just try to give me an F in ikea.
Sometimes, I am very grateful that anyone has ever wanted to live with me at all. I once wreaked complete havoc on an International Dolls of the World set that an aunt had given me. Me, a bee-bee gun, and one of my brothers throwing the dolls out the window while I waited on the ground with my gun held aloft, yelling, "Pull!" just like it was clay pigeons. Doll parts littered our yard ever-after. I was known to rule my brothers with an iron fist, although I never dressed anyone up in female clothes. I was known as an enforcer of sorts. I was never an instigator, and instead was always the one that pounded you five times harder because you'd dared to pound me once.

My first roommate was a gay man (who insisted he be called Harry the Gay, King of all Gays because "That asshole Richard stole the title 'the Lionhearted'). HtG invited drag queens into our living room. Frequently, I'd come home to real-life enactments of Mommie Dearest. Often, the queens used me as a dress-up doll of sorts. It was here that I learned the art of glamour and gained a love for feathers that remains to this very day.

That was fun until said gay ruler of the free world became a coke addict and started listening to all this tweaker music and inviting slum-dogs into our cozy little pad at all hours of the day and night. I've lived with a number of folks--from a good friend who regularly enjoyed five or six beers while taking a shower to the performance artist who liked to stage gory scenes with catsup and Big Wheels (picture a faux accident scene on the side of the road with a child's thrift store shoe and you get the idea). Somehow, I've managed to out-weird and out-silly everyone. How, I don't know because living at Arcosanti, I lived with some odd motherfuckers. I've always sort of worried that maybe I am too difficult to live with because I am eccentric and have the largest and heaviest collection of books and artifacts outside of a museum or library.

Yet, I am in love with the sweetest, most compassionate man, and he seems to rather like living with me. I've known this man long enough to have actually seen his transition from college student to young man. He tolerates the songs of questionable merit I sing and the fact that I thought Gertrude Hawk was the name of the little old lady at the candy story and had no idea it was a chain chocolatier. "Do you think that the waiter at Bob Evans is named Bob Evans, too?" my love howled. I hammer all manner of shit to our walls, and he smiles and continues reading his law books, telling me how much he adores me. The newest addition is a miniature plaster deer head. The deer has a wreath of (also plaster) flowers around its neck. It'll go next to my linocut of a skeleton bride.

Now that I'm sending roots and tendrils into the soil here, I've discovered Ikea. The other night, I proudly hammered and cursed together a night-stand. The next night, after celebrating my success a little too heartily with lemon-drop martinis, I pinned the instructions for the Malm drawers to the 'fridge. I wrote "A+++! Good job! WOW!" in red Sharpie all over the instructions. Shaun noted this development with an arch of brow and a good-natured smile. "You are fun to live with," he said and tucked me into bed.

My Ikea report card remains on our 'fridge. Just wait until I put together the bureau of drawers tomorrow night. I've got gold stars and Swedish meatballs. I went to Ikea tonight so I could buy meatballs and have dinner. I don't know how anyone can live with me.

jalullah tewel