The hardest chair
There’s this line in an erotic short story by Anais Nin, where she describes a man as such:
“He always chose the hardest chair.”
It’s probably not the only description of the man, but it’s the only one that’s stayed with me. I didn’t need to know anything else about him. These six words were enough.
I identified with this hard-chair-sitting man immediately, for reasons not clear at the time—masochism? Chivalry? Some warped commitment to masculinity, rugged individuality, or bravado?
My father was a man who chose the hardest chair. For 30+ years he sat in a straight-backed wooden chair in the dining room, watching Seinfeld, The Tonight Show with David Letterman, Ally McBeal (!), while a couch and two arm chairs went neglected nearby.
(By him, at least. My brother and I availed ourselves of their squish.)
I thought of the Nin line again yesterday while at the grocery store. One of my hearing loss coping mechanisms is to choose the self-checkout lane, in order…