It’s done. After months and months of procrastination for which no one other than myself can reasonably be held responsible, it’s finally finished. Or, depending on your point of view, it’s as finished as it’s ever going to be. The spare room at our place that, until now, has been a dumping ground for everything from unpacked boxes of books to low-level nuclear waste, has now been wholly transformed. It no longer has to suffer the ignominy of looking like a glorified closet or one of those rooms you’d expect to see featured on a ‘tenants from hell’ expose on tabloid telly. Nor does it need to be hidden from view, lest it should bring shame to the rest of the house. Not any more.
It’s done. After months and months of procrastination for which no one other than myself can reasonably be held responsible, it’s finally finished. Or, depending on your point of view, it’s as finished as it’s ever going to be. The spare room at our place that, until now, has been a dumping ground for everything from unpacked boxes of books to low-level nuclear waste, has now been wholly transformed. It no longer has to suffer the ignominy of looking like a glorified closet or one of those rooms you’d expect to see featured on a ‘tenants from hell’ expose on tabloid telly. Nor does it need to be hidden from view, lest it should bring shame to the rest of the house. Not any more.
I speak, of course, of the one room of the house that belongs to me and me alone. But before you demand more details and a full-frontal room reveal, I must sound a note of caution. This is not a mere case of re-decoration. It is more a re-birth. In fact, so powerful is this extraordinary metamorphosis that it may no longer be a room in the conventional sense at all. Instead, it may now be a ‘man-cave’.
You ought to see it. Shelves run like veins across the walls and are stuffed full of hundreds of books and CDs. I love nothing more than to be surrounded by them. Musical instruments lie slumped in the corners like exhausted boxers and a large desk floats in the middle of the room, a life raft on a sea of carpet. It looks, in a word, busy. Vinyl records, a picture of ‘Dogs Playing Poker’: it’s a space that definitely ticks a lot of ‘man-cave’ boxes. That said, there are some obvious shortcomings that must be confronted if the place is ever going to realize its full man-cave potential.
For starters, there’s no sporting memorabilia. The plain truth is, there’s nothing within the four walls of my so-called man cave that celebrates either my or anyone else’s athletic prowess in any way whatsoever. I used to have several swimming certificates I earned during primary school, but these have long been swallowed by the mists of time, even if I do still describe these on my curriculum vitae as ‘post graduate qualifications’. I do recall collecting Scanlon’s footy cards for one season, succeeding only in securing the less popular half of Carlton’s 1984 team. Even if I could find those cards now, I’d resist the temptation to frame them.
It’s not that I don’t own any sporting trophies. It’s more that the only ones I was ever awarded are suitably tiny, as befits the scale of my achievements. I don’t think of them so much as statues so much as stature; namely very, very small. Indeed, they’re the kind of awards that invite mockery rather than admiration. My sixteen-year-old nephew’s sporting trophies look like skyscrapers. Were our respective awards to get into a fight, his would win, gold-painted hands down. Currently, my trophies reside in my father’s study, between the ostrich egg he managed to get through customs in 1962 and the souvenir Corningware that celebrates the wedding of Charles and Dianna. As odd as it may sound to say, it’s where they belong. I couldn’t possibly move them now.
Nor do I have anything in the way of hunting trophies. My room is the world that taxidermy forgot, bereft of so much as a stuffed rabbit, much less an elk or antelope. In these enlightened times, perhaps that’s just as well. The only thing I hunt for are bargains, but no-one stuffs and mounts a pair of discounted Explorer socks on the wall. No one. Granted, picking up three pairs of these beauties for eight bucks a pop is an achievement of some substance that, in a better world, would be celebrated, but perhaps not in the man cave.
I don’t own a novelty chair, either. Be it a tractor seat welded to a crankshaft, an oversized faux gorilla hand or a piece of old growth timber, I am woefully deficient in the area of unique seating. Currently, I’m using whatever I can grab from the dining room. An odd chair’s not the only think I’m missing. Come to think of it, I don’t have a jukebox, bar or big screen television. There’s nary a pool table or pinball machine in sight. Nor have I nailed a number plate from Texas, California or Utah into the plaster. The more I think about it, the more I realize just how short of the mark I am.
Perhaps that’s all right. Maybe there’s no shame to be had in falling short in the man-cave stakes. If I’m being honest, I struggle a bit with the term ‘man-cave’. Perhaps the blatant gender specificity makes it seem too exclusory. Instead, I might use the Brady method. Brady Bunch patriarch and professional perm enthusiast Mike Brady didn’t have a man-cave. He had a den. It was a place to keep blueprints and dispense meaningful advice to children. There were no decapitated woodland creatures hanging from the wall. Just a few books, a couch that’d seen plenty of better days and a painting that looked as if it might well have been souvenired from a Holiday Inn. It was a sanctuary; a place where a man (permed or otherwise) could feel safe and wear a polyester shirt underneath an oversized cardigan. It’s time to surrender my man-cave aspirations. I am, it seems, a den kind of guy. So be it.