The IKEA Matrix

I spent my day reorganizing my closet and throwing out all sorts of unnecessary garbage. I even got crafty and made these two beautiful things, for which the name – although am certain it exists – I haven’t a clue. I threw all of my agendas and writing books in the top one, and my letters in the bottom one.



Then I took the decision to buy the IKEA ektorp single reading chair, which I’ve been eyeing for quite some time. I drove out to IKEA totally psyched to buy it, bring it home, put it together and start reading Zadie Smith’s On Beauty this very evening. The chair and matching footrest I wanted in this fabric:



I saw it, I sat in it & I thought: this is my chair. It is this chair that I will take with me to my new home and place on my porch, along with others in different fabrics so that when people come and visit, they too will be seated in comfy sinky cozy chairs made for coffee and tea, cookies, cakes, good conversation and long lasting memories. And when my daughter has her girlfriends over, she too will be able to sit out on these very chairs and talk about boys and actors and shit poetry and all of the things neither her father nor I should ever know about. I was so happy, that I thought the two individuals seated on the ektorp sofa next to me cuddling in the store were sort of precious in their own unique weird way.

But then I made the fatal mistake of asking the boy who worked there to show me the matching footrest.

Fatal mistake because apparently, there is no matching footrest. Apparently the Swedes don’t think you need a matching footrest for this chair. They instead want you to purchase the leaby red footrest. And by leaby, they mean slutty. Behold the shade of red fashioned after the very lipstick Madonna wore throughout her Blonde Ambition tour:



What am I going to do with that shade of red anywhere in my home? My daughter will be a raging whore if I put something like that on my porch. Honestly, it may not appear as large a travesty as it really is, but it is. Especially when I had my heart set on that beautiful chair and it’s matching footrest. I stared at the boy incapable of comprehending what he was saying because I could not register: NOT AVAILABLE. He kept pointing at the hideous Leaby Red and declaring: It’s made to match. I couldn’t even look at the footrest, the red was so blinding and my eyes quite nearly started bleeding.

I said: “dark, rich red?”
He said: “leaby!”
I said: “No. That’s a really cheap brothel red.”
“Leaby?”
“That can’t possibly be the only matching footrest you have. Why doesn’t it come in the same fabric? It would be so easy to make with all of your cheap slave labour in China.”
“We use cheap slave labour?”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t everybody? It sounds right, don’t you think? I mean Swedes don’t make this, do they? It’s probably poor blind children in Cambodia somewhere.”
“I thought you said China?”
“I said: ‘I don’t know’. Maybe India? And why are these two sleeping on your couch? This isn’t a home. Is it? Is this some Swedish guy’s home and I’m here by accident?”

…and the conversation just spiraled into stupidity from there.

Deflated and without a chair, I decided to leave my memories of a porch and children behind at IKEA. Only, if you’ve been inside of an IKEA store, you know it’s not made so that you may walk out at your leisure. Instead, you have to follow the rabbit out of the IKEA Matrix or else you will be swallowed by one of the ektorp chairs and as you’re being swallowed, they will take a picture of you and then frame it and stick it in one of their faux living rooms on display.

Did you really think those photos were donated? No. They are photos of people who get lost in the IKEA Matrix, my friends.

After bumping along and going back to the same damn spot 12 times, I found the arrows on the floor and followed them out. I swear there was a guy behind me with a camera.