I Like My Adult Apartment, I Think It’s Nice

Columnist Curtis Cook finally has it all—a chair that's impossible to have sex in, way more pillows than necessary and a table too small to store lube.

(eLuxury Supply)

My girlfriend and I have decided to decorate our apartment so that it has a more homey, adult feel. Of course, we started sprucing up the place the same the way every mid-to-late twenty-something couple starts beautifying their apartment—by framing all the posters we'd bought in college.

That's just where we are in life right now. We're still childish enough to hang posters on our walls, but adult enough to run down to Michael's and buy a plexiglass frame ('cause we're not quite grown enough to splurge on actual glass).

Recently, we've been specifically focused on decorating our bedroom. So this past weekend, we went out and bought a cheap, matching set of bedside tables.

I have to say, I never expected to make a purchase like this. When I was single, I didn't have a bedside table. I just had an upside down cardboard box that I could rest my bedside beers on. Now, I have a tiny table complete with a tiny drawer that's clearly meant to store condoms. There's literally nothing else that could possibly fit inside that drawer. And my girlfriend got an IUD recently, so I don't even need a place to store condoms. Score!

What I could use, though, is a handy place to keep a bottle of lube, but even the smallest bottle of lubricant won't fit into the drawer by our bed. So now, not only am I stuck with a tiny, empty drawer, I also have to stash my lube under the bed like a pervy teenager who still lives at his mom's house.

Well, it's not my lube. My girlfriend and I use it together, so it's our lube. After all, relationships are about sharing, and what's mine is hers.

But it's not just the bedside table. We also bought a couple of new throw pillows to add some flair to the room, though I'm not entirely sure why since we already had the two pillows we sleep on at night. But my girlfriend wanted to make the bed more comfortable, and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get her to spend more time in bed.

So now, we have a pair of pillows that we never actually sleep on. Instead, we take them off of the bed at night, and we put them back on the bed in the morning. Every once in a while, we'll slide a spare pillow under her butt during sex, but most of the time, we just pick 'em up and toss them onto the chair in the corner of our bedroom.

And honestly, the chair in our bedroom makes even less sense than the pillows. We never sit in it, and we can't even have sex on the damn thing because we made the rookie mistake of buying a bedroom chair with arms. And an armed chair is an intimate evening's worst nightmare.

And it's not just that the chair has arms. We're a 21st century couple. We could work around the arms if we had to. But it's also a rocking chair, and you have to be a sexual maven to safely fuck on a rocking chair with arms. Otherwise, you're bound to wind up in the emergency room, clutching your crotch and awkwardly explaining to a medical professional that you just didn't have the necessary balance and expertise to make a rocking chair sexy.

Of course, I shouldn't complain. It's nice that we're growing up together as a couple and that we're at a place in life where we can invest in our living space. After all, my girlfriend used to be the only bit of pleasantry in the bedroom. Now, we have so much nice shit that when I go to bed at night, I rest my head on my pillow (one of the two we actually use), close my eyes, and say, "Goodnight room. Goodnight moon. Goodnight bedside table that won't store my lube. Goodnight useless pillows. Goodnight useless chair. Goodnight framed posters from college everywhere."

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