Newlyweds recently moved into the apartment below. They are in their early-to-mid-twenties, beautiful, blond and hopeful. They bought a grill and plastic patio furniture, but every day, starting at about seven in the morning, I am awakened with the sounds of metal crunching and mallets hammering. The hammering is obviously not the result of some major construction; there are no solid wops driving nail into board, rather it is the sound of little tap-tap-taps as if there were a toddler trying to ball peen a square peg into a round slot.
One afternoon while vacuuming my apartment, there was a thud at the door. I opened and found my downstairs neighbor standing there with a weary expression.
“Hey man,” he said. “My wife wants to ask you something.”
I thought this was odd. Why would his wife send him up? Why would he go?
We went downstairs and the lackey opened his front door. What I saw was a showroom right out of Sweden. Every item, from the rugs on the floor, to the flyswatter and lingonberries in the kitchen, was from Ikea.
Going to Ikea is a serious step in the stages of a relationship. It symbolizes hope and union, and ultimately, compromise. Just as there are the stages of a relationship, there are also stages of Ikea.
We begin with the living room display, which is always the first place you bring a date when entering your home. Right? Sit him down on the KARLSTAD armchair; ask him questions about his likes and livelihood and take a seat on the matching footstool.
Next, it is dinner in the dining room where you have a pot of Swedish meatballs already prepared. You toast IRVIG red wine glasses to new beginnings and dim the lights. There could be a little smooching here, or you could just wait until the next display, the Bedroom. From here, you can walk past the Youth Room, where the furniture is colorful and plastic, and beyond that, the Bathroom, Textiles, and Lighting.
Ikea furniture looks best in the showroom. Once home, hours and even days are painstakingly consumed assembling the likes of an ÅRDEL wardrobe and MALM queen bed frame. Once finished, however, you are partially maimed and expectations are never quite delivered.
Ikea is an affordable way for you and your partner to furnish your first apartment on the fly. It is something to do as a couple, and it can be addictive, until the physics of entropy settle in.
After many dinner parties and cocktail hours, you or your boyfriend may decide the VIKA AMON desk set would look better in the front room, and perhaps the EXPEDIT bookcase would look best as a room divide. You spend a Saturday afternoon dragging this quivering furniture room to room, dismantling it and restoring it once again, but only finding a loss of hope.
Whether moving the furniture to different areas of your apartment or into a newly purchased house, the pieces don’t quite fit back together again. It is only a matter of months before the red IKEA PS cabinet self-destructs and is pushed out of view into a closet to store winter hats and scarves, leaving a discernable hole where it once rested in the dining room.
Furniture from Ikea is temporary. It is only meant to hold the place of something more substantial, like an heirloom or a great thrift store find. You can’t depend on something to always look good and adequately do its job with only a three year shelf life.
I walked around my neighbor’s JORUN area rugs, following the lackey toward the back bedroom where his wife sat poised upon the KILAN bedspread. I stopped in the threshold. She looked up and brushed a blond bang from her brow.
“I’m trying to study. Can you keep the racket down up there?”
Over the next few weeks the relationship with my neighbors deteriorated. I had to tiptoe around my apartment, careful the floorboards didn’t creak lest I’d get a call from my landlord.
After an all too quiet dinner party, I was in the kitchen washing the dishes. A cobalt blue dinner plate slipped from my grasp and splintered on the floor. Two minutes later, there was a rap on the door.
“Look, man,” said my neighbor. “She’s really trying to study down there. Can you keep it down?”
I looked into his eyes. They were as broken as my dinner plate. Behind each was a man pulling at his hair, screaming Get me the hell out of here.
Jonathan Cade is an American citizen and currently lives in the Fan. He’s been known to teach an occasional creative class at various institutions. He lived in Italy for six years with his boyfriend. He eats tacos, and takes “no” for an answer. His friends call him Jonny Cake. His column, Dating Craig, appears on Richmond.com every Tuesday.
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