PART 2
GLUTTONY (THIRD CIRCLE):
The cruelest part about the IKEA experience is by far the meatballs. Any place that serves those delicious little morsels can’t be bad, right? Wrong. Straight out of one of the most horrifying children’s fairy tales ever written, IKEA has put their own spin on Hansel and Gretel. The store is a maze (a topic I revisit in this post frequently). Drop bread crumbs if you wish, but a trip into IKEA is akin to a walk through the forest from The Blair Witch Project. Kick that fucking map into the river my friend — you’re as lost as you’ve ever been.
After traversing through flat-Earth oceans of nothing but beds, sinks, staged studio apartments, spatulas, and dresser knobs…you find yourself back in the same place you started, with nothing but a cart full of confusion.
They lace the air with nitrogen in IKEA. Did you know that? It’s just enough to take the edge off. It weakens your limbs and disarms your limbic system. Eventually, you have no choice but to venture deeper into the woods. To continue is terrifying, but to turn back…that would be suicide. You trudge on, hoping to stumble upon a beacon of hope.
The gingerbread cottage in this forest of darkness is, without a doubt, the cafeteria. When you first smell it, you think it’s an olfactory mirage. Your mind playing tricks on you. But then you see it. Through the rotted tree limbs and bramble patches, there lies a house. A refuge. A lighthouse in the storm. A cafeteria serving Swedish meatballs — the most wonderful food in the world. But that’s not all. There is lingonberry jam with mashed potatoes and marzipan cake. It’s heaven. You start to change your mind about this place entirely.
That is… until you see the line. Like hogs at a trough — you get in line and do your best to tune out the deafening buzz of idiotic conversation seeping out into the ether. Each person thinking their opinions, lives, and stories matter. Each person waiting to stuff their face with meatballs. Eventually, you reach the front of the line and are served a scoop of meatballs, mashers, and gravy by the only person in IKEA having a worse day than you are… the cafeteria worker. I don’t believe in God, Jesus, or hope. But I pray for that soul.
You take your tray, find your seat, and eat and eat and eat, priming yourself for the emotional slaughter that lies ahead. When the food is all gone, all that’s left is indigestion. You look up and stare at the ones you love and a harsh reality sinks in. None of this makes sense. Why are you here eating these meatballs? Why is your friend just standing in the corner? Do you mean to tell me that only one of the sides of the soda fountain is working? Seriously? ANOTHER GODDAMN LINE?!
I don’t know a lot, but I know this: if there really were a loving, caring, merciful God in the heavens, he’d end your suffering right then and there. He’d have you Mama Cass yourself on a meatball or slip on a puddle of spilt gravy and fall and split your head like a piece of particle board furniture. He’d spare you the nightmare that awaits. But this is IKEA. There is no God here. There is only cold, harsh, brutal, Swedish-nitrogen-laced reality. You must carry on.
You may be wondering…why is there no witch in the Gingerbread cottage at IKEA?
Who do you think is making all those tasty meatballs…
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SLOTH (FOURTH CIRCLE):
After you’ve been fed, you are in need of a nap. HA. HA HA. Look at all the beds. All the couches. It can’t hurt to just sit or lie down for a bit. Oh… poor, dear, sweet soul. IKEA furniture isn’t designed for comfort. It’s designed for torture.
When I was fresh out of college, my wife and I bought a sofa couch from IKEA: The Nyhamn!
Seriously — look at this thing. This “couch” doesn’t even have arms. It’s a tortilla taco’d over a few wooden boards and a metal frame. People actually hurt themselves sitting on that couch in my apartment. JUST BY SITTING. But IKEA furniture is a strange beast. Similar to the way Morgan Freeman describes the walls in Shawshank:
“First you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them.” There’s a Swedish version of that sentiment — it’s called Stockholm syndrome. I kept my Nyhamn for almost 10 years. TEN YEARS OF MY LIFE JUST GONE. A couch is a big purchase, and when it doubles as a sleeper sofa… well that’s just convenient! The first two years were the hardest. The leg cramps, the stubbed toes on the metal frame, the irate guests who were mad that they slept on it after a night of drinking only to wake up with scoliosis. I started to depend on lines like “OOOH sorry — didn’t realize I was running a Ritz Carlton.” Deep down though, I knew that having anyone sleep on that couch was cruel.
Over the years, friends stopped sleeping over and our Nyhamn grew old in an extra bedroom, chained up away from civilization and muzzled like a dog that bites. When I first got that couch, I hated it. Then I got used to it. After a while… I depended on it. That’s IKEA Stockholm Syndrome. That’s institutionalized.
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ENVY (FIFTH CIRCLE):
Perhaps it was envy that got you here. “Love the new plates Kelly! Where’d you get ‘em?! Kelly… what’s wrong?” *Kelly shudders and whispers in a voice choked by trauma…* “IKEA.”
In a society built around keeping up with the Johanssons (SWEDISH JOKE — NAILED IT), Envy is one of the many techniques this venus-fly-trap of dark misery utilizes to lure its prey. The most wicked demons are those that shift shapes; they welcome you into their homes with open arms, only to lock you in the dungeon with the rats nipping at your knuckles as you try to grab your tin bowl of prisoner gruel (Side note: I think I need to get more sun… maybe take a vacation).
Envy is a shape-shifter. Once you enter the store, Kelly’s plates are long forgotten. They are left fading to ash in the memory dump like the noble Bing Bong. Your envy of things is now replaced with an envy of place. You yearn for the fresh air of the outside world as you choke on the nitrogen and the smell of manufactured textiles. You are envious of every living soul who is not currently in IKEA. And your punishment for your green-blooded jealousy is to wander floor to floor, looking for those DAMN PLATES.
It’s Bandersnatch on acid. A choose-your-own nightmare, where every twist, turn, and decision all leads back to a “time is a flat circle”/“what the fuck is happening here” Salvador Dali clock-melting portrait of hell. The sheer chaos is disorienting, but once you find your legs and grab onto a Ypperlig to steady yourself, you march on.
Then it goes from lost in the woods to Moses in the desert. You wander. You wander through the staged apartments. You wander through the beds and couches…into the cafeteria and down the stairs thinking “GOD IT’S ALMOST OVER, RIGHT?!”
Wrong — you’ve entered the marketplace. A boundary-less desert on the surface of an alien planet. Everything is in Swedish. JESUS CHRIST, IS THIS A BRACKET AND FRAMING SECTION? Yes…yes it is. Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining is based on a Sunday stroll through the marketplace. First you lose your mind, then you attack your family, and then you get lost and die in a frozen maze of Godmorgons, Pomps, Skubbs, and Storstabbes. What’ll it be, Mr. Torrance?
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VANITY (SIXTH CIRCLE):
I can’t speak for everyone — but before I got in the car to drive to IKEA, I felt like a good and decent person. I had a job, a family, and some good things going for me. I didn’t consider myself to be highly exceptional — but I liked myself.
From the moment you take the escalator up, you become a sheep on a farm. Herded throughout the store on a pathway/conveyor-belt designed to keep the livestock from straying from the herd. All roads lead to the cash register. If you are the company you keep, then it doesn’t take long to realize that you are perhaps not everything you thought yourself to be upon entering. You’ve got a basket full of shit, a giant cart full of more shit, meatball gravy stains on your shirt, and a stupid look on your face.
When you arrive at the wall decoration and mirrors section in the market hall, it’s hard to respect (much less like) the person staring back at you. And there’s nowhere to hide. Mirrors mirrors everywhere, and all the boards did shrink. Everywhere you turn you see a version of yourself so truly horrifying that you will never be able to look at yourself the same again.
Like the boys in Pinocchio — you enter IKEA as they enter Pleasure Island. Full of innocence and hope. But soon, you fall prey to your own hedonism. Judgement error after judgement error, you slip further into the abyss. By the time you hit that house of mirrors, you are putting hooves to ears in a desperate attempt to dull the deafening braying escaping your lungs. You gasp from the shock. You yearn for the past. You ask God for a mulligan. But all that comes out is hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw.
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END PART 2
Death By Content 