It's that damned liberal guilt thing again, doc by Jon Worley
While even the slightest possibility of watching Kenneth Starr serve jail time is a delicious proposition indeed, I must admit that I've gotten bored with the quicker-zipper-upper scandal. So, of course, instead of staying glued to the TV during a rare three-day weekend, my wife and I trucked over to Cleveland (that party town) to visit some friends.
Lots of fun chats, with more time devoted to a scholarly discussion of the merits of the Spice Girls than the previously mentioned national affair. And then the IKEA catalog got passed around.
IKEA is a Swedish acronym, and it is also the name of a home implements company that likes to give its products dubious Swedish names like "dokument" (a wastebasket). Even spotting a catalog (much less touching one) is a sure sign that you're succumbed to incipient yuppiedom. No matter that the prices are relatively cheap (as is the quality of the goods for sale, natch), make no mistake: This stuff has upwardly-mobile kitsch written all over it.
If you don't believe me, whip out those My So-Called Life tapes (you've got 'em, don't lie to me) and check out Angela's bedroom. Pure IKEA, down to the punctuation mark handles on the drawers. As that show's setting was suburban Pittsburgh, it seemed only natural that Barbara and I would wander by the Iron City area warehouse, just to sample the goods in person.
As a (lame) way of explanation, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,800 CDs (to go along with hundreds of LPs, tapes and 7-inches), and my dreadfully constructed shelving is not only out of space, but threatening imminent collapse. I need new storage, and I need it now. I've been threatening to go down to the local lumberteria and undertake another questionable woodworking project, but it seems IKEA has plenty of solutions for me, all more or less within our budget. Actually, the stuff is cheaper than the lumber for my improvements. Probably because there's a good chunk of particleboard hiding out underneath the veneer.
Anyway, we wandered into suburban Allegheny County and parked about a mile from the entrance. Minivans from there to the horizon, it seemed. All of the women were either carrying babies or still pregnant. As IKEA adheres to all health regulations (and it was about 40 degrees out), none of them were barefoot. I can't speak for their home lives. We drifted around the place, checking out this table and that set of shelving, imaging all of the stuff we could buy to turn our apartment into a place that might support inhabitation by adults. Yes, we contemplated exiling our current milk crate chic (a decor which dates back to our college days) to the dustbin of our memories. As we are no longer recent college graduates, this only makes sense.
At that moment something of an epiphany hit me. No matter how hard I try or how much I want it, I'm never gonna have a claim on the Starving Artist of the Year award. Like the Offspring, Green Day and so many other "alternative" punk bands, if I make some sort of great cultural statement, it's gonna come from a middle-class background. All that dirt-poor bloody-knuckles authenticity I've always wanted will be denied. I have to face it: I'm comfortable.
I feel like Tom Hayden after he married Jane Fonda, or maybe Dave Pirner after he shacked up with Winona Ryder. No matter how much I want to be involved in a life-and-death struggle for my existence, that's not me. Now, Winona dumped Dave even before Soul Asylum tanked, so that proves there's always hope. A little. Maybe.
I'm fooling myself, and I don't believe it. Time to get past this. Time to make that order to IKEA and be pleased with the order it brings to my life. Time to accept that I have a lot more in common with Alex Keaton than I do with Joan Armatrading . Time to bite the bullet and settle down.
Not on your fucking life.
Jon Worley's last agonizing self-realization concerned his slow but inexorable journey into the land where people actually wear Dockers and are happy about that fact.