IKEA Assembly Instructions. (The Present)
The coffee shop door swung open, and the one I had been waiting for finally entered. His gait was confident, as if he had just stepped out of the pages of a catalog for "successful men-this season's model." I mentally checked a box: "appearance confirmed."
A blind date is like Russian roulette, only instead of a bullet, it's boredom. Or idiocy.
This time, the chamber spun particularly luckily: Seryozha. Young, athletic, pleasant-looking, smelling of expensive cologne and unrealized ambitions.
We sat in a coffee shop, where at one table they argued about the metaverse, and at another, about the Bitcoin exchange rate. The noise of modern-day Babylon. The barista, with the face of a philosopher, was creating foam on a latte, investing the process with a Zen-like concentration that Siddhartha himself would have envied. I caught myself thinking that I was watching this spectacle with the same interest with which I once watched gladiator fights. Only instead of blood, it was streaming caffeine.
He spoke the right words, memorized from some pickup training session. He nodded, smiled, pretended to listen. And I saw his gaze-sliding over me, appraising, compiling a checklist: "appearance-passed, sense of humor-present, proceeding to the next item."
I suddenly had a desperate urge to ask: "What's my SKU number in your internal database?" But I merely stirred the foam in my cup with a spoon, listening to his monologue about the importance of personal boundaries and mindfulness, which, by all appearances, he understood as instructions for assembling a dresser from a Swedish hypermarket.
And then he said IT. Without embarrassment, without stumbling, with the slight, triumphant smile of a man who has found the perfect life hack.
"You know, I recently watched a really cool video on YouTube. Some awesome techniques… Not a bad theory. Want me to demonstrate? Let's test it out in practice."
He said it as if he were proposing not passionate sex and an ocean of bliss, but to beta-test a new sushi delivery app. Like, here's the algorithm, let's run A/B testing and write a review. I imagined a box with pictograms: "Assemble orgasm from these six parts; do not confuse screws A and B."
I looked at him-a young, healthy, handsome primate-and thought he was like that monkey with a grenade. Poking buttons without understanding the potential explosion. He doesn't need art. He needs a life hack. He doesn't need connection. He needs a review and five stars. "Were you satisfied with the process? Leave a comment below."
For centuries, I watched this art being distorted, simplified, profaned. But to reduce it to the level of a YouTube tutorial-something you can watch on your commute, between a shampoo ad and a review of a new phone model…
It's not even vulgar.
It's sad. It's an assembly line where a sacred ritual is stamped into parts for a primitive construction. Assemble, get a short-term high, and when bored-disassemble and shove into the closet until better times.
"You know, Seryozha," my lips stretched into a polite, utterly lifeless smile, the kind animatronic robots wear at Disneyland. "I suddenly have an urgent matter. I think the water at home is boiling over and the iron is on fire. Wouldn't wish it on an enemy."
He looked puzzled, as if his "Alexa" had suddenly refused to execute a command. Probably, his rejection script didn't have a response for this. His gaze expressed pure cognitive dissonance: "But I did everything according to the instructions! Where's the glitch?"
I didn't wait. I got up and walked out onto the street, into the Moscow evening, filled with the light of advertising billboards screaming about how to become better, sexier, more successful.
I walked, and an annoying melody swirled in my head. As if someone were playing a Swedish polka on a child's xylophone. Assemble happiness in three easy steps. Batteries not included.