New York's apartments mirror the same architectural mindset of the island as a whole - limited horizontal space means that one must build up, and my closet is no exception. Not being the 5'10" my childhood self was convinced I was fated to be, much of that vertical space is difficult to interact with daily. Which is why at 10AM, my room looked like this:
My mother would be so embarrassed.
But wouldn't you know it? For an investment of a measly $50 and 2 hours, one can construct a closet that looks like this:
Magical, isn't it?
And while a messy, unorganized closet is terrifying, even more so is the brilliant adventure that I suggested Manfriend and I embark upon a while back. (Why are all the stupid ideas always mine?) In an attempt to prompt more significant conversation over our latest long distance stint, I suggested we read a book together. (Prior conversations were always disturbingly full of a similar lexicon excercised by my teenage self while conversing with my parents. Think: The day was fine. I did some stuff. It was pretty lame. May I please be excused?) I had read wonderful things about Freedom: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen, and bonus points - my principal had read it, so I could borrow it from her AND have things about which to converse with both her and Manfriend. A win, win, win!
Wrong.
The book is amazing, verbose, and has an inventive point of view in the narrator, but hits a little too close to home in a few ways. The main character, Patty, was a college athlete, hugely competitive, and has a less-than-ideal adult relationship with her father. She moves into suburbia and attempts to create the ideal family (not unlike what my future plans used to be for my adult life.) While the similarities pretty much stop there, I've just finished the introduction to her infidelity with her husband's best friend. (Easy, Killer. I haven't ruined anything - she tells you this is coming within the first 30 pages of the book.) Suddenly my head is swimming with textually-based questions - how is it possible that both men are so taken with such a whiny, wallowing woman? She's a former athlete - how is she lacking any form of self-respect? How is it that she is able to shower her husband with even more affection after sleeping with his best friend? How does one get to a point in one's marriage where "sleepwalking" into another man's bed becomes a plausible option?
These inquiries into the motivations of characters' developments quickly become more text-to-self than I would prefer. Having never been monogomy's number one fan (college friends will tell you - I was adamant that I would never be ridiculous enough to marry. Men are the enemy and cannot be trusted.) this has done some strange things to my psyche. I find myself asking, "Why can't I see all of Manfriend's Facebook pictures? What is he hiding?" "I wonder if that man and woman making out in the next train car are driven by the added adrenaline of having an affair?" "I don't like to eat the same thing every day, day after day for breakfast. Could this be a manifestation of my Patty-like potential?"
Manfriend, probably very perceptively, is several pages behind me and has put off our discussion of this latest development. Which is convenient for me - it gives me more time to fiendishly soul-search about the perplexing paradoxes of marriage. Oh, so healthy.
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