Rectum? It nearly killed 'em

"The things you own, eventually own you," said Tyler Durden in Fight Club. If that's true, then there's a couch in my living room calling me it's little bitch.

Most of a weekend was spent searching out a sofa big enough for Lin and I to lay on together and the right color to match the walls in a future home. After the first few stops, I realized within the confines of beds, lazy boys, and dinning tables, the only thing you need to know to sell furniture is how to be an asshole. An occupation I could have been born into. A busy store usually means there are crowds of people in the aisles and not enough cashiers. For some reason, we weaved through sectional soffas and recliner chairs easily without offering our pardon to any other patrons. I spoke to a few sales reps on the floor as they buzzed by towards somewhere else. I thought maybe if I stripped birth naked and tied the money we wanted to spend into a seductive thong then their attention would be granted. But as my own self-respect told me otherwise, we left to try and find someone who would give a damn.

Where we found a suitable sofa and love seat, we found a man who was friendly in a salesman kind of way. The kind of guy you wouldn't trust with your wife, but was selling something that fit our budget. Of course, the scrapes on his arms and the bloodshot redness in his eyes from the detached retina he was apparently suffering from added to the mystique. After sleeping on it a while we went back to sign the forms and pay for our new couches. Our hand-me-downs lasted a while and I fought buying new couches knowing one day we would move from this townhouse and into a house, but after a spring surrendered its last hope, I knew it was time.

Lin has wanted couches where both of us could lie down and watch tv together for a while. I knew this would cause a problem, but nothing we couldn't overcome with a little precise measuring. The dimensions seemed possible. They lined up the walls nicely and even the extra width would still leave the living room comfortable. But one worry was something a tape measure couldn't answer - getting it through the damn door.

The young man slid his dolly to the tailgate of my truck and we slid the sofa to the front. Only a half inch kept the gate from securing, but I wasn't going far. My worry, other than the door, was now focused on the dark cloud that was settling over our home a few miles away. I braked in front of our door step and hurriedly got Lindsay outside to see about some help. I tried to wrap my arms around our new couch, all wrapped in plastic and card board and once I realized God made them too short to grab the damn thing any which way, I heard the pelts of rain smattering the plastic. Luckily, a neighbor was available to help just as the rain picked up. He was a taller black man whose arms grabbed an end of the couch without a problem I grunted and huffed as I tried to stretch out to get some sort of grip which was harder now that the water on the plastic made it even slicker. We started to move, and I had to stop and re-grip. We took a few more steps and I re-gripped again. Finally, we get to the door and we tilted and slid and pushed and shoved this big green plastic wrapped unholy motherfucker as far in as we could, until the stairs and ceiling denied the last six inches. We picked it up above our heads. Turned it completely over. But six inches, which never seemed like much before, as I have been told, was like jumping the Grand Canyon.

While the door to our home stood wide open and a couch coming back out the door, stripped of it's plastic, cardboard, pillows and virtue, the rain came down in big sweaty angry side swiping summertime drops. "Put it back in," I yelled, and Lin began to freak. I snatched the plastic from the ground and held it over the exposed end while I took the brunt of the moisture. I'm sure this man was looking at me with pure pity in his heart while the last dry part of me no longer existed and I might have even contemplated crying since no one could tell because of the rain. But while I stood there, we gave one last hard push and the same whole which denied entrance before gave way and the couch came falling through. The real tears wanted to come now.

The funny thing is, now that it sits in our living room, I'm not so sure about the color anymore.