February: I’m not a fan.
It’s the shortest month for a reason. Football (in the US) is over). Sports as we know it begin to hibernate until baseball season. For much of the nation, the weather is putrid. Naturally, in this national funk, my thoughts turn to a fifteen year quest that remains unfulfilled.
It’s So Much More Than a Desk.
Before I discuss my personal Great White Whale, let me give you some back story about my wife’s eerie ability to find rare and unusual gifts. She’s like a tall, Norwegian bloodhound with really great legs, but a high customer rating on Ebay to boot. Nothing escapes her internet sleuthing, except for an odd furniture request I’ve had as a standing goal– even she hasn’t been able to find my dream desk, which is crazy given her skills. Since there isn’t anything else fun in February, I shall reignite my search for The One That Got Away.
Scene: 2002. The Hemingway Collection from Thomasville
I was watching television and saw– and got excited, mind you– an advertisement about a furniture collection. Thomasville announced that they were creating two American collections based on Ernest Hemingway and Humphrey Bogart. Look, I write books and I’m over the age of forty; either one of those men lived the kind of life that I was raised to consider just short of Godhood.
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| How Writers See Themselves. But Of Course. |
So, I see this desk.Yes, it’s mass produced but I don’t care. I freak out and start looking to buy one, only to find out it’s around 2500 dollars.
“No, we can’t take a post-dated check,” Said every Thomasville store. Trust me, I asked.
All right then. I file the item away as *to be located* and move on with my life. I’ve seen two versions of the desk in various locations around the United states– one in California (of course, those people horde all the cool things) and one at an undisclosed location. The seller was rather tight-lipped, leading me to think the desk was stuffed with human skulls or something; naturally I wanted that desk even more.
I envision myself sitting at the desk, writing novels of great weight, penning letters on handmade vellum and generally acting like it’s 1937, but without all the Nazis and Stalinists ruining everything. I would wear some sort of linen something, a devil-may-care attitude, and I would have my first whiskey at eleven a.m., right after I had my first screaming match with a shadowy editor somewhere– this brawl would ensue on a vintage handheld telephone and would include terms like scalawag and reprobate. Seriously, it’s a fantastic desk.
Wanna see?
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| Be still, my heart. |
Do I need a desk with faux Arabian Oryx horn legs? Of course not. But I want it very much indeed. So, I’ll keep poking around on ebay, pinterest, whatever, and then one day, it will be in my grasp at a reasonable price, though located in the U.P. of Michigan or something. No matter, there’s a lesson in here somewhere about patience and, character, maybe. Or just plain old consumerism. Either way, if you see one of these beauties, you tell me. I’ll be there with my postdated check.