“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “By the time the guy is into the bedroom, the deal is closed. He won’t even notice.” “It also creaks when things heat up,” I say. “I’m worried one day it will collapse.” “That he would notice,” my friend says. Off I go, then, to find a bed with dignity. Something solid, stylish and assured, befitting a person of my age and taste, a bed that says this woman will put up with none of your nonsense, do not even think of trying it, pal. It takes about a minute and a half to find. It is dark wood, with a linen and mahogany headboard, and lots of storage drawers. Catherine the Great and the Preobrazhensky Life Guards could spend the night on this bed and it wouldn’t collapse. And in the morning you could say, “How’d ya sleep, fellas?” and they’d pound their Wheaties bowls on the table and holler, “????????????? ???????!!” (“Wonderful bed!!”)
I also need a new mattress. There are seasons of mattresses, I have come to realize, that correlate with one’s stages of maturity. When you are 17 and sneaking into abandoned hotels in the Catskills with your boyfriend, and the mattresses smell of mold and are so skinny they can be rolled up, you do not care one bit. You are enchanted to be on a surface that does not include rocks. When you are 24 and have your first newspaper job, you become more selective; a mattress on the floor is a sign of a very immature guy and you quickly move on. For the next few decades, there is a mattress and a human nonintervention pact: you live side by side, like the United States and Canada, without giving each other much thought. Mattresses have as much identity as gym socks. Then you hit 60, and you wake up stiff and get out of bed in increments, as if you had extra joints, channeling your grandmother: “Oy. Oy vey. Vey iz mir.” You don’t need one of those “French Women Don’t Do Whatever It Is You Do, You Pathetic American Slob” books to know that this is not hot. Also, you cannot keep kidding yourself that your back aches because of the gym. Your back aches because you are in your 60s. It is serious mattress time. I trot into a mattress store that is having a sale, searching for a brand I slept on in a friend’s house, for which she paid about $1,000. The current model, with tax and delivery, will cost $1,647, which throws me, but O.K., inflation. I try it. It is soft and welcoming, perhaps too welcoming. I might soon be pulled under, like in the quicksand scene in “Lawrence of Arabia.” The salesman, aware that he has a live one, steers me to a firmer model. I love it. It is a magnificent mattress. Perfect. The sale price, however, with tax comes to $2,486. This is more than I paid for my first car. Say you spilled something on it. It could be like the 2008 market crash. A major investment would be wiped out. “It’s very nice,” I tell the salesman, “but way over what I was planning to spend.” “Let me see what I can do — I can make a call,” the salesman says, and “If there is one thing I never want to do, it is make anyone feel pressured.” Whether this comes before or after, “I work on commission,” I do not recall. I do know I am not about to make a $2,400 decision in 20 minutes. “I have to think about it,” I say. “I’ll be back.” “Everybody says that,” the salesman says. “And only nine out of 10 do.” “Look,” I say, “I’m a very straight shooter. If I say I will be back, I will be back.” Now you might argue, as any adult who has not had a table dropped on his or her head should, that a promise made to a salesman does not count and, moreover, the salesman knows it does not count. It’s like when a guy with whom you have had no chemistry all evening says, “I’ll call you,” an acceptable social lie and much nicer than the guy adding, “When you are the last woman on earth and I have a gun to my head, and even then, when we sleep together, I’ll be picturing someone else.” And rationally, in the upper crust of my brain, I do know this. But there is a voice inside me saying: “You made a promise, you have to keep your word.” It is very aggravating. Shouldn’t the smartness train have pulled into the station by now? And, of course, even as I am returning to the mattress store, where I do not want to go, to speak to this pushy salesman, I know the answer: This wisdom-of-age stuff is nonsense; certain things are in the hardwiring, you will do the same dumb things over and over. I go back to the store, but this serious mattress purchase is too much for me. I do not buy it. Which is just as well, as I am having second thoughts about the bed as well. I am concerned that the drawers will make me feel as if I am sleeping on a bureau or worse, a child’s bed. Also, with the headboard and the new dresser and the side table, the set will come to $3,800. And the painting contractor who carries the insurance my building demands gives me an estimate of $2,400 to paint a 13-by-15-foot bedroom. Not only that, but people are so worried about bedbugs in New York that I can’t take the old mattress out of the building unless it wears something like a mattress condom. And trying to coordinate all the pickups and paint jobs and mattresses coming and going has given me a headache. To hell with the new bedroom. If someone comes along, we’ll do it on the couch. Joyce Wadler on Twitter:
@joyce_wadler View the original article here
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