Boho” or whatever the hell they’re calling the hodge-podge look that they featured in trendy decorating magazines like Dwell or Domino, where people who could not clutter up a living space if their lives depended on it attempt to look as though they enjoy going out to farms and rubbing elbows with common, salt-of-the-earth folk and bargaining with them for their old, beat-up junk. (Deep down inside you just know these decorators hate the sight of chipping paint and the fact that none of their furniture matches.) This not that. If I had to come up with a name for the look I am talking about, I would call it the “Crap-Thrown-Together” look. It is letters from best friends tacked right into the wall next to a cool page ripped out a magazine next to the power bill. It is flower pots on top of lidless tupperwares overflowing with paper scraps on top of cd players that no longer work on top of plastic milk crates…as a coffee table. It is never being able to find your cell phone or keys. It is, occasionally, tree branches falling down and hitting you on the head. I don’t want this for our new apartment.
Still, very soon I plan to write a feature on the “hot new” Crap-Thrown-Together look to submit to the trendy decor magazines. Either the editors will recognize it for the unlivable horror it is or — I think this is much more likely — we’ll cash in big on my wife’s eccentricity…and my ability to lay in on with a snow shovel.
I will use the money we make to get our place decorated properly.
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