While visiting IKEA alone, it occurred to me I’ve never undertaken this demented activity of aspirational domesticity without a friend or girlfriend or boyfriend, someone I was either living with or was at risk of living with.
What should have simply been an errand to procure a side table or cheese grater or chair would inevitably take on an existential sheen.
Once, as I was testing a queen bed with a bad boyfriend, he received a text from his ex saying she’d seen him from afar at IKEA with a new girl and he could go fuck himself. We never lived together.
At IKEA alone, however, I only had myself to interrogate and berate, only had my own opinion of whether this closet organizer was strictly necessary. No— the only thing for sale at IKEA is the entertainment of entertaining other ways of life.