blakspring

I don’t much care for clothes shopping.  I’ve gotten a little bit better at it over the last several years but for the most part it still leaves me exhausted, cranky, and annoyed.  I hate shopping alone because I always think that everything looks terrible on me and I also hate shopping with someone else because I feel guilty making them follow me around while giving me a second opinion.  But since clothing is not optional in our society, every once in a while I have to suck it up and get something new.

So partly for this reason and partly because maybe we have a secret death wish, Ultra and I drove to Woodbury Common Outlets in upstate New York for the first time in our lives.  We got there about 11 a.m. and walked into what is essentially a small town.  It was surreal, kind of like being in Disney World, except without all the cool rides and people dressed as rodents.  There are supposedly over 200 stores in this place and Ultra had the good sense to print out a map and highlight everywhere she wanted to go.  She kindly provided me with a different colored highlighter so that by the time we arrived, we were totally prepared.

I somehow imagined that we would go in like a SWAT team on a reconnaissance mission, entering every highlighted store, quickly scanning the racks, possibly making a purchase, and getting the hell out.  But, just like the time I tried to bake a cake without an oven, this plan too failed miserably.  I had hoped to be back in Brooklyn by 6 p.m.  Ummm, yeah, at 6 p.m. we’d only covered about two thirds of the stores that we had planned on seeing.  I am willing to take the blame for most of this because as much as I normally hate shopping I bought so many things that I probably won’t have to purchase anything for another decade.  Ultra had the patience of a saint, advised me on every article of clothing that I tried on, and made me realize why celebrities have personal shoppers.  In my defense however, I would like to note that my buying frenzy was very tame in comparison to just about every other person there.  If I had a dollar for every shopper that I saw with a rolling suitcase…well, let’s just say I could’ve bought my own rolling suitcase and continued the shopping spree.

I do have a limit and that is bags and shoes.  I actually do not understand women’s obsessions with bags and shoes.  Perhaps I have a renegade Y-chromosome inside my genetic makeup because those two things really don’t do it for me.  When Ultra was in Coach, blissfully wading through a sea of ugly handbags, I took a seat and tried not to fall asleep.  Honestly, tumbleweeds probably would have been more interesting to look at than these handbags.  I tried to help her decide between several bags but finally all I could do was laugh like an idiot until she had to tell me to shut it and go sit back down.

One of the last stores we went to was Kenneth Cole.  There were so many shoes in there that I started to feel dizzy.  (The dizziness might have also been brought on by the fact that we were at the outlets for over nine hours at this point.)  Ultra pointed out a pair of shoes and commented on how nice they were.  I glanced over and was about to make a face and disagree when I stopped mid-word and realized with a shock that I actually liked the shoes.  They were shiny, had very tall and skinny heels, and were goddamn sexy.  I dropped my bags to the floor, found my size, and put those babies on.  Even though I could barely stand in themat first, I felt a surge of power, like I could take over the world or at least take out someone’s eye with the sharp heel.  “These are awesome, like some dominatrix shoes,” I said to Ultra.  I found the name of the shoe written on the box: Mistress.  And for just a few moments, while I walked up and down the store and tried on all three colors the shoes came in, I considered buying them just for the hell of it.  In the end I did not buy the shoes but Ultra did take a picture with my cell phone of me wearing them.  If I start to feel too tomboyish I can just flip open my phone and remind myself that maybe I am a girl after all.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 7:45 am and is filed under mi vida estupida. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.