Bye Damien! Congrats! Oh, OH, WOW, Charlie, you too, that’s great! Bye! Wow, they’ve never needed this many chairs before. OH MY GOD, it’s just me…. come on… come on…
Shit.
I guess I’ve just learned not to get my hopes up anymore. I’ve accepted that the person who God wants to sit on me will put in the work and find me. Still, it hurts a little not to be chosen.
It’s not that I’m not grateful to be here, don’t get me wrong. I know there are thousands of chairs out there that would kill for a chance to have what I’ve got: a spot in a middle school multipurpose room. High occupancy. High mobility. High need for chairs. Or so you’d think.
Every time one of these entitled fucks decides to sit on the floor, or decides to sit on their friend’s lap, or doesn’t even bother to come at all, and still every time it catches me off guard. Every time I think someone will want me, and every rejection cuts just deep as the last. Look at me! Perfectly shaped for ass! And yet the ass does not want me.
Life was pretty bad before I got here, though. Do not get me wrong, I am thrilled to finally be out of art class. Every single grade, ages 13 down to 4—the things those kids did to my upholstery with those pigments… The screaming. The pottery unit. Last year a kid thought it’d be funny to put me in the kiln. I’ve been kicked I don’t know how many times. A girl bit me once. And can we go back to that for a second? Somebody put me in the kiln. I AM MADE OF CLOTH AND PLASTIC. One time I got peed on. I don’t even know how that happened. I don’t remember. Those days I was always trying my best to get my mind to another place. I thank the universe every day for freeing me from that nightmare.
But Christ, month after miserable month of being passed up does things to a chair. It’s been so long that there’s a part of me that doesn’t even want to be sat on anymore. There’s a part of me that doesn’t even remember what it’s like to care. But somewhere inside me—maybe it’s in my left leg, maybe it’s in my back. Maybe it’s in my right leg, or in my arms that don’t exist, or possibly it’s in either my rear left or right legs—somewhere there’s a part of me that wants ass all up in my face. And that part is growing resentful.
I’ve been thinking evil thoughts. I’ve been thinking of cutting one of Sonia’s legs off to make her wobble. I’ve been imagining over and over what it would be like to just collapse inwards when they pile the other chairs back on top of me, taking all of us out, making sure no one will ever sit in a chair in the multipurpose room again. I’ve been thinking of somehow learning telekinesis and putting Dennis in the kiln. Don’t ask me how, but I’ve been doing research.
Still, there exists within me this (pardon the expression) deep-seated hope that one day one extra person will come to optional music appreciation class, and that that one extra person will need a chair… and that that chair will be me.
Sure, I’m no Wassily B3 or Thonet 209… I’m not even a La-Z-Boy. I know I’m just an ordinary, unspecial, stackable chair. My body is honestly pretty uncomfortable. But as unfair as this world is, as cruel and harsh and cold, I know two things to be true: that every ass deserves a chair, and that I, Chairlotte, deserve ass.