I WAS at my crabby worst the other day. Beng and I were in the mall, there to find new pillows to replace the ones that I—like Barack Obama, according to his wife Michelle—had drooled on for years, and which no amount of airing in the sunshine could restore to baby-sweet freshness.
Now, I don’t mind shopping for household stuff—in fact, I rather enjoy it; I like choosing the colors and thicknesses of the bathroom towels, the grip of the can opener, the design of the faucet handles. These are objects I’m going to have to live with every day for years, and I don’t want to have to stare at something annoying last thing at night or first thing in the morning. So I fret and fuss over these details with the same care I devote to my computers and fountain pens—yes, this is okay but not that; no, too much blue, too little white, and so on.
I was actually looking forward to buying new pillows, because I could barely stand my own, but I’d gotten cranky because I was bushed and hungry, a lethal combination that trumps all other needs and pleasures. Somewhere, somehow, between the house and the mall, I began dreaming of a thick, juicy burger and a side of fries, and I knew exactly where to get it—the Wham! Burger joint in The Block at SM North, whose burgers, to my mind (and to my tummy), can be matched only by those at the Waterfront Insular Hotel in Davao. But now the slurry of pre-Christmas traffic on North Avenue was congealing and threatening me with famine, and something in me snapped and I declared to Beng that we weren’t going anywhere and doing anything without a burger in the belly to ballast my loftier predispositions.
As soon as we parked, I made a beeline for the burger place; I ordered one for each of us and we ate in a surly silence punctuated only by my chompers. (That was another reason for my displeasure: Beng had set me up for a visit to the dentist the next day and I was dreading and resisting the prospect.) Thankfully, the strange way I eat my burgers is, I think, a natural pacifier. I have this notion of saving the best for last: give me a plate of paella and I’ll work my way around and eventually to the scrumptious chunks of chorizo and shrimp. So it goes with burgers: first, the lettuce, then the slice of tomato, then—depending on how badly I’m starved—the bun, then finally, climactically, the patty! This time I didn’t wait too long; once I’d disposed of the veggies, I bit into the burger and savored the rush of bloody juices down my gullet and the sides of my mouth. I almost forgot about the pillows; by the time I was done I was meek and happy, ready to be led anywhere.
So we went down to the furniture and houseware store, and wove our way past a subdivision of sofas and dining sets to the pillows and cushions in the back, where Beng—being the female shopper that she is—promptly inspected, pinched, fluffed, and critiqued every pillow to be found on the shelves. Little did I realize what pillow technology had wrought since the days my mother stuffed handfuls of kapok into cotton sleeves then sewed them up before covering them with flowery cases sewn out of chicken-feed bags. Today, we were told, pillows shaped themselves around your head, sensed your body temperature, and adjusted their own firmness; they could relieve pain, cure insomnia, and promote world peace. They also cost a fortune—about what Beng and I had paid for our whole bed 15 years earlier. (For all that droolworthiness, Beng couldn’t find a drool-proof pillow.)
Now, as interesting as the mechanics of bedtime may be, I have a fairly low threshold of patience when it comes to objects that don’t blink or beep or throw up something digital, so I wandered off as soon as Beng said she was going to check out the pillowcases as well, having settled on a pair of scrawny-looking, vacuum-packed pillows that—the sales clerk swore—would balloon to glorious fullness once we took them home and opened them up. (I was naturally suspicious, but the boy in me wanted to see it happen.) The real problem was, I was getting sleepy; the burger had settled into my upper abdomen and was beginning to send curly little arrows of pleasure all around the place.
So I strayed to the furniture and saw a row of big, fat, leatherbound chairs, like happy, wide-hipped mommas, saying “Come here. Sit. Now.” And like a sailor charmed by some sibilant song, I shuffled forward and fell into the arms of one of them, and at that moment—sinking into the depths of plush depravity—I knew that I was lost, and that my whole life and its many labors had been a prelude to this point of final, complete, and abject surrender to the claims of late middle age. I felt enveloped by unconditional love. This chair understood me. It was attentive to every twinge of pain and weariness in my 54-year-old body. I could lie there and babble all day and it wouldn’t say one word back, except maybe words like “Stay. Sleep. Shhhh.”
Through the haze, I saw a pair of sales clerks grinning above me like cherubs. “It’s our latest model, sir! It rocks, but when you pull out the foot rest—here, let me show you, chung, chuck, thwoop!—then it turns into a recliner, which is why it’s called the Reclina-Rocker!”
Indeed it was, said the label and the accompanying price tag, which I now paid closer attention to. What, I wondered, was all this luxury worth? I saw five figures, as big and as bloated as the beast itself, and normally I would’ve jumped out of there like I’d sat on a hot plate, but blame it on the burger: I was feeling extraordinarily mellow and amenable to friendly and reasonable persuasion. I began to review my long and storied life; I recited my curriculum vitae to myself, recounting all the hardships, all the slings and arrows I had had to weather to get to where I was (namely, Home Depot).
Surely I deserved a La-Z-Boy!
It wasn’t cheap, but surely I could make it all back, dreaming up bestselling novels and screenplays while staring at the ceiling in supine sublimity. And heck, I argued further, I’d spent as much if not more on my iPhone, and whenever that iPhone rang it brought me nothing but grief because it would be someone reminding me of work, work, work. So this, I concluded, was going to be my perfect antidote to all that, my faithful companion for the rest of my working life (and even better, my non-working one as well). It came with a ten-year guarantee, which was more than I could say for myself.
Now Beng, bless my stars, is the agreeable kind. She came over with her pillows and pillowcases, and saw me stretched out on the La-Z-Boy like a man being tickled to death on the medieval rack. Against all my instincts I rose to my feet and gallantly said, “Hey, Beng, I’ve found an early Christmas present—for us!”
I don’t think she believed me, but does it matter? This thing now sits on my side of the bed, but she knows it’s one more reason for me to come home early and maybe lose the crabbiness, even without the burger.
