How It All Began: My Descent into Pillow Madness

It started innocently enough. The world shut down due to/COVID. Civilization paused. Travel ceased. I, a free man, a thinker, a wanderer of hardware store aisles, was grounded. With nowhere to go and no one to impress, I was drafted into new household duties — specifically, bed-making.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “That’s no big deal!” Oh, my sweet summer child. You have no idea.

At first, it was just a bed — a flat horizontal surface for unconsciousness. I had one pillow. A sensible, rugged,  slab of foam. Marriage brought a second pillow — a diplomatic compromise. So far, so good.

But then it happened.

A demonic decree was issued from the high priestesses of design — some throw-pillow sorceress in Manhattan or the seventh circle of Pinterest. She commanded that American bedrooms must resemble the inner chambers of the Sultan of Brunei. Pillows! Towering pyramids of them. Beaded ones. Velvet ones. Pillows shaped like kidneys, wombs, sea cucumbers!

Pillow Oppression: The Fluffening

I don’t live in a harem. I live in New England. A place where people chip ice, wear flannel, and fear interior decorators more than black bears. Our home is colonial — creaky floors, drafty windows, and not a thread of Ottoman silk.

Yet each morning, I am condemned to reassemble this fabric fortress. Seven pillows. Seven! And that number grows with each Pottery Barn shipment like a virus of fluff. The act of bed-making now requires both a Master’s degree in geometry and a Sherpa guide.

I pick them up. I fluff. I toss. I align by size, color, and emotional subtext. Sometimes I just collapse and whisper, “Why? Why must there be one shaped like a starfish?”

Sultans never made their own beds. If they had, harems would have been abolished centuries ago. No man in history has chosen this life. We have been domestically pillow-whipped.

The Great Pillow Rebellion

But no more. I am drawing a line in the Egyptian cotton.

Seven pillows. That’s it. That’s the legal cap. Any new additions will be stuffed under the bed to gather dust, bugs, and disdain. I am reclaiming my male dignity, my minimalist sanity, and what’s left of my lumbar discs.

Masculinity. The Minimalist Design School. The Male Liberation Movement.

We rise. BUT We fluff no more!