My Beef With: My Bunk Bed

I have a bunk bed at the ripe old age of twenty-two. I don’t live in a hostel, and I wasn’t deprived of one when I was younger, resulting in some weird manifestation of childhood suppression. It isn’t shaped like a rocket ship, and it doesn’t have curtains that you can open and close as you pretend that you are on an interrailing adventure with your friend down below.

It is a sturdy, 80s build that features a top bunk that if any higher up to the ceiling, may result in the permanent reshaping of someone’s brain as they get up every morning. The bottom is a simple affair, complemented by a mattress that has a tendency to reshape itself in the night, acting as a poor extension of the top. The top is so vastly wide for a bunk bed, that if any bigger, would require planning permission to simply exist. If the top and bottom were twins, it would seem the bottom had been nibbled at in the womb by it’s fellow top friend and had emerged half formed and lacking any sort of purpose. This isn’t any bunk bed, this is a colossal wooden beast that would never fall apart unless potentially in nuclear warfare.

The truth is, I don’t sleep on the top bunk, a truth that has slowly permeated my life.

The look on the faces of my friends as I tell them that I don’t sleep on the top consists of a combination of shock, disgust and disappointment, as if every person who owns a bunk bed needs to be grateful for the overriding fact that they have a bunk bed by sleeping on the top. Many think that the point of having a bunk bed is to sleep high up in the air…as hey, isn’t that the reason you got one in the first place? Not sleeping on the top of a bunk bed is almost as socially unacceptable as putting your gum into a restaurant menu or not apologising when someone walks into you in England.

I occasionally refer to it as my punk bed when people come round to keep them guessing. Expecting some sort of vampire haven with shrines to Johnny Rotten, the actual site can leave them in a state of shock. Plus, the decision to rebel against the younger status quo of having a bunk bed in your twenties is awfully punk.

Due to the sheer collection of clothes that it garners over the course of the week, I also like to call it my open wardrobe, making it sound extremely nouveau and unassuming to those who are yet to experience it. If I am feeling adventurous, I will often take meetings in my room just so that half the camera is taken up by the baffling sleeping complex in the background. As they guess between dramatic bookcase and wooden slide, I quickly retort ‘bunk bed’ in the same way someone would say lactose intolerant as they refuse parmesan that has been offered to them to sprinkle over their carbonara.

You may be thinking, how did you get yourself into this situation in the first place? Surely, a flat with a bunk bed in London would attract a demographic of buyers in their own right. They flock together once every fortnight and discuss the health benefits they have seen from sleeping high in the air. One person will be brandishing the experts guide to a good nights sleep demanding that bunk bed sleepers get a say after writing to the author weekly, and another will be thinking about how they are opting out of the group by purchasing a hammock yet are too afraid to tell the others.

My bunk bed catapulted into my life a very long time ago, inhabiting my flat space, and sticking ever since. At first I found this prospect exciting, and would view going to sleep every night like an adventure into the unknown. Climbing up the ladder for the first time was like boarding a plane to some mysterious destination, unbeknownst to what challenges may prop up. After a week high in the sky, I found going to the toilet in the night almost just as awkward as unpacking a tent in the wild whilst hyenas encircle you. Would today finally be the day where I miss a step and plunge to my death in a sleepy-eyed stupor? No post mortem would be required as the murderer would be the gargantuan wooden build looming over.

One of the only bonuses of having a bunk bed is the sleepovers. When my friends come round, the bunk bed really comes into action, and for a night or so, I forget about the fact that my bunk bed is here to stay and I adore it.

It may not be a well-mattressed emperor set up, and it certainly isn’t a doughy enveloping hug of warmth. Instead, it’s a sleeping space with character and rigour, deserving of awe. It’s slats tell stories of sleepers past. We can’t forget the one who fell off in the middle of the night just to get back up the ladder and continue their suspended slumber because this is character building at its best. Its legacy is everlasting- the flat with the bunk bed is now common speak.

From those that are vertically challenged to the ones that use their height as a weapon of valuable currency, the bunk bed experience is always the same. Leaving its indelible mark via a stiff back or a bruise to the top of your head, a bunk bed will never fail to remind you that sleep is precious.