Lounge of Tomorrow - Inspiration?

Its widely known that all door knobs are raving lunatics. It’s what they get for being twisted around all the time. Doors are usually not very trusting after years of being jerked around, and chairs usually feel put upon, the result of spending too much time bearing heavy loads.

“Pssst, Barry. Barry! Is he asleep?”

“Wuh-huh.”

“I said, is he asleep?”

“And I said 'wuh-huh'.”

“Which sounded like you were asking me to repeat my question.”

“No, ‘Wuh-huh’ very clearly means ‘Yes, Rufus has paid the bills, mopped up the floor, smoked a joint, and has fallen asleep in the upholstered Eames chair he found in the abandoned lot behind the supermarket.’

“I understand you now.”

“Good. I’ve been working very hard on developing a language for doors. I really think us doors should stick together.”

The chair let out a resigned sigh. “Would make it rather hard for you to open and shut if you were stuck together, and opening and shutting is, after all, your purpose. You are the barrier between inside and out, external and internal, public and private. Doors are, perhaps, the most important objects in the world.” The chairs often had to reassure Barry that he was important and well liked. Doors can be so terribly sulky. Chairs are naturally obliging even if they are not always comfortable. Sadly, there was no point in reassuring a chair of its importance. Take away chairs, and there’s still a ground to sit upon. Chairs know this only too well.

“Hey, fellas, can you pipe up a bit? We can’t hear anything from in here, and as you know Old Cue likes to withhold information.” The sound came from a corner pocket and was spoken by the No. 6 solid.

“I do, I do indeed. I like to keep secrets. Why everyone in here can see that the linoleum is of a certain color, and in a certain condition, but just because we all know what the linoleum looks like does not mean I’ll tell you what it looks like if you ask me, because everything I know is a secret even kept from myself. For instance, there is a brown box up there, high up in the wall. I see it. I believe I even know what it is, and have recorded its proper name down in my memory.”

“You’re talking about me, I gather! I am the super coolest object in this entire joint,” piped up the air conditioner who was still arrogant and brash even though it was never plugged in anymore.

“Shhh. I would thank you not to interrupt me again,” continued Cue Ball. Anyway, I will not tell you what it is used for, even though I’m fairly certain I know its exact purpose, but I sometimes bury my secrets so deep, there’s just no telling, not even to myself. In the morning, when you are all exhausted and asleep, I open up my secrets and I investigate them thoroughly. I come to a greater understanding about the world and all the people in it, but I like to keep this knowledge to myself, even though I’m fairly certain that a treatise detailing all I have learned would eliminate avarice from the hearts of man.”

The only object in Nora’s Midway Truck Stop that cared one whit about the hearts of man was Cue Ball. Cue Ball once asked Rufus’ dog, Filthy, what he thought about the hearts of man, and all Filthy had to say was, “Moist. Do you have any?”

None of the objects in Nora’s Midway Truck Stop had known that many years ago Rufus used to work in the Grove Hill morgue. The hearts were always Filthy’s favorite part of his evening meals. Without this knowledge, the objects just assumed Filthy was joking. All the objects liked Filthy, and the only time they envied humans is when one laid a sweaty palm on Filthy’s back. They would have liked to better show how much they appreciated his company, and how safe they always felt when he was around. They would have really liked to pet him.

The linoleum, however, despised Filthy. In his old age Filthy had become mildly incontinent and would leave miserable puddles of piss on the linoleum floor, which would sometimes get mopped up, but usually it would seep deep into the foundation. As a result, Nora’s Midway Truck Stop always smelled of dog piss and its patrons were often heard bemoaning Filthy and the stinking floor. “Should shoot him as a kindness,” they would say, “and rip up this wretched floor, put in new linoleum.”

The floor would shudder at this. The floor was always waiting to be torn up and tossed into the rubbish bin, and waiting was turning out to be a miserable existence, just like it had been for the floor’s previous owner, Nora.

Nora, when she was alive, used to sit on her porch until the mail arrived, waiting for a letter from her son. He had moved to California to be a movie star. She didn’t read the papers or watch television, but the residents of Grove Hill all talked about their hometown boy who made it big in Hollywood. She waited everyday for an invitation that would request her presence in his home, a room having already been made up for her. This went on for ten years. She began to feel that it was a mother’s lot to grow old and resent her child, to sit and wait after years of hard work, until you become smelly and useless and tired out. Eventually she knew this to be exactly her lot, and she greeted it every morning with a grimace and a fart.

Nora was bringing a tray of glasses to the kitchen when she had a stroke, slipped and cracked her head on the pool table, and was found dead the next morning by Rufus and Filthy. Filthy was still only a few years old then. All evening Nora lay on the linoleum, and the linoleum – newly installed – was greatly resenting the spilled alcohol, shattered glass, and blood splatter, though they were grateful that the blood at least matched.

Cue Ball told the table it was a murderer, and the pool table hadn’t spoken to anyone but the Eight Ball since that night. Eight Balls, being prophetic, tell no lies, and yet they too know how to keep a secret.

The ambulance came to take away the body that had once been their Owner. They zipped her up in a bag and took her out, just like Rufus and his crew took out the trash every night. And that’s why the objects all knew that human beings were really no better off than they were. Sure, a person had animation, but when the animation was over, she was bagged and tossed aside, same as anything that’s lost its usefulness.

Only the Cue Ball seemed to give Man greater importance, but if any of the other objects suggested the Cue Ball may be right, the Door was always quick to interject a little wisdom of its own. “Do you know how many beatings old CB gets in a night? I wouldn’t put too much faith in damaged wisdom, my friends.”

The Door had been at Nora’s as long as the walls and the floor. They only recently started calling it Barry after a drunken teenager tagged her lover’s name across its entire width. The Door didn’t mind. In fact, it thought it gave it some character.

Pool tables came and went and chairs came and went even faster. Glasses got broken, liquor got drunk, light bulbs were changed, and the air conditioner sat dormant but cocky as ever. The people changed too but there wasn’t anyway of telling since, to inanimate objects, all people look the same. They hung around them in blurs in dim light and left looking demolished. In the daytime they looked badly reassembled and shoddily painted over with false sobriety, or as the door knob attached to the exit door would say, “False hope!” before falling into a fit of mad giggles.

On the opposite side of the hall a “NO EXIT” sign overlooked the squalid room with an angry expression. Drunks ignored the sign all the time and passed through the doors below without notice. “There is no meaning,” said the sign. “There is no purpose. Not for any of us. There is no exit and yet they exit. And if I serve no purpose, than you serve no purpose. Maybe there is no purpose in the world at all."

Rufus was having a bad dream. He kicked in his designer chair, which was feeling rather glum in its new environment. The desk spoke up in a most sympathetic tone to say, “That’s all right ,dearie. Don’t you worry. It don’t matter where you’ve been, it don’t matter where you are, and it don’t matter where you going. It’s really all the same.”

Rufus let out a deep sigh in agreement and the Eames squeaked once before falling quiet.