A Room
I once spent a great deal of time designing a single room. Not decorating it. Designing it.
Every decision had a purpose, though not always the purpose another person imagined.
Heavy maroon velvet curtains covered the windows from ceiling to floor. They softened outside noise as much as they blocked the view. The lighting was warm enough to flatter without concealing. Music drifted through speakers you could hear but not easily locate. The room was always a little warmer than seemed strictly necessary. Thick rugs absorbed footsteps.
The walls were covered with photographs of men. They were naked more often than clothed, though surprisingly few visitors described the room as overtly sexual. One priest, after looking carefully around, remarked that he had expected something much more embarrassing.
Between the photographs hung mirrors. Large ones. Small ones. Vertical and horizontal. A man lying down, standing up, turning his head or simply catching himself unexpectedly in passing would see himself from angles he had probably never encountered before. I gradually realised how compelling this was. Men looked at themselves with a kind of quiet curiosity, as though meeting someone familiar under unfamiliar circumstances.
Above the mirrors stood shelves of books.
History. Theology. Philosophy. Psychology. Politics. Sexuality. They looked faintly improbable there, yet they proved unexpectedly useful. More than one conversation began with a man looking upwards and asking, “Have you really read all these?”
At one end of the room stood a massage table. At the other, a wide divan.
Most people, if asked to identify the room’s purpose, would have had little difficulty.
They would also, I think, have been only partly right.
The massage table explained what happened in the room. It did not explain what the room was for.
Looking back, I think the room’s real purpose was much simpler. It removed small acts of vigilance. Men stopped lowering their voices. They stopped apologising for talking too long. They stopped looking over their shoulder before expressing an uncertain thought.
They undressed. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they did both for much longer than either of us had expected.
I designed the room carefully because I wanted it to do something before either of us spoke. Only years later did I realise what that something was. It wasn’t intended to persuade anyone of anything.
It simply suggested, quietly and without announcement, that for a little while there might be no need to defend oneself.
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