Pillow Talk

Of all the rooms I now pay to inhabit, I understand the bedroom the least. Growing up, of course, my bedroom was sanctuary, office, my gallery of individual taste and perspective. The house wasn't mine, although I occupied it. The lights, heat, air conditioning and foodstuffs within it weren't provided by me. I was an eighteen-year guest. Similarly, the artwork, furniture and decor weren't of my doing. Whatever accoutrements were hung, applied or affixed were borne of my parent's tastes.

So, my bedroom became important, a refuge. As I got older, lines were drawn, boundaries delineated, not of any hostility, but of a growing need for space. Since then, I've had five apartments, each divided into at least four rooms: kitchen, bathroom, living room, and bedroom, ranging in price from four hundred to seven hundred dollars a month.

The critical role by bedroom is now being served well by other rooms, like the living room, for which bought my first real piece of art, painted by a friend's wife, of Mary and Joseph in the stable. It's a soothing, peaceful image that fills quite adequately the blank enormity behind my couch. Additionally, an old, fancy bike from my youth gives things a playful, antique feel. I've tried to keep things traditional. That most of my possessions are donated and gifted me helps create the aged slant.

My door opens directly into the living room. No dividers, beaded curtains, partitions exist to provide a distinctively separate sense of entryway. In other words, I must either lock the door or put on some pants. The living room has the television, stereo, bookshelves, and a leather chair purloined by the curb. Friends have slept on the couches, crashed in the chairs. It's a public space, and care has gone into ensuring it satisfies the role. I eat most of my meals there, despite having a circular dining room table.

The kitchen is the kitchen. I make egg sandwiches and pour cereal there. In it's own way, it's entirely functional, too small for socializing. I've never really questioned it, or tried to reconfigure it in any way, and appreciate it for the space that it is. In the morning, it smells like coffee; sometimes like candles or incense in the evenings. I try to park on the street outside my kitchen window. Along with my morning caffeine, I get the satisfaction and unending relief of seeing my car, situated and intact where it was left the previous night. The dishes cradle into themselves, are white, the walls white, the refrigerator white. White is the color of cleanliness and purity.

All the odds and ends get relegated to the bedroom. I'm unsure of the room's purpose, onto which side of public and private it's supposed to fall. With another I have only just begun to share it. I'm more cognizant of the cleanliness of my sheets, and of the pudginess of my laundry hamper. I have a gorgeous, hand-fashioned headboard, which remains unattached, as I am without possession of the right tools to secure it to the box spring.

A lamp on the alarm-clock side of the table has a stately brass-bass, but I miscalculated on the shade. The yellow, blue combination casts a funeral light, to which I've never warmed. The room is light blue, in deliberate contrast with the living room's beige, greens and reds, and in the same hesitant perspective, I've never embraced it, either. Since it's never used for formal socializing, I tend to ignore the decorations. It might need a woman's touch, or simply more attention. I have no intention of turning it into a museum, but it can be made more comfortable with what I believe will be minimal effort.

I examine the room critically, and unevenly. In a lower light, it almost manages to look attractive, gentle and beckoning. It's not exactly a mattress tossed in the corner. A fellow-tenant and friend remarked that it seemed 'very workmanlike.' The place was meant for sleeping, seemed sterile and utilitarian. Which was fine with me, at the time. I didn't much care how many smudged drinking glasses were on the nightstand. Things have changed.