“It looks like furniture for polyamorous couples,” my friend texts in response to the photo I’ve just sent him. The lounger I want to buy is an oversized, slouchy, slightly structured bean bag and ottoman set.
The company website shows the lounger in context: blue oceans peek through windows so tall and vivid they might be AI-generated, and young, attractive people lounge with plush throws, steaming cups of tea, and occasionally, sleek laptops. They appear to be able to work and socialize at the same time, even in their swimsuits. Intriguing, vaguely multiracial social situations open before them at the peak of the golden hour. They glow with effortless abundance. The lounger glows, too.
In Ways of Seeing, John Berger wrote that advertising imagery is not about what you see on the page, or what’s actually there, but what might happen later—after the scene we are witnessing. This was the 70s, a golden age of furniture design, of furniture as life-and-style combined. But my bean bag ads seem to say something a bit stranger than that. They whisper not just of possible lives, but of life as possibility itself. Buy this, and something might still happen to you, or to someone, even though everyone is convinced they’ve seen it all.
At long last, it arrives. Assembled and fluffed up, the lounger is beautiful. It’s velvet, which my mom tells me is impractical. I assure her that it’s washable, and I remind myself, silently, that I’m an adult who works hard and is allowed to spend money on something impractical once in a while. The velvet whispers possibility. The less practical, the better.
It’s too big for the room (but that’s what “oversized” means!) and the color might not be right. The ottoman alone is huge, overpriced, stupid. Mom would remind me, rightly, that no one needs it. But it feels pretty great to put my legs up as I sink into the seat. I half-sit and half-lie there, waiting for something. Waiting just to feel…something. I can’t tell if I want this preposterous furniture, if it’s right for the space, if it’s “me,” if I can afford it. But surely my body will give me a sign.
Everything becomes warm and weightless and then the room falls away. Time shuts softly like a jewelry box.
I was asleep for barely a minute, but still, a tiny miracle. Is it the world’s most comfortable soft seating—as I was promised—or am I so tired that I’d fallen asleep at the first hint of permission? Was that illicit nap the door into my new life?
I pull myself out of the thing and walk to the other side of the room to behold it. But it’s just a lumpy bean bag. Looking at it, I can’t quite see it anymore, much less whatever it is I’m looking for. The room is a mess of open factory boxes and plastic bags. My dog walks past, bored. The sun is going down.
— Art by Lara Schaberg
