We were married four days when reality hit me so hard my elbow nearly shattered the display case in the housewares section of Macy’s from the weight of my head collapsing into my rapidly tensing hand. Due to not such infinite wisdom and some logistical issues, our honeymoon was scheduled to begin a week after our wedding, leaving us seven full days to go shopping and play house.

I should have seen it coming when she told me we needed to order a bedroom set well in advance of the time we actually needed it, technically our wedding day since we hadn’t been shacking up. Silly me to think you walked into a or possibly many stores, find something you like, order it, and have it delivered in a reasonable time frame, like most other things you buy. NOT SO FAST. Something about factories down south cutting wood at certain times of the year, which taught me that furniture is seasonal. My darling wife, then my darling fiancée, was nominated to be the advance scout in locating sets for my perusal, since I was the one with theoretically less taste and definitely less say in the decision process anyway. 

I don’t remember who anointed her the de facto Maurice Villency of our relationship, but that was the mantle she donned. We were both coming directly from our parents’ houses to our first apartment, so neither of us had had the opportunity to participate in any sort of interior design-off to see who had better taste. My former bedroom was a beauty. Parquet wood floors, dark brown wood grain mica laminate dresser and chest, medium brown real wood desk, mismatched lighter brown peeling-mica table with contemporary silver duct tape trim, baroque lamp with yellowed shade, reddish brown wood grain colored contact-papered pinewood shelves, and my grandfather’s non-heirloom quality dark brown vinyl easy chair with broken mechanism which fixed it in an upright position. A full-size Confederate flag (it was the 1970s)  hung next to a $29 flea market oil painting of a sailing ship on water, a good place to be. Dark blue curtains, corkboard on the door to soundproof the room, and to pull the whole look together, midnight blue and lime green walls, with the bifold closets painted in both colors on a diagonal. All this in a cozy 12 by 12 space which came to be known as the Cave. Damn, I think I did a rather good job given my parental/genetic design influence was based primarily on variations of plastic. No color wheel issues either.

Her bedroom was the Land of Mica. White and brown mica. For that matter, everything in her room was white and brown or white or brown. The walls, the carpet, the pictures, the curtains.  Everything. The unique twist to the look was her furniture had no legs. And upon further review, none of the furniture in her parents’ house had legs…something about it looking more modern, don’t ask. And none of the mirrors provided anyone over 5 foot 2, the tallest member of the family, the ability to see one’s head without squatting. Apparently there was some missing link in the design gene pool with her as well.

So we’re at Macy’s looking to buy accessories for our apartment, a lovely one bedroom in an old building with a fire escape and beautiful view of a parking lot. After I lifted my elbow off the counter, my darling wife shot me her best, filthy “You’re embarrassing me, you idiot, why did I marry you“ look, and told the salesgirl we’d take the $39 plastic tissue holder and the $54 plastic garbage can and the $23 plastic bathroom cup and all the other assorted overpriced plastic and other should- have-been-a lot-cheaper accessories essential to starting our apartment furnishing off on the right foot, all the while with me thinking our expenditure as a percentage of our joint income was totally out of whack.

And that was just the beginning. Then there was wallpaper. Five hours in a wallpaper store, sober, no less, left me blind, but not as blind as when I hung it in the bathroom and found it  absorbed all the light, therefore promising to render me a bleeding mess after every shave. Or our R2D2/ built-in wall hamper painted in bright, metallic silver. Or the feathery plumes hung on the bedroom window valances which created the world’s only mustachioed windows. Or the scalloped plywood window frame and subsequent wallpapered plywood porthole on our dining room window providing a nice cozy U-boat feel. All accomplished in a few months with not a lot of money, maybe to make up for the plastic overdose. Where she came up with that stuff was beyond me, since her roots didn’t give me any inkling of any sort of gothic/Alice in Wonderland/bad acid dementia creating a bizarro world in her head.

But as they say, you never know, and in her case it’s the absolute truth.

We’ve come a long way from that apartment and our house in the ‘burbs has its own unique style and character which offers many “interesting” things to look at.

But even better, she’s been a successful interior designer for over 20 years.

I guess she was on to something.