Love, life and wardrobes
Here I go public about a big problem in the bedroom. Originally published in The Sunday Age.
Every long-term relationship has its comedy routines. You fall into familiar roles and trot out your lines. If you had an audience, they’d be rolling in the aisles. That’s the nature of silly, repetitive arguments couples have – they’re funny, as long as you’re not the one having them.
The greatest source of grudging comedy gold at our place is our wardrobe. And I’m not talking about our clothes (although I’m sure there are guffaws to be had there too). This is an actual built-in wardrobe, a his-and-hers monstrosity that – along with our two little kids and too little sleep – provides endless potential for laughs. If only we could see the humour in it.
Stubborn and unwieldy, the wardrobe came with the house and runs the length of our bedroom wall. To operate it I heave one of three massive sliding doors aside to access the inner sanctum of my undies drawer. Meanwhile, my beloved is simultaneously shoving the doors in the opposite direction to get to her undies drawer. In the split second it takes for me to hoist my holey Y-fronts, the great doors slam shut in my face. A tussle of sliding, slamming and cursing ensues. Until we’re both finally dressed and thoroughly infuriated.
Always in a rush, always too bleary-brained to find a better way, we seem destined to perform this Vaudeville slapstick act at least once a day. After a particularly bad night’s sleep, the slapstick takes on sinister tones. It’s more like a tug of war.
Working the wardrobe solo is no less frustrating because your wardrobe-mate has inevitably blockaded the sliding mechanism with a row of half-open, overflowing drawers. Throw in a couple of small, screaming children with a knack for shoving hands, heads or family pets between the wardrobe’s perilous rolling stock and suddenly a coffee to start the day seems redundant.
Years ago, when my future wardrobe rival suggested we shack up together, I was all for it. I was overcome by excitement and horror in equal measure. Being a bloke, I was determined not to let on. My opposing emotions cancelled each other out. I affected a cool, calm exterior to suggest I didn’t really mind either way. Which, being a woman, my partner saw through in an instant.
Cunningly, she presented her cohabitation proposal in the form of a question. She asked me what rules I would lay down if she was to move in with me.
In what I now regard as a moment of uncharacteristic clarity, I delivered a decree along these lines: I would give up my bachelorhood on the condition that the traffic areas of our shared home never be blocked by discarded clothes or related accessories.
Clearly, I was already in training to become a grumpy old man. Even then, in my carefree-ish young-ishness, I was infuriated by items sprawled, Labrador-like, in doorways.
Of course, my decree just made her giggle. There she was letting me call the shots and the best I could come up with was a finicky plea about housekeeping.
The fact that she considered my demand laughably undemanding only added to my unease. Sure, a little messiness might seem trivial. But it’s the little messy tangles that really drive a pair spare. We’re old hands when it comes to tackling vast, complicated challenges as a united front and yet seemingly harmless, day-to-day annoyances can often have us scrabbling madly in opposite directions.
I remember well the bedroom my beloved kept in her share house. It was knee-deep in girly cast-offs. There was a rough path between the door and bed, as if a small snowplough had been used to clear an emergency exit. I was assured I would never encounter such extreme conditions in our future home together.
As non-core promises go, that one wouldn’t have known a core if it tripped over one. All the more so now that we have toddlers running riot. There are dolls and prams and porridge bowls at every turn. There is stray Lego underfoot. Trivial, yes. But painful all the same.
As if for old times’ sake, my wardrobe rival occasionally leaves her footwear in darkened rooms for me to stumble over. When she does, I like to describe, to no one in particular, exactly how I will end my days: headlong in that stupid wardrobe, covered in shattered mirror glass, having tripped over a pair of calf-length leather boots. Cue laughter. Roll credits. And bring in the set builders – that wardrobe’s hilarious!