Holiday traditions usually warm my heart, but there's one tradition I dread experiencing every year - that of my annual trip to the clothing establishment Abercrombie & Fitch. Why do I have to go there every year? Well, it turns out it's one of the few stores that reliably carries my girlfriends size, which can be roughly compared to those having the same body mass index of an Amazonian Fruit Fly. I'm not sure how there's enough of these people who, while obviously lacking proper nutrition intake at a formative age, have survived, grown up, and found jobs that allow them to spend $45 on a pair of socks, but I digress. The visit begins, of course, with the simple act of walking into the store, which is an intimidating proposition all on it's own. There are no windows, so you can't see inside and perform any kind of a risk assesment prior to entering. You can, however, hear the roughly forty decibels of pounding music being blasted at all those who cross the threshold, and for the entirety of their shopping experience. I'm guessing today's ADD-riddled youth can't even bear the thought of shopping for ten minutes without there being a chance they'll lose their hearing. I wish I could identify the music being played on my visit, but I can't and it doesn't matter - as soon as I walk in the song changes to Mariah Carey telling me that I'm all she wants for Christmas. I can't swear to it, but it feels like the volume increases on this particular song to forty-three decibels. I walk in and I'm immediately greeted by a handsome youthful boy girl couple. At least I think they're greeting me. I can't really hear them, because Mariah is really starting to get into it and there's a speaker right over my head. Anyway, the couple smiles at me and says something. I smile and nod and act like I heard them. I notice the girl (a gorgeous 16 year old blonde) stare at the right side of my head where the gray is really starting to show, and I imagine her thinking that I'm there to shop for one of my children. The boy - oh, wow - holy shit - he's not even wearing a shirt. How can a store that sells many men's shirts not have provided one to one of it's employees? This is when he flexes his pecs at me and I realize that he's shirtless on purpose. This is part of his job description - not to model the clothes, but to model himself. I stare for a moment, resist the urge to point out that I have eaten steaks thicker than his bicep, and breeze past them. I remind myself to check Victoria's Secret before I leave the mall to see if the topless store clerk trend has spread. So now I'm fully inside, and here's the part where I always wish I would have remembered to take a flashlight along with me, because there are no lights beyond the pale glow of a few nightlights spaced here and there. I'm trying to orient myself, peering through the gloom, as Mariah begins listing all the things she doesn't want for Christmas. I assume I won't be on that list, and try to tune her out. I pick up a sweater that I think my girlfriend might like and try to make out it's shape. Holding it inches from my face, I realize why I thought she'd like it - she already has it. The exact same one, a few years old, wears it all the time. Looking around I notice several pieces of clothing that my girlfriend already has, and has had for a while. This is curious, to me. It's almost as if A&F stumbled upon the perfect design for all clothes years ago, and having thus defined what is stylish and awesome, has abandoned all further attempts to innovate new things, and is just selling more and more copies of the same old crap. Between that and the topless freak at the door, I have serious concerns about their marketing strategies. Well, I think, maybe she'd like another one of these sweaters. I find the price tag, but in the all encompassing darkness it looks like it says $130. For this? It's practically a t-shirt. Surely I'm seeing it wrong. I pull out my phone, activate the flashlight, and confirm that yes, it's $130. I search the sweater earnestly, thinking it must have a USB port or something, but I don't find one and I put it back where I found it and back away. Damnit, using that flashlight was a bad idea because I have abandoned my shadowy ethereal form, and now another female sales clerk has noticed me and is bearing down on me. She invades my personal space without hesistation and smiles and says something I don't hear. I smile and nod and say "I'm fine", which seems to confuse her. She says something else, louder, and I realize I'm going to have to engage in conversation. I take a half step closer and bend down slightly with a questioning look on my face, hoping she'll repeat herself. However, my body language is suddenly misinterpreted and instead of being "Older Dude That Can't Hear Me", I am instantly reclassified as "Creepy Guy Trying To Get Close To My Breasts". She takes a huge and deliberate 'No means No' step backwards, and I give her a quick, frantic hand waving never-mind motion. She spins and walks off, presumeably to report me to store security. I stand there, lamenting what is easily the 500th social encounter I have ruined this year through my own awkwardness. And this is when I scratch my nose nervously. Oh crap. Bad idea, terrible idea. I guess when I picked up that sweater I coated my palm in that terrible stinking cologne the store splashes around by the bucketload. Now it's in my nose and eyes and throat and SNEEZE followed by WET SNEEZE followed by BELLOWING SNEEZE and I'm frantically searching my coat for Kleenex which is making it worse, because every time I move the coat more and more of that stinking mist comes off it and I realize the store must have been spraying me down this whole time the way the supermarket has those little hoses they use to spray down the broccoli. I find the tissue, try to empty my nose as quietly as possible (and why did I bother? Mariah is now attempting to harmonize YOOOOU, BABY in every way she possibly can before the universe comes to an end) and get a hold of myself. I tilt my head back and try to search the ceiling for the little hoses that must be there, but of course there's no lights and I can't see the ceiling, but I imagine that instead of a ceiling, there must be a fine grained network of speakers and hoses, programmed to mist up at the loud points of whatever song is playing. Which is as annoying as it is ingenious. Somewhere in the back there must be a full beer keg of this crap, and it has to be changed out via hand truck at the start of every day. And just what the hell is in this cologne? To say it smells like sex would be to insult the way crotch sweat smells. You know what it reminds me of? You know that scene in Matrix 2, where there's a big human party in Zion, and for some inexplicable reason all the filthy humans start dancing, grinding, and humping for a full five minutes while these weird drums beat and they're in in this expansive wide open sewer that reeks of piss and oil and spaceships and the faint smell of depleted ozone? This shit smells exactly what that room must have smelled like. How can anyone choose, and pay money, to smell this way? I see a manager walking around and think about complaining, but then I realize how "I am not broccoli and I resent being treated like broccoli" is going to sound, so I decide to keep my mouth shut, grab something small off a rack, and head towards the cashier. Mariah is wrapping up the song (or has run out of breath, it's not clear) as I step onto the line in the #2 spot. That's when I notice the woman in front of me - a senior citizen, maybe five feet tall, sixties, white hair in a bun. She's holding onto a small frilly pink pair of sweatpants that's clearly meant for her granddaughter, and she's staring quite fixedly at something behind the register. I turn and look, still wiping my nose. There in front of us is a huger-than-life-size ad of two bodies, male and female, in black and white. They are both topless, but the male is completely naked. His "parts" are covered by the female's rump, which is pressed firmly against him. Oh, and yes, her butt crack is showing, because the male is in the process of pulling her jeans off from behind. He has nearly accomplished his mission, and the jeans themselves (which is what I assume the ad is selling) comprise maybe 3% of the entire ad. Because, I assume, nothing says "Buy these jeans" more than "HOT DOGGY-STYLE RAPE IN 3...2...1..." And this is where something strange happens. I'm looking at grandma here taking this scene in, and I start to wax philosophical about life and aging, and start to think that at this stage in my life I am mentally much closer to this grandma than I am to the children running around the rest of the store. And that makes me sad. But it doesn't last long because my next thought is that I should tap Granny on the shoulder, and when she turns around, I should look at this sexy ad, look back at her, wink, and then put my hands on her shoulders and see what happens next. But before I can put my plan into action, she's called to the register, and is out of my life forever. When my turn comes, I hand over my item. The clerk smiles and says something I can't hear, because Mariah is over and something heavy on percussion is playing. I just smile and hand her my card, and hope she didn't say something like "Would you like to donate three thousand dollars to a charity for skinny but well dressed retards?", although that might look awesome on my credit card statement. We're wrapping up the purchase - and do you think that A&F would hand me something as gauche and non-green as a plastic bag? Of course not - they hand me a little tote bag that's been heavily lacquered with the store "scent" and has cute little handles made from the hide of a yak in Kuala Lumpur. Which is clearly much more environmentally friendly than a simple fucking plastic bag, and if you don't understand that...I guess you're too old to be shopping at Abercrombie and Fitch - which, thankfully, I do not have to do again for an entire year. Lots of love and Happy Holidays to all.
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