Futon for sale. Sturdy wood frame with small queen mattress and blue mattress cover. 80″ x 50″ when flat. 32″ high in couch mode.
Used.
I first encountered this futon when it was fairly new, serving as the bed in the dorm room of the woman who would become my first wife. I remain unsure whether the standard-issue bed had been relegated to a storage area or whether Princeton merely expected its students, by their senior year at least, to acquire beds in order to reside on campus. This was on the first floor of Edwards Hall, on the south end of the long narrow building, a generous single room in a residence a stone’s throw from the fabled Whig and Clio, wherein she spent most of her time and energy as a debater. I would log a good amount of time there myself, as an uncertain guest and eventually a friend of the Panel, playing video games or pool, writing cases or practicing debate, perusing tarnished hardware in dusty glass cases bearing names like Ted Cruz and Jason Goldman.
I slept not infrequently on this futon over the course of the 2001-2002 school year, nestled as it was just under the mantle overlooking the bricked-up fireplace that adorned the room’s south wall. The mantle was, at first, littered with posed pictures of my girlfriend with her ex-boyfriend, a debate rival who I loathed, grew to tolerate and almost like, then loathed again upon the advent of this new relationship. They were posed at a dance, a debate tournament, a trip to one of their homes, leering from their frames with reminders of what he had that I did not. It took some time in the tentative fumblings of the early long-distance relationship for me to ask her to consider removing them from the mantle, but the concussive alarm clock remained.
The clock was thin and black, proffering large red numbers visible from Trenton. The cord of the clock dangled perilously below its body and down to a plug near the fireplace, inevitably tangling with limbs sent aloft by 2 AM nightmares or earlier exertions. It was here I learned to snooze an alarm clock, having never developed the habit prior, as she ritually set the alarm for an hour before the desired time of rising so as to pelt the large flat button four to six times before resigning herself to consciousness. Inevitably, at least two such peltings per morning would result in the clock’s rapid descent from the mantle, often toward my face, after which I was left to muse about the origin of the term “clocked” to mean roundly and definitively hit.
It was that futon which I left for the first time in mid-October 2001, to traverse back up I-95 through New York City to Waltham, spending over an hour in line at the George Washington Bridge for the then-ubiquitous security checks attempting to prevent the then-inevitable sequel to 9/11. Three months later, on that futon, I would offer my proud and carefully guarded virginity to the woman who would become my first wife on the 8,000th day of my life, seemingly behind most of my generation but still ahead of several close friends whose approximate values I shared. For her part, she thought I’d made a bit too much of the whole thing and, especially, the resentment I carried for who in particular had come before me. I never was one to let things go.
But I’m letting go of the futon, as I did the borrowed one I slept on (straight on the floor) in my own room senior year in college. The futon I’m now selling came with us to California, served as our bed in Berkeley and then in Oakland, absorbed the urine of Pandora the cat during a neglectful cat-sitting debacle and ever after that. Our cat was also not one to forgive easily. The futon hosted an outbreak of fleas from same, became infested, and (don’t worry!), the mattress was replaced. When my friend Fish moved out to live alone again, we headed back to Berkeley and, in the wake of improved financial circumstances, bought a new real bed, a dark-wood Japanese themed queen, very low to the ground, with a matching light-table nightstand. The futon became the living room couch, from which she watched home improvement shows and The Wire while I played poker online or wrote quizzes. A steady stream of guests came to enjoy the futon, our parents for long stays, pumpkin carvers for short hours, former friends from debate. I recall, poignantly, the day after David Foster Wallace killed himself when Sep awoke on the futon to tell us so. The futon was folded up and down in regular intervals.
It was on the ill-fated truck that rolled over in a cross-country accident on its return trip to Princeton, surviving fully intact (check the FutonFax!) while our coffee table splintered to matchsticks beside it. In its second tour of Princetonian duty, at the doomed Tiny House, it again served as couch and guest bed, her mom sleeping there in the first week while I attended my first debate tournament with Rutgers. My dad sleeping there, a year later, in my last week as he tried to help me move stuff and focus on living. In between, of course, some choice words were said thereon. “Your problem is that you’re just committed to commitment.” “I no longer think your high school girlfriend was crazy.” “There’s just something about you that makes people betray you.” If you can figure out how to take these words with the futon, I would be most grateful.
There was some discussion, amidst this history, of whether to leave the futon behind. She’d taken the new “adult” bed in the tortured division of items, along with half the books and games, a bit less of the furniture, and a truly unfair portion of the money. I needed a bed, still. And after all, I’d exchanged a terse and telling dialogue with my now becoming ex-mother-in-law over the hesitant decision to purchase a trinkety memento in Monrovia, Liberia:
Her, unsentimentally: “Do you really want a souvenir from Liberia, given what’s happening?”
Me, unemotionally, after a moment’s reflection: “Everything I own is a souvenir of Liberia.”
This is no longer true, thank God, but it was when I moved to Highland Park. Wherein I slept on the futon for years, wherein I first slept beside the woman who has, recently, become my second wife. Guests were left, at first, the infamous but much passed on green couch; later, the overstuffed new brown couch which can also be purchased here, in a state of mild disrepair. The apartment was automatically overheated by steam heat controlled by a much cooler upstairs sensor that transformed the one-bedroom into a tropical paradise during winter, making my future wife and visiting friends fling open icy windows at wee hours to desperately pant in the snowy external oxygen. We rode out Hurricane Sandy there, transformers flashing green death throes in the powerless night as micro-branches lashed the glass. I’d earlier, alone, ridden out Hurricane Irene there as well, leaving extra time the next morning to traverse the flooding on my way to the debate event wherein I would meet my wife for the very first time.
The futon moved with us across Highland Park, remaining our bed, then resumed guest bed duties in two stints in New Orleans after the ill-fated first lease of the cockroach-infested place on Robert Street. Here it’s hosted family and friends of many varieties, them crashing after Mardi Gras parades and nights on Bourbon Street, trips to fine restaurants and a tense night watching Brexit results waft in. We’ve been more popular in New Orleans than New Jersey, as you might imagine, and the futon has put in good regular work. I would estimate that at least forty distinct individuals have slept here, ranging in age from three to seventy-one.
The futon receives regular compliments for its sturdy support and the restful sleep it facilitates. It works extremely well with sheets, being just smaller enough than a standard queen to easily accept both fitted and regular queen sheets with minimal pushback. It is best pushed up into couch shape by two or more people at once, otherwise requiring several trips back and forth to each long end in order to secure the couch shape with that satisfying click. At least one finger has been badly, if recoverably, injured in this process. One person is sufficient to restore it to its flat, bedlike position, though being quite mindful of finger placement is strongly recommended.
We have, perhaps regrettably, failed to routinely rotate the mattress as is I’m sure recommended by some or another regulatory agency of such products. Nevertheless, the futon mattress now bears the second case for, as noted, the second mattress this frame has held during my nearly sixteen years of proximity or possession. I make no guarantees as to its longevity or future resale value, but offer this long and durable history as a possible hint to its ability to withstand both regular use and a wide variety of life activities. The frame is tricky to move as it tends to try to slide back and forth while in transit, but is ultimately light and pliable. The mattress is frustratingly unwieldy and has often been among the highlight banes of the ten moves it (or its predecessor) has joined me for, with the lone exception of its trip from New Jersey to New Orleans, wherein the movers had taped it into a tight roll.
It is recommended that you bring a friend to carry it away with you, though I will do my best to help you get it out the door and into whatever conveyance you bring. Shipping is not offered. Any attendant ghosts are free with purchase.
$250. Or best offer.
