Ode to a desk chair
We both knew this day was coming, desk chair. Or, perhaps, you didn’t: given all the indignities you’ve suffered — yet endured, in your pathetic fashion — perhaps you’ve come to think of yourself as immortal. Well, you’re not: you’re a crappy desk chair, and I’m replacing you.
You were pristine, once. During the time I lived in Spanish Harlem — 2002, or possibly 2003 — near-crippled by chronic back pain, I needed proper lumbar support. I’d liberated a folding chair from the K-8 school where I worked (though, why I lugged it all the way home on the subway, from West 10th to East 117th, only a younger man could answer), but that thing was like an iron maiden. So I petitioned my parents to buy me you. Then I lay on the floor until my back quit spasming.
(In that apartment — next door to the chicken slaughterhouse — a fine layer of dust covered my desk. In the morning, sipping from a cup of instant Café Bustillo, I could distinguish mouse-prints weaving between the stapler and the pen cozy. If someone broke in, desk chair, you were the only thing they’d logically want to steal.)
Together, we moved farther north into Manhattan; then crossed the East River, into Brooklyn. I have a feeling that, during these many moves, I piled heavy things on top of you, desk chair. Maybe that’s why you’ve got a tendency to sink over the course of a day, until my knees are up around my ears, and it’s like I’m squatting over a rest station toilet. Your hydraulics suck, is what I’m saying — but I’ll take the heat for that.
Your faulty arm rests, though, I can’t abide. First, the right one fell off: a desk chair without an arm rest is like a bicycle without a seat — tremendously uncomfortable. And after I screwed that one back on, the other one fell off. It’s one thing to keep the Phillips-head handy; another thing to use a drill, because the Phillips-head doesn’t provide adequate torque. Do you see what I’m saying, desk chair? If someone broke in today, they’d be more likely to steal the Ryobi.
(Also: it looks like I’ve spilled an inordinate amount of wax on your mesh webbing. Splashed wax all over you, practically — and that’s just baffling. Thursday was the first day I wore shorts, and my bare skin was touching you, and … yuck.)
So: your tenure ends today. Or possibly not today, if I’m out when my order arrives. If it’s the DHL guy, we’re cool — he’s got a goatee, and gets a kick out of delivering my Beer of the Month Club. But if it’s the FedEx guy or the UPS guy — each delinquent in his duties — I may have to wait. Possibly, it may require a trip down to the depot; but time is short, desk chair.
And when I roll you outside — where your mesh webbing can absorb the warmth of the sun, and hopefully the wax stains won’t be overly noticeable from the sidewalk — and I turn my back on you, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone wheels you away. Possibly, I’ll even hear the transaction through my open window: hear the opening of the gate, hear you squeak and clatter down Wyckoff Street. But I won’t watch.
Because I still think of those mouse-prints fairly often, desk chair. Worse than the chronic back pain in those days, it was a time when I was lonely. I liked to imagine it was only one mouse; and while that’s still deeply unhygienic, it was you, me, and that mouse.
The mouse ran into a glue trap. You got old, and — to varying degrees — busted. But I’m still here.
