Then & Now & My Loveseat
Things I need to put on my wall sitting on my loveseat.
It was the blank walls and the fact that I was laying prone on my loveseat a few days ago. I thought about a moment I had 3 years ago at a bar in Echo Park. I leaned against a pony wall while I cried to my best friend about the pit in my stomach that was a symptom of the future. I believed not knowing what was going to happen was a scary bad thing, something to be avoided. Some time went by and I sat in a photo booth. I wore a necklace I have now since lost, a slip dress that clings to the hips I now have, and a leopard coat my mother bought me three years prior. My hair was fringeless and my eyes were dilated with ignorant innocence. I remember that after I sat in that photo booth my friends and I took a drunk saunter down Sunset and we met these Swedish guys who told us their AirBnB was haunted. I went home with my roommate and we sat on the loveseat and probably talked about what happened that evening. The loveseat we sat on now lives with me in San Francisco. Back then the loveseat was not as saggy and the embroidery was intact. Now the loveseat is uncomfortable and maybe exists simply as a relic that I cannot let go of.
Two years ago my older brother drove a Dodge Durango while he transported the loveseat to San Francisco. I brought my mattress, some pots and pans, and clothes in my car. The first time I saw my apartment, the vacant walls and foreign landscape made it seem bigger than I now know it to be. My mattress went on the floor and the loveseat in the living room. I had a place to lay and a place to sit. A place that I sat on in Los Angeles, was now a place to sit on in San Francisco. Maybe nothing has changed to the loveseat other than it has gotten older like myself. I found the aforementioned photo booth strip about two months ago tucked into a book I have not looked at for three years. In one frame I am smiling with a closed mouth, the next I am laughing eyes closed with my face tilting down, the third frame another closed mouth smile with a sense of preparedness, and the final frame my mouth is open and smiling through a laugh. In the three years that have since passed, I have had many photo booth portraits taken. In my most recent portrait my cheeks look slightly sullen, my hair is different, and my demeanor has changed in the way that only you can read your own face, like understanding a good side from a better side.
I suppose these photo booth strips and my unraveling loveseat serve as different tools that record time. My current blank walls reminded me of a time in my life two years ago where I was unsure. Nothing felt grounded or familiar, except maybe my loveseat. The two seater embroidered curved and tufted couch my mother found at a vintage shop in Venice. The legend as I have been told is that my couch used to be wrapped in plastic and belonged to a woman who lived in Palm Springs. Since I moved to San Francisco the acquiring of items has been done. My formica table I got from a man in Los Gatos who told me it belonged to his mother, my coffee table I got from a man in Dublin who told me it belonged to his friend’s mother. I could go on, but the point is moot. I feel as though I have found myself in another transition period. My one roommate has moved out and a new one is moving in on the precipice that in 10 months I will be moving somewhere else, another city. So since my old roommate took her art with her I am now again greeted by the blank walls I have not seen in two years. As I sit on my loveseat now, I know it will only get older and more uncomfortable. For some reason that makes it harder for me to grasp that one day I will get a couch. My mother bought me this and it came with me from apartment to apartment. I went through heartbreaks and late nights on this loveseat. I have seen the best and worst movies from the comfort of this loveseat. I have received good news and bad and gave Chloe a bob while we watched She’s All That. The time will come, I am sure, when I will get a couch and maybe I will take it from one apartment to the next, but it will never be the one I grew up with. I imagine another couch will be sensible and muted, much easier to match with other furniture. I am sure this future couch will be leather and not embroidered fabric. I am sure this other couch will be more forgettable. I am sure another couch will simply be a couch, not a loveseat, or maybe perhaps more correctly a fixture of my youth.
(And yes I know I can recover my loveseat, but that simply is not the point).
