YOU haven’t been able to wipe the shit-eating grin off your face since you put your hand on mine to insist on paying for the IKEA ferry tickets. You look prissy in white jeans I’ve never seen before, jeans that tell me you’re not breaking a sweat today. You’re in flip-flops and your toenails sparkle and your hair is in a bun and you don’t have any hickeys, so there’s that. You are “thrilled” that I am “up for a jaunt” and you promise to make it fun and you better try your damnedest because the whole time you’re talking to me, I’m just seeing your mouth as an orifice for Benji’s cock and I’m thinking of the way you joked with your friends in your e-mail: You: Joe is a go. Slave for a day. Score one for Beck!
Chana: LOL you know you have to blow him or give him a handy.
You: No no he’s not assembling, just going with.
Lynn: Do you think if you asked him he would install my AC unit?
Chana: Lynn, are you offering to blow Joe?
Lynn: You’re disgusting.
You: Nobody is blowing anybody. Trust me.
WE meet at the docks and kiss hello like platonic European friends or some shit. At least once we get on the boat and sit down we are close. You wrap your arm through mine. I can’t tell if you’re cold or hot and you smile.
“I can’t believe you’ve never been to IKEA,” you say.
“And I can’t believe you have.”
“Oh, I love it there,” you say and you’re leaning into me more. “Wait until you see it, all these little staged rooms. You just walk from one living room to another living room and you can’t leave without going through the entire store. There’s something magical about it. Do I sound crazy?”
“No,” I say and you don’t. “I’m the same way about the bookshop. You know, I walk around and I feel like the whole world is in there, the most important stories of all time. And then downstairs, in the cage.”
“Excuse me. Did you say, the cage?”
“Rare books, Beck. Gotta keep ’em safe.”
“I guess I hear cage and I think animal.”
Benji’s probably awake by now and the air feels good out here. “Nah, it’s like a casino. They keep the money in a cage.”
“What is it about stores?”
“Huh.”
“You like selling stuff and I am full on addicted to buying stuff in the most stereotypically girly way. I love to shop. I mean I can be in the worst mood and I go to IKEA and come out of there with . . .” You pause and is this it? Red ladle red ladle red ladle. “I come out of there with a couple of place mats, and I feel renewed.”
Fuck. “That’s good, that’s a good way to feel.”
Maybe if I share an object with you, maybe then you’ll share the ladle with me. I take the AC remote out of my pocket and I remember fantasizing about this moment before I had you. You look at it and you don’t touch it and I tell you that you can touch it and you take it out of my hand. You smile. “This is high-tech.”
“It’s the most important thing I have. It controls the humidifiers and the AC units in the cage,” I say. “If I were to jack up the heat and let those books get moist, they’d be gone, forever. Gertrude Stein is dead and she’s not coming back to life to sign books.”
“I just got the chills,” you say and you smile. Ladle? “You would be a good writer, Joe.”
“How do you know that I’m not?” I say and you like it and I try again: “Your folks must be proud of you, getting your MFA.”
You’re entertained and you look out at the water and I follow your eyes and you’re still touching me and I wish I could kiss you to get Benji’s cock out of your mouth and you play with your hair instead of holding my hand.
“I don’t have folks,” you say. “I have my mom but she’s alone.”
I glance around at the other IKEA ferry riders. None of them are like us. They’re all talking about end tables and Swedish foods. We are special. We are falling in love.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I am.
“My dad died,” you say.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I am.
“I don’t know,” you say and your eyes are wet but it could be the wind and you know so many guys you could have asked, guys in class, guys online. You asked me. “I guess sometimes I cry for no reason. Death is just so final, you know? He’s gone. There’s no coming back. He’s gone.”
You wipe your eyes and I won’t let you laugh your way out of this one. “When did he pass?”
“Almost a year ago.”
“Beck.”
You look at me and I nod and you crumble in my arms, and it looks like we’re hugging, another young couple off to IKEA to get feathers for the nest and eat hyped-up meatballs, and nobody can hear you crying except for me. You try to wiggle away but I hold you, and your big Portman eyes are glossy and your cheeks are red and there’s an old couple across the way and the dude nods at me like I’m Captain America and we’re almost there and you’re wiping your eyes.
I want more. I try: “So, what was he like, your dad?”
You shrug and I wish there were a way for me to ask about a red ladle but it’s not a normal question and you sigh. “He loved to cook. That was one good thing.”
“I like to cook too,” I say and I will learn how to cook. Red ladle red ladle red ladle.
“Good to know,” you say and you cross your legs. “My shrink would say that I’m not respecting boundaries.”
“You see a shrink?”
“Dr. Nicky,” you say and I nod.
“Omigod, Joe. Why am I telling you this? What’s wrong with me?”
“Don’t you think that’s a question for Dr. Nicky?” I say. You smile. I am funny.
Now I understand the meaning of Angevine on Tuesdays at three marked in the calendar in your phone. Dr. Nicky Angevine. Bing! And I mean it when I tell you not to be embarrassed. “Seriously, Beck,” I say, all comforting. “I think shrinks are great.”
“Most guys don’t wanna know stuff,” you say. “Most guys would freak out at me right now. The crying and the shrinking and the shopping.”
“You know too many guys,” I say and you smile and you know you need me and you nod like you agree, like you’re agreeing to us, seeing the light, and the captain blows the horn. You kiss me.
IN the movie 500 Days of Summer, IKEA is the most romantic place on earth. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the girl start out in one kitchen and she’s sweet on him and pretending to feed him dinner and when the faucet doesn’t work—the joke being that all the appliances are props—Joseph jumps out of his chair and walks through a doorway into another kitchen and she is in awe of him and he says, “That’s why we bought a home with two kitchens.” I watched the clip right after you tweeted about going to IKEA and it’s not like I’m some moron who expects life to be like the movies, but it has to be said.
Life at IKEA is not like life at IKEA in the movies.
In real life, I am not Joseph Gordon-Levitt and I have to push a giant metal shopping cart, weaving through the masses while you point out sofas you don’t need, wall units you don’t have room for, and ovens that are made of cardboard. There are a million people crowding this gargantuan converted warehouse. It’s a dystopian nightmare come true where all furniture is cut from the same hunk of cheap-ass wood, where all rooms were furnished with items that came out of the exact same factory at the exact same time. It smells like body odor and Febreze and baby shit and farts and meatballs and nail polish and more baby shit—doesn’t anyone get a babysitter anymore?—and it is loud, Beck, and I miss half the things you say because I can’t hear you over the other humans. And all the while, I am consciously not thinking about where the red ladles might be in this hellacious sprawl of new shit.