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Are you lonely in bed? Want to bounce on the box springs with some sexy company? Just align your mattress in the proper position and the lovers will line up at your door, swears a recent convert to feng shui.

Karen May, 32, wrote in the London Mirror that she was single, antisocial and depressed when she consulted Liza Evans, a feng shui designer. Redecorating the barren boudoir was advised as a remedy. The cold bed was pulled away from the wall because this would allow Mr. Right warmth and access on the opposite side. The bed's head was also steered southwest, the direction of romance.

Repainting the room supplied the next invitation to intimacy as the pale mauve walls were replaced with hot red and orange hues. A red heart-shaped lamp was also installed. Its warm glow made Karen feel "relaxed and sexy." Fake plants were disposed of to rid the chamber of "dead energy." A wooden sculpture of two people entwined was purchased to promote "unity."

Were magic gems incorporated? Absolutely. A rose crystal was dangled by the window to attract "the earth element."

Did the ancient but also New Age arrangement produce aphrodisiac results?

May claims she met a man named Mike at her gym one month later. Mike, 30, made her blush and she "couldn't stop thinking about him." A week later, the two chatted all night together and marvelous Mike confessed that he was "irresistibly drawn" to her.

Today, Karen reports that they've been together for nearly a year and it's just gotten better and better. "We're on the same wavelength and we trust each other implicitly," she coos.

Yadda-yadda-yadda. Yawn. Groan. Bah. Humbug.

Naked World scoffs at the innumerable silly superstitions of feng shui, like the fear that one's wealth will disappear "down the drain" if you don't fix a dripping faucet. I propose that the arcane art simply performs as a mental placebo on the easily influenced and the wistfully hopeful. My skepticism will not stem the tide of converts though as long as testimony like May's promises solitaries that they can land partners by simply primping their flats.
salon.com | Feb. 7, 2000

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