Buying A Bed: Part One
Sheffield Admin Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 8:12AM Okay, does anyone mind reading about romance in order to get to the current decorating saga in my life?
Unfortunately, this is not my story of romance. As you know, my life is consumed with contractors, electricians, and testing out terrible wall colors. 
This is the story of my friend, Samantha. Samantha is one of those chronically single women, even though everyone who meets her and then learns she is single has the same response: how on earth is it that no one has snapped you up yet?
Sam is, in short, great---loads of personality, clever, witty, generous. And I don’t mean by that that she isn’t good-looking (you know, when someone is setting you up on a blind date and they say “he’s terrific, has a great job, he’s really funny ….” and they don’t mention looks, it means looks are not going to be exactly his selling point.) But Sam is also gorgeous, with a wild mop of naturally blonde hair, great athletic figure. You know, she’s that woman in yoga class you look at enviously even as the yoga instructor is saying “we are not here to compare….”
Okay. So Sam somehow has made it into her 40s without ever getting married. Not that she hasn’t wanted to---she has very much wanted a husband, but has never quite hit it right. So she’s got a terrific apartment in a great neighborhood, which is larger than most New York City apartments because she’s been living there forever and moved in back when a normal person could actually afford an apartment in New York City, a real apartment, with a separate bedroom and a kitchen that actually fits comfortably a dining table.
Sam is also one of New York’s star editors, with a high-powered job at a big publishing house. She makes a good salary, and she’s been able to furnish her place very nicely, so it’s pretty much perfect.
And her life is great---going out to expense-account lunches with agents and editors, getting invited to fancy publishing parties, the works. Sometimes she invites me along to those parties, and let me just say that they are the parities you want to be at, even though no matter what you do you feel dreadfully underdressed.
So, her perfect life had this one blemish: she really wanted to find a man to love and share it all with, but kept striking out. They all seemed great at first, but then turned out to be married, gay, or incapable of intimacy. Or, in one rather stunning case, all three.
Until now. Along came the Bachelor of West 86th Street. A lovely guy, still never married at fifty. All Sam’s friends pointed out to her that this was a red flag, probably indicated that he would most likely never, ever, want to even go near the topic of marriage or commitment.
But she kept seeing him, and he was delightful. We all fell in love with him. He took her out dancing. He spoke French. He took her to charming restaurants. And then he asked her to marry him, and we all just about fell off our chairs.
Once they started talking marriage, they started talking about beds and bedding. And not in the way you’re thinking. The thing is, he had a tiny apartment with a double bed in the tiny bedroom. She had a much bigger apartment with --- you guessed it --- a double bed in the big bedroom. The Feng Shui experts reading this will probably come in to say what I myself told Sam long ago, which is that if you don’t want to be single anymore, start by getting a bed that’s big enough for two.
The Bachelor of West 86th Street was, like Sam, quite athletic, but this meant he was muscular, and he was tall to boot. So sharing a double bed soon seemed like torture to both of them, and quickly they launched into a search for a nice, comfortable, and most of all larger, bed.
Check in next week to see what happens next.
Reader Comments (1)
If your friend Samantha is as much a catch as what you say she must be too picky regarding men. Decent women usually get snapped up fast.
James
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