Antigeist

Me and you and a dog named Blue.

Well weren't G and I just the picture of coupledom and domesticity this weekend...Dusting and vacuuming and closet reorganizing, breaking for brunch with dear friends, buying the fixings for a gourmet supper, and cooking it together. We dug out all the winter clothes, put away all the summer stuff, and I hung a hook by his side of the bed--so his bathrobe would be the first thing at hand on the upcoming chilly mornings. Jeans were darned, buttons re-sewn. He bought me a bottle of fine wine, which I sipped while applying a faux-finish to a picture frame and stirring the simmering home-made soup--all to a soundtrack of 1920's Parisian songbirds and Mexican folk goddesses.

The kind of homey picture that would make me want to vomit, normally. But hey, sometimes you simply have to get your domiciliary groove on.

But nothing makes you seem more like a Thirtysomething cast member than a trip as a couple to a housewares store, which we also had to do this weekend (new bed; no sheets). There's no way around it: neither the necessity of such a trip, nor the resulting hipness-suckage. I challenge the coolest, edgiest person ever--a heyday Lou Reed--to feel like anything other than a yuppie bougie capitalist while discussing thread count with their partner at Bed Bath & Beyond.

The dynamics fascinate me while shopping in those stores. The scene is always, always the same: Couples--gay, straight, doesn't matter, nor is it gender specific--one wide-eyed and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of housey delights at hand...the other, invariably, has a look that says they'd rather birth a rhinoceros anally than be subjected to hours of deliberation over bath mats and lamp shades. You overhear lots of snippets like this:

"What do you think honey, the stainless dish rack, or the black plastic? Now I like the stainless, but it may rust, and the black one..."
"I don't care."
"What?"
"Whichever one. I don't care."
"What do you mean you don't care..."
"It's a dish rack."

"Wow! Look at these wine glasses!"
"We have wine glasses."
"But not like these."
"But we don't drink wine (receives 'the look')...put them in the cart."

"Ohhhh... throw pillows."
"Sweet Jesus no. We're on to throw pillows?"
"Aren't they beautiful, so soft..."
"I'm going out for a smoke."
"Do you like to ruin everything?"
"Allll-rightie then, I'll meet you outside."

"I just don't understand why we need to buy a liquid hand-soap dispenser when it comes in a dispenser."
"Because the bottles are ugly."
"Ugly? It comes in the same bottle you have in your hand!"
"They're not the same. The ones in the store have cheesy labels on them."
"A label? You want to pay twenty dollars for something so it doesn't have a label?"
"Yes, I do."
"That's insane! I'll scratch the labels off the ones from the store!"
"Oh, and grab a second one for the kitchen."
"The kitchen? For the...dish soap?"
"Yep."
"Because the labels on the dish soap..."
"...ugly."

Luckily G and I share a shopping phobia problem that keeps our jaunts to those places down to a minimum. Though I will admit to two things: being more in the delighted camp and he in the dear Christ can we get the fuck out of here camp, and that the last conversation was us. Verbatim.

Posted by Antigeist at October 4, 2004 03:07 PM