I can never take a simple walk through a mall. Each department, each store in fact, holds its own joys and contradictions, terrors and taunts. There’s the mass confusion at the perfume department: how the hell do I want to smell, anyway? Flowery, spicy, sultry, full of fun? Mildly interesting for my age? I never got the concept behind perfume: sure, I like the smell, but am I trying to attract myself? Shouldn’t I be wearing the smell of a freshly manicured baseball field, ready for tonight’s big game? Would smelling like lilies of the valley really make him wild with desire, or would he have flashbacks to his third grade English teacher who maybe also smelled a little like pee?
And let’s not even talk about the junior department, with its pube-skimming skinny jeans, its frothy tiny skirts, its toss of sex and hair, all of which remind me that no, I am no longer a junior, howeverlong I pause there, fingering a skimpy sweater for some fictional teenage daughter.
But I think it’s the purse department that really sends me into a whirling tizz. Purses confuse me, enrage me. Though they never satisfy, they also never cease to call out to me, titillate and tease as I walk by them on my way to buy the pressing things on my list. My ever-lovin’ list, which guides me and prods me all day long until I can cross off all the crap and just call it a day, for chrissakes, until one fine day when I’ll have done everything on all my lists and I will be allowed to peacefully croak, thank yew.
However and in the meantime, I can never just walk on by the “bag” department. The reasons are myriad. First of all, the purse I am usually carrying is so old and decayed I am shamed into pausing for a look-see. Secondly, I have two X chromosomes, after all, which release a hormone which tells me to always have an eye out for the perfect purse which is out there somewhere, but always just out of reach…I just KNOW the godot of purses, the holy grail of bags, the nirvana of carryalls lurks buried somewhere in the wreckage of buckles and clasps, cunning hidden pockets, smart little zippers and flaps.
