Couching History


Michael  sits  down  thinking, "If I write this down it will make more
sense later on."

"Fat chance," he says to no one in particular.

A blank pad stretches into the near distance.  In the far distance are
the subjects, leaping about, creating the  disturbance,  but  slipping
quietly out of reach.

A  disturbing  pattern  has  emerged  in  his life.  Many years in the
making but just recently noticed.  "Every woman I have ever known  has
wanted  me to own a couch."  He thinks this is true, anyway, there may
have been a few who didn't but they are a distinct minority.

A  moribund  curiosity  has  overtaken  him  recently,   causing   the
unearthing  of  old  notebooks,  letters,  photographs,  and the usual
detritus of existance.  Anthropology is  grave  robbing.   Nowhere  is
furniture  explicitly mentioned, but this is all he can remember about
some portions of the past. Even entire  people  have  been  forgotten,
based   on  the  evidence  of  unrecognized  signatures  scribbled  on
mysterious postcards, which have recently come to light.  "Well, maybe
that was someone who didn't want a sofa," he hopes.  He looks  up  the
word  couch  in his dictionary and is disturbed to find one meaning to
be "to lower (a spear, lance, etc.) to an attacking position."

There was a period when large funiture like  objects  were  distinctly
non-utilitarian.   First, when living in the trailer there was no room
for a big chair type thing. He chose to build in  desk,  bed,  kitchen
counter,   and  darkroom  sink.  Possibly  with  the  idea  of  moving
everything at once.  It was, after all, in a Mobile Home  Park.   When
his  environment was filled with these mostly wooden objects, he moved
on to period of living in apartments.  Hunting and  gathering  finally
gave way to urban-industrial life.  Frequent moves eclipsed any formal
and  functional value of a large overstuffed seat that wouldn't fit in
stair wells and elevators.  "Cf:  space-time  warps  in  the  work  of
Douglas Adams," he notes.

Cindy  started  it in earnest by expressing a desire for a sofa at the
first  sign   of   available   space   and   faltering   relationship.
"Domestication  of  the  free  spirit."   He  refuses  to consider the
possiblity. "Caving to craven desires of bourgoise acceptability."

Soon there is a hiatus  of  cramped  and  temporary  living  quarters.
Constructed  desk,  bed, and bookshelf, which deconstruct to component
parts at the slightest suggestion of mobility.  "And a  couch  in  the
shared living room.  Hmm?"  In retrospect, it proved useful as virtual
and actual seduction scenes played out in situ.

"But it was the fireplace that was the attraction, not the couch, damn
it!."  Maybe. "Anyway, those days are over."  Aren't they?

Cindy,  meanwhile,  leaves  her  latest  live in situation for greener
pastures. Come moving  day  it  appears  that  she  has  succeeded  in
achieving  an  entire  hidabed  of her own, heavy metal frame and all.
Said  furniture  has  become  a  bone  stuck  in  the  throat  of  the
disappointed  household  party,  who feels compelled to remove it from
his premiss, ASAP.  The three of them materialize one morning  at  the
base  of  the stairway to the new life, a room in a flat occupied by a
friend-of-a-friend of Michael's.  Inside, innocently visiting, are the
latter friends, of the  former  friend-of-a,  Dot  and  Bruce.   Cindy
desparately  needs  to  make  phone  calls.   Dot,  Bruce,  and the Ex
levitate the glorified divan into its necessary location. The Ex turns
to Bruce and says, "I don't know who you people are, but  Thank  You,"
from  the  very  bottom  of  his  soul.  This is fortunately, the last
Michael or anyone hears of the Ex, or the  sofa.   Cindy  sporadically
reappears however.

Comfort  and  upper-middle posturing have become confused in his mind.
The apocryphal living room done in clear plastic sheath.  The  parents
settling  in  for  an  evening  nap,  father in a large chair, mother,
naturally, on the couch.  Lavishly  superflous  Louis  the  Xth-d-IVth
dingbats.   Television.   A  visit  to a department store confirms his
fears, husbands snooze on  the  displays  while  wives  have  animated
discussions with sales personnel. 

Rick explains  furnishing pragmatics. "I have a chair.  I sit on it." 
He demonstrates.  "I have a table. I put things on  it  when  I  don't
want  them  on  the floor."  It seems quite the reverse, actually.  "I
have a bed.  I sleep on it.  I  don't  need  a  couch  cluttering  up.
Pah."  This particular friend is known for spending protracted periods
living  in an old truck in the woods. "And besides, upholstery is part
of the witchy arts coming under the heading of sewing."

It's back to Bauhaus and the crux of the aesthetic problem.  Form must
follow function.  Function must be maximized.  Wasted space and energy
are  dysfunctional,  signifiers  of   morally   bankrupt   conspicious
consumers.   Comfort  as  concept  must  obviously  be rejected. Sleek
modernist lines on the hard edge of reality are the answer.  The  word
'davenport'  rolls  off  the  tongue  like  a  55  gallon drum of used
crankcase oil.

Later, an  Atomica  coffee  maker  causes  a  major  re-evaluation  of
Michael's  aesthetic  principles.   Not  only  does  it make reliabily
excellent cappuccino, reliability being against the grain of an object
with  it's  parentage,  but  it  looks  quite  pleasing,  not  at  all
surprising   for   an   Italian.    This   is   a  minor  problem  for
form/functionality and can be  treated  as  serendipitous.  The  major
problem  is  that  it  is  round.   Not just round but curving in many
complicated directions without being cluttered. Michael  cannot  build
round  objects  without large machine tools.  Worse yet, the device is
molded Aluminium.  More and larger tools.  It  seems  hopeless,  until
Rick  again  explains  the  pragmatic  aspects.   "It's easier to make
multiples with a mold, and it's easier to get an object out of a  mold
if  it is round."  Many years later, Michael describes this quandry to
an attractive  female  aquaintance,  who  happens  to  be  a  clinical
psychologist.  Her only comment is, "One wonders about your opinion of
women."

Martha  wants  a  chair  for herself, to work at her desk.  Fine. Then
comes the Dread Couch Suggestion.  Replace  the  futon,  pillows,  and
blankets  piled  on  the  padded  carpet  in the hallway aneurism that
serves as the common room?  With  real  furniture?   A  compromise  is
arranged,  in  the  form  of  the loan of Dot's and Bruce's queen size
folding mattress, a Couchtress. Loaned because it is too difficult  to
move across state lines. When fully unfurled it occupies the room with
a  narrow  foot  wide  moat  on  all  sides.   Blocking  exit from the
apartment, it  prevents  poorly  planned  escapes.   When  folded  the
tasteful floral upholstery sulks against the wall.  No one sits on it.
The beast is shipped off to it's rightful owners and Martha leaves for
Tibet shortly thereafter.

Michael   buys   a  house.   Good  investment.   Better  weather.   No
furniture. His friends offer their spare . . .  you guessed it.

Barbara3 aquires a squarish ratty-plaid bench thing after  her  sister
whines,  "I  don't know why Mum and Dad still like you, you don't even
have a couch." Brian inherits the object from Barbara3 when her living
quarters shrink.  A couple of  years  later  Brian  moves  to  plusher
surroundings.  He  doesn't want the thing to reappear in his new home.
After some delicate maneuvering, physical and political, it ends up in
Ken's already cramped studio's kitchen.  Michael avoids all  knowledge
of  the  object  being  transported  in his truck.  It turns out to be
quite  plesant  to  sit  and  talk  while   Ken   prepares   wonderful
improvisational dinners.  "It's the company," he thinks.

Ken  finally  moves  and  again the couch orbits dangeriously close to
Michael's bare living room.

Ugly.  "I'll  build  one  sometime.   I  have  folding  chairs  and  a
servicable  table."  Designs falter at the fabric stage. "Textiles are
like life.  You cut them square but they get all twisted up before you
can finish nailing them down, or whatever one  does  with  them."   No
couch.  Not even a divan.

He   begins   to  see  a  therapist  to  prevent  his  vision  of  the
bitter-old-man from becoming fact.  He sits on a . . . couch . . . and
talks about his childhood.

Every woman that spends any time in Michael's house, or knows him well
enough to comment, eventually says, "You need furniture."  In the back
of his mind he suspects that "furniture" means a couch.  One says, "So
what about the lack of furniture?."  An implication of disturbing  and
horrific   deeds   lurks  as  an  undercurrent  in  the  rest  of  the
conversation.

His parents give him money to buy a sofabed.  He buys a table saw  and
proceeds to remodel the kitchen.  He toys with the idea of turning the
table  saw into a couch, with written directions where not to put your
feet when it is plugged in.

And this is when the revelation occurs.   "Why  do  women  want  these
things?"   Furniture in general, but sofas in the specific.  He asks a
number of them. Most seem to confuse the question with, "Why don't you
want to lie on the bed?"  An interesting,  but  altogether  different,
question.  Neither question is addressed to his prurient satisfaction.
There  does  however  seem  to  be  a  link  in  their  minds  between
overstuffed  furniture  and  foreplay  without  performance  pressure.
Brooke points out that sofas and automobile back seats  have  much  in
common  in  adolescent  mythos.   Michael  didn't participate in these
situations as a teenager and is only recently aware of what  an  idiot
he  was.  There is also a sense of permanence imparted by objects that
are too heavy to move.

Female friends tell stories of past lives with  davenports.   A  couch
that distracted them from the unimportant matter of being elsewhere at
that  time.   Sofas  that  prevented grevious sports injuries by being
there when the urge to run came over them.  Divans  that  helped  them
study for important exams.  Even a huge davenport that single-handedly
destroyed a friendship when the household split into component parts.

Barbara1 complains, "My old white couch has broken springs underneath.
I need  a  new  sofa.  You can't get parts for the old ones anymore." 
She was a physics major and may be too practical.

Sally, bless her soul, does not own  a  couch,  claims  that  all  her
furniture was inherited from her inlaws when she married, and that she
still  sleeps  on  a  mattress  on the floor.  One point for Michael's
side.

Barbara4 is not at all excited by  sofas.  "They're  too  staid,"  she
opines. A second, albeit halfhearted, point to the home team.

Jean  thinks  that  Michael is sending a mixed message, "You need more
'poofy' things."  Michael hopes the word, taken in context, means soft
and round objects for sitting. The house itself is inviting, but there
is no comfortable place to sit save the bed. Even the bed is hard foam
on a rectangular  platform.   This  reveals  a  hitherto  unrecognized
sado-masochistic bent in Michael's psyche. He invites friends over for
dinner.  They  mill around looking for suitable leaning surfaces until
the meal is served. Then they are forced to sit on hard wooden folding
chairs at a table that is a bit too low.  The  food  is  usually  good
though.

Much  of  the utilitarian philosophy, it seems, is based on the denial
of tactile pleasures.  Sort of an ascetic-aesthetics.   He  has  never
really  felt  physically  comfortable, in any environment.  In fact he
believes this to  be  both  immoral  and  impossible.   The  sense  of
belonging  in  a  social  situation  is  even further removed from his
experience. Therefore, he wants everyone  to  be  amorphously  ill  at
ease.  A shared experience.

"Of  course,  my  bed  is  not in front of the fireplace."  The hearth
center and the comfort locus are separated.  "Maybe if there was a bed
in the living room?" he thinks.

"It's not  the  same,"  Barbara5  and  Barbara6  tell  him.   Barbara5
elucidates,  "I  do  other  things  in bed. On a good couch I can read
without being distracted."

Still all Michael  can  visualize  is  the  suburban  couch  potatoes'
wasteland.  It  may be a sign of resigination, perhaps despair, but he
begins looking at sofabeds.  "Now its just a matter of shopping, which
I hate."


                                 XXX

(c) 1990 M. I. Smith