A new birthday suit!

I don’t buy clothes for myself. Aside from the very occasional concert tee, I can think of almost nothing that I wear that was not purchased for me by someone else. Thus, every few years or so when my mother offers to take me clothes shopping for my birthday, I have to accept. Otherwise I will be naked. There’s nothing wrong with naked, mind you, but in certain situations it is definitely frowned upon. Like at work. The grocery store. My own apartment.

Great, someone wants to buy me things! No complaints here. The only problem is, when it comes to clothing, it is useful to actually be present when they are purchased to ensure that they fit. And while I am generally not overly concerned with my appearance, I do prefer that my clothes fit. If you had a hot body like this, you would to. (I teed that one right up for you, Bacon Soup. Now knock it out of the park!)

Unfortunately, I am also allergic to the mall. So there we were in Macy’s on a busy Saturday afternoon and all those people and all those mirrors and all those fluorescent lights and all those trendy outfits made me feel like I was caught in some crowded discotheque but with really slow music and someone has just shouted "fire!" Malls are big buildings, but to me there is no more claustrophobic place to be. I get extremely anxious and confused and irritable. Much like the Planet Hollywood in Orlando, Florida, I feel that every mall just may be hiding a portal to hell somewhere within. I don’t want to be caught off-guard in either one. I’ve never dropped acid (so much left to do in life!), but I think a visit to the mall for me must be like a really bad trip (down-tempo disco! portals to hell! Ralph Lauren! PANIC!)

Add to that the frustration of trying on 18 pairs of pants without finding anything that fits. Either they don’t make clothes for people my size and shape or a whole army of skinny dudes raided the department stores before we got there. Despite the best efforts of both my mom and Courtney, we could not find a pair of pants that did not, in my mom’s words, "have enough room in the butt for a loaded diaper." Ewww. On second thought, that could come in handy down the road.

Eventually, we found ourselves in one of the darker corners of the world, a place called the Gap. Actually, compared to the techno-thumping shithole Abercrombie, the Gap is a bastion of tranquility and sunshine. And they make clothes for skinny people! And the clerks can distinguish dark gray from navy! And they were having a sale! My trusty lieutenants sent me into the dressing room with four or five pairs of pants, and they all fit perfectly! (Oh Gap, if only you weren’t so painfully trendy and I weren’t such a contrarian stick in the mud, we might be friends.) I ended up with two pairs of super hip pants that were both on sale. The jeans, though apparently tailored just for me, were $50, and I refuse to wear $50 trousers. My mom also insisted on buying me a T-shirt that had something to do with Bono and AIDS in Africa. I told her to just send Bono a check for $13. No need to bring a t-shirt into the equation, right? Wrong. I got a new t-shirt.

Feeling lucky to have so far not round-house kicked any other shoppers in the head in my mall-induced delirium, the three of us escaped its evil clutches and headed for the relative sanity of Kohls, where I did find a wonderfully trendy and well-fitting pair of Levis for the unbeatable price of $13. Did I say $13? What I meant was the unbeatable price of my mom’s $13. Can’t argue with that. Kohls, as always, was also having a sale and so I picked up a whole stack of $8 shirts and sweaters as well.

And all this explains why I sit here right now at work, looking incredibly dashing in my brand-new threads. If only Kohls also sold sticks with which to beat away all the ladies that now find me irresistible. No, wait, I must still be delirious from the shopping. It’s just me here.

And it’s not my birthday yet, so don’t bother.