Anatomy of a Lonely Shopping Trip

Wake up with slight hangover and curious empty feeling.

Ascribe empty feeling to empty stomach.

Fill stomach with chocolate milk.

Wait.

Empty feeling does not subside.

Slap hand to forehead. Why, you have things to buy!

Make list. List, for some reason, includes the following cryptic line (sandwiched between present for Boyfriend and present for a lovely girl named Stephanie): “Something pretty and unnecessary.” Right.

Call friends. Invite them to create fellowship to accompany you on your quest to Planet Scaro, i.e. shopping mall.

Friends tell you that you are a soulless consumerist drone who really ought to be ground up and fed to the starving giant squid (over-fishing is a bitch).

Wonder what Chuck Norris would do in this situation.

Remember you are not Chuck Norris, you’re not even Steven Seagal in fact, and drive to mall alone.

Spend, oh, about 8 years sniffing perfumes at Sephora. Find pretty gift for someone else at Sephora instead.

Find pretty dress at J. Crew, only to realize that it looks too much like a feminized Kuwaiti dishdash, and fret about looking “Orientalist” (screw you, Edward Said!). Find pretty gift for someone else at J. Crew instead.

Notice a pattern emerging.

Stop over at the hub of corporate book-selling, that pantheon of plushness, Barnes & Noble. Read magazine story on Orlando Bloom. He’s got “nowhere to go” (or so the interviewer thinks). You and I both, pirate.

People-watch. Many of the people you know assume that Americans flock to the mall like zombies. This is not the case. Most people are on a mission, although their approaches vary wildly. For example, some of the most energetic shoppers are Party People. Party People need clothes for a specific event – be it a cocktail party or a funeral, and they are admirably methodical, like the Nazis, without all that mass-murder crap.

You are a bit of a Party Person. You are looking for a perfect dress. Actually, you’ve already found a perfect dress – but it’s entirely overpriced and impractical, and it looks a bit like something that an extra from Star Trek would wear. Which is glamorous, really, but you are not sure if you can pull it off with dignity.

You find a gorgeous dress hanging right outside the door at one of those pricey chains that tries valiantly to channel the quirky, and sometimes succeeds. This dress is not quirky, however – it is romantic, pastoral, feminine, like a field of flowers. It manages to say “fuck you” to hypersexualization and puritanical zeal alike. You don’t deserve such splendour. You head to Nordstrom.

Nordstrom is famous for its superior customer service. It is especially superior in the men’s section. Shopping for make-up or dresses at Nordstrom as a woman – you are merely one of many. Going over to the masculine side of things – you are a brave explorer. You capture your prize, Boyfriend’s present, with the help of a shop assistant who answers nearly all of your questions with an “Of course! This is Nordstrom!” He has a point.

You must never eat at the food-court. This is age-old wisdom, passed down through generations. It’s a bit like “don’t blow-dry your hair in the bathtub” or “don’t run with scissors.”

You are starving.

The food-court is not an option, but neither is a real restaurant, because who the hell eats a good dinner on her own? You could always pretend to have an imaginary friend, of course. You two could have an engrossing conversation about the physical measurements of the TARDIS over a slab of medium-rare steak. And you would tip the waiter really, really well for putting up with all of it. Except that you still have a dress to buy.

Starving and parched, and less than sane, you have decided that you have suffered enough, and must now have your reward. You make your way back to the gorgeous dress. You try it on. It fits like a cloud of mist over a mountain. You twirl a bit. You ask the shop assistant what he thinks. He grunts. You wonder if the grunt is a “raar I am man, I impressed by pretty dress” kind of grunt or a “whatever, crazy lady, get out of perfectly-gelled hair already” kind of grunt. You have a 50/50 chance here. You go with the first option.

On the way home, you listen to Dido on repeat. Ohmigod, like, Dido is so pointless and mainstream. Ohmigod, you, like, are totally listening to Dido while totally driving back from the mall – where you spent nearly three hours, being so totally mainstream! You should totally be kicked to death by righteous anti-capitalism freedom-fighters in ironic t-shirts!

Oh bloody hell. You turn up Dido and even dare to roll the windows down on this warm night in Carolina. You don’t even stop singing, horribly off-tune, along to the stereo when you stop at a red light, in full view of the people next to you. Lonely Shoppers have that courage, you see.