I wouldn’t say I sprung forth from the womb a natural shopper, but I have learned a thing or two over the years. Ordinarily, I’m pretty decisive – when faced with all the alternatives, I would have no problem figuring out which one works best for me (or you, for that matter). But of late I seem to be doing nothing but a whole bunch of hesitating. The problem, my friends, is a debilitating one – there is simply too much choice.
When I entered Bed, Bath & Beyond’s flagship store on Sixth Avenue, I was after a simple shower curtain. Two hours later, I found myself still rooted to the same spot, gazing upwards, a little awestruck, at the one hundred plus shower curtains hanging in the most elaborate display from the forty foot ceilings of this fluffy warehouse. These were no ordinary shower curtains. They looked majestic, like the fluttering sails of a dozen yachts, criss-crossing each other in all manner of divine, creative angles. My eyes skipped from one to the other with the most pathetic uncertainty. There was the fetching plastic one, embossed with a giant image of the Brooklyn Bridge; there was the luscious, golden, 1000-thread-count fabric one, which seemed to flirt with you as it shimmered in the air-conditioned breeze. Perhaps I wanted the bright red one? The checkered one? The one with delicate Japanese cherry blossom embroidery? Eventually I left, somewhat uncertainly, with a lightly glittery white one, and now every morning as I step into my shower I ask myself somberly whether I made the right choice. And it’s not just shower curtains, people. Every f&*king purchase brings with it agonizing indecision and spending paralysis. Yesterday, while picking up a box of tissues at my local chemist, I counted twenty-two different varieties of lip balm on point-of-sale display at the counter. Twenty-two.
The worst symptom of this recent re-acquaintance with my hesitant side is that I’ve still not managed to pick up all the big furniture items for my new pad. Every weekend, I wander into the same furniture shops, and with an odd kind of melancholy ask myself the same tired questions. Which of the sixty-eight styles of “accent chair” in Crate & Barrel’s showroom would suit me and my personality best? Is it the streamlined 60’s mod number, or perhaps the overstuffed, chenille-wrapped, grizzly bear of a armchair? Now that I think about it, maybe now is the time to finesse my personal style, do something a little unusual. I could embrace the nouvelle vogue of shabby chic and pick up one of those Louis XVI antique-style numbers, upholstered with that faux-faded, incredibly sophisticated, satin Paris stripe. Yes, I tell myself, this is the one that speaks most harmoniously with my indubitable inner elegance. Or is it? Sigh. One particular day I felt emboldened enough to make a decision – I strode up to the saleschick and, with much feigned determination, told her I wanted to order a “London Chair” please. She smiled and said “have you decided on a fabric and colour?” When I, rather deflated, asked her about the choices, she mumbled something about there being forty options, give or take, once you took into account the custom colours, and that she’d go fetch the swatches. By the time she returned, I was gone. Like the wind. I hit the footpath, stopping only to pick up some comfort food – a hot pretzel – from a guy on the corner of Houston and Broadway, and jumped in a cab. Enough!
These are the frustrating circumstances which led me, one chilly weeknight as I ducked in and out of the uber-hip galleries of Chelsea, to the most spontaneous and financially irresponsible purchasing decision of my short life as a New Yorker. Laurie Frick, an artist friend of a friend, was exhibiting her new work at Robert Steele Gallery. Laurie produces these wonderfully busy collage pieces, which look vaguely like street maps when viewed from afar, and when examined up close tell you a whole bunch of erratic stories that captured my interest in a persistent way. And having spent a whole two months curiously unable to buy the things I needed, once I saw something I really liked, well, the impulse to buy was irresistible. And buying that thing I really liked, well, it was the most liberating feeling in the world. And that is how I came to be liberated by Laurie Frick’s “Gothic Red”, which apparently has something to do with the imperfection of memory, the little fragments of things we remember and the little slivers of things we don’t. For me, I just like looking at it, I guess, and every night when I come home, I take a moment to sit on my lone piece of furniture (my chocolate leather sofa from Macy’s) and stare awhile at “Gothic Red”.
