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I live in a closet and spend my days surrounded by padded walls.
 

The latter is easily explained: I work in a cubicle. Of course, cubicles are pretty strange. Cubicle technology transformed the modern office space into a rodent’s maze with various rewards such as the coffee maker and restrooms, and traps like That Yattering Coworker, but without a clear sense of start or finish. I’m sure my pet rats (bless their little departed souls) would have been perfectly happy in modern offices, provided they were rat-sized. When I peer over the cubicle walls I see the bobbing heads of my coworkers as they scurry down artificial corridors. The rodent analogy is made complete when someone stands on his desk to talk to a neighbor, looking for all the world like a prarie dog poking his head out of the hole. I harbor a vague suspicion that exercise treadmills were the first sign, and cubicles the second sign, of the gradual rodent-ification and decline of our society.
 

Most of us have come to accept cubicles despite our knowledge that they are both silly and sterile. Only with people does familiarity breed contempt; with things and places, familiarity breeds acceptance. Once I realized that I had become one of the cubicle people, I bucked up and bought some plants and posters to mark my territory and then willfully ignored the surreality of my work environment.
 

I’m sure this makes sense to you. You understand the human capacity to adapt to seemingly dehumanizing conditions, and even take ownership of circumstance to turn it into a victory of individuality and joy. Bear this in mind as I remind you that I live in a closet.
 

This is not the figurative ?The Closet?. When I told my friend Mary that I was living in a closet, she replied with compassion, ?how long have you known that you were gay before you told anyone??
 

No, my bedroom is a closet. It is 4’ by 8’. (By way of comparison, death-row prison cells are 4’ by 10’). ^{[1] [2]} It is a bedroom in the strictest sense of the word since the bed fills it corner-to-corner. And I love it, I absolutely love it. The walls are a dreamy yellow, the window is large and bright, and courtesy of Ikea it is well lit by a glowing paper globe and a wall light. When I go to bed, I open the door, climb into bed, and then close the door.
 

It is deeply comforting to fall asleep in a small, well-contained space. Perhaps it’s because after I’ve turned off the lights, I know for certain that no unspeakable monsters are lurking out there because there’s not a there to be had. Or maybe the simplicity of a bedroom that contains only a bed prohibits worries about books not read, laundry not done, or phone calls not made. I used to live in a giant 15’ by 24’ bedroom with a queen-sized bed and a bank of East-facing windows that caught the morning sunlight. Although it was perfectly lovely, the unfilled space shattered my attention. It was with pleasure that I moved into my cozy closet. (The drop in rent was pretty great, too).
 

My friend Shari is into energy work, Feng Shui, and many other related disciplines that I respect, but with a healthy dose of skepticism. She is the only person to see my closet and gasp with approval and not with shock that oh my God he lives in there?
 

“Chuck, this room’s gottalotta good energy. You must Feng Shui it to let it flow properly, especially at the foot of the bed. That’s cool.”
 

Because I didn’t know the first thing about Feng Shui but would be dammed before I’d admit to any hole in my knowledge, I agreed to Feng Shui the room and freely translated this to mean “Feng Shui: put stuff in the corners that doesn’t suck.” I installed some shelves, put a friendly plant above the foot of the bed (named the Very Happy Plant because it’s growing like a weed), and hung a vase against the far wall. When Shari visited me a week later, she complimented my Feng Shui skills.
 

My closet bedroom has become a kind of litmus test for guests visiting the house. There are two kinds of people, the kind of people who can grow to accept that I live in a closet and the kind of people who simply cannot. When a newcomer visits our house and sees the closet, he will scream with laughter disguised a beat too late as a gasp of shock, and then ask 10 times if someone actually lives there. No, really, no joke, does someone like living there?
 

Some people just cannot get it. They see the Very Happy Plant, they feel the good energy vibes, and they know that I’m not lying when I say that I’m happy, but it’s simply not part of their worldview that a bedroom can be tiny. A bedroom is where you put your stuff, right? If your home is your castle, your bedroom is the keep. A closet bedroom shatters all sense of ordering possessions -- it’s clearly the product of a dangerous communist mindset.
 

When my roommate and I began the arduous process of screening the 60+ applicants who wanted to sublet the large bedroom, we quickly realized that the most relevant indicator of an applicant’s worthiness was his reaction to my closet. With the rent market being the way it is, everyone knocking on our door claimed to be laidback but neat, interesting but unobtrusive, cultured but not elite. The moment we threw open the closet door, however, a person’s true colors were revealed. A gasp of horror betrayed the snob, a smug air of superiority undermined That Buddhist Guy, and repeated pity jokes did away with Mr. Gets Along Fine with Everyone.
 

Other folks – the ones we tended to like -- saw the room and understood the adaptations I had made. Sure, it’s a different lifestyle to have your stuff in a different room than where you sleep, but there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it could be kind of cool and counter-culture to challenge such a simple assumption about what a bedroom needs to be.
 

Of course, with that said, I also realize that my pet rats would have loved the closet bedroom. As they would have loved my office cubicle, and exercise treadmills…
 

As a (hopefully!) interesting addendum -- I was poking around the OED this evening and realized that there's nothing shameful about living in a closet per se; the word "closet" means "a room for privacy or retirement." Unlike many words that have suffered long and torturous careers, "closet" has had a relatively pleasant transistion from meaning any private room, to the king's private room, to the king's private chapel, to any smallish chapel, to any smallish side-room.
 

It also means "the den or lair of a wild beast."
 

My closet: chapel, sanctuary... and lair.
 

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