So I went to Diversity’s new store, over behind the Diamond, and it was great. Diversity Thrift fills me with joy – I cannot walk in there without feeling a world of possibilities awaits me. I rarely pay attention to the clothes. I browse the housewares, but my life is filled with tchotchkes; I don’t need any more.
It’s the furniture I crave – the unexpected gem hidden behind the 1960s faux-maple bedroom set. By gem I mean something that most folks would consider a disaster. Something you’d be embarrassed to leave on the curb for pick-up in case the neighbors saw it. I don’t like smelly stuff – I avoid upholstery at all cost – or trendy retro furniture, although I do have an old push-button phone from the Holiday Inn in Tyson’s Corner, with buttons for housekeeping and room service. Sometimes I press them.
No, what I really like is wood, old wood, wood that wears its nicks and stains proudly. I prefer things that are handmade and a little askew, and maybe not all made of the same kind of wood, but still it has to stand up straight and respect its right angles. These objects have integrity, I think, they won’t let me down. They’ve been let down themselves so many times.
So what was I doing at Diversity obsessing over a tacky veneer-covered end table, circa 1965? It was truly ugly. The legs jutted out coyly as though aiming directly at the floor would be in poor taste. It had one of those recessed shelves on the top where you are supposed to put a lamp, preferably one with a pebble-textured base.
The sales tag described it as “End Table with Native Design” and it was kind of accurate – that was its selling point. The main surface of the table had two inlaid, factory-produced tiles in attractive shades of aqua and peachy brown. One tile depicted a wagon train about to be attacked by a band of braves. The other tile was really sick, the pièce de résistance: an image of John Smith, trussed and lying on the ground, while over him Pocahontas and Powhatan debate whether he should live or die.
What is this, I thought? Who in their right mind would put this on an end table, clearly manufactured for a motel chain, unless it was the Manifest Destiny Inn? I walked away from the table and then circled back. It was appalling, but it was no good. I had to have it.
The two Goth kids who helped me load it into my car said they were sorry to see it go. They had wondered who would buy it. They had wanted it themselves. How fucked up is that? they said.
I love Diversity. I love a place where I can buy neglected furniture and have the proceeds go to a good cause. I love finding an old spool of thread in a drawer after I’ve brought a piece home. I love seeing the crayon marks made by a child forty years ago. Most of all, I love the possibility that no one else in Powhatan’s kingdom, here on the James, has an end table like mine.
Mugs
I got the mug from a show at the Corcoran. Childishly, I wanted to make a statement. I have taste, I go to museums. The mug says that I am not Number One Grandpa, or an habitué of Dunkin Donuts, or a customer of Jack Luck Chevrolet: Meeting Your Driving Needs Since 1948. My mug has snob appeal – it was bought one day after the exhibit opened. It should be numbered, like a lithograph.
It is only slightly less obnoxious than my James Joyce mug, which a friend brought me from a conference. James Joyce: Meeting Your Stream of Consciousness Needs Since 1904. Now that is one cup of java: “I go forth to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” No wonder people at work hate me.
It’s not that others don’t have impressive mugs. A friend told me about the one her son keeps at the office. “Fuck Cancer,” it says, ‘cause he did. And recently I was served coffee in what is probably one of the most sophisticated mugs in all of greater Richmond: it commemorates a speech by Mikhail Gorbachev at VCU in 1993. Since the person who offered me the mug is a gracious southern hostess, it really was a bottomless cup of perestroika.
I have a secret mug, a comfort mug, with a Peter Rabbit-like design. But it is ersatz Peter Rabbit. I bought it for a nickel in a Lutheran thrift shop. It is not elegant; it is not literate; it does not convey that I move in select circles. It is my little cup of home, and family. The me before I even drank coffee.
It is only slightly less obnoxious than my James Joyce mug, which a friend brought me from a conference. James Joyce: Meeting Your Stream of Consciousness Needs Since 1904. Now that is one cup of java: “I go forth to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” No wonder people at work hate me.
It’s not that others don’t have impressive mugs. A friend told me about the one her son keeps at the office. “Fuck Cancer,” it says, ‘cause he did. And recently I was served coffee in what is probably one of the most sophisticated mugs in all of greater Richmond: it commemorates a speech by Mikhail Gorbachev at VCU in 1993. Since the person who offered me the mug is a gracious southern hostess, it really was a bottomless cup of perestroika.
I have a secret mug, a comfort mug, with a Peter Rabbit-like design. But it is ersatz Peter Rabbit. I bought it for a nickel in a Lutheran thrift shop. It is not elegant; it is not literate; it does not convey that I move in select circles. It is my little cup of home, and family. The me before I even drank coffee.
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