A trip to the Mall

The following is a post from an old High school Friend and Navy Buddy. His thoughts and rambelings are his own. I post them here for your review and comment.


The grownups all looked as if someone had silently farted. The rich children all looked like they might blurt out crying at any moment. I can only imagine what they thought of me. Mall security is along for a stroll with me.
I stick out like a turd in a punchbowl because I’m young, white, and masculine. A lot of these young men my age have an effeminate quality about them. They have pretty hair, pretty bone structure, pretty lips and gentrified clothes. A nearsighted man might be excused for wanting to slip one of them his meat.
Now and again I’ll see a middle-aged man with a hard, focused gaze in his eyes and a purposeful walk. They seem to have a place to go like they intend to, “get in, get out, no fucking about.” A man breezes past me and gives a look of recognition.
There is nothing sweet or wistful about him. He’s well attired but stocky, solidly built. His anemic-looking children shuttle along on a magic carpet of ennui. The oldest boy says something in his refined way and the father glares him down.
I’ve stopped now and again feigning to look at something in a window display. I’ll look over purposefully at the security men who try to look disinterested in my behavior. One looks up, checking the roof for leaks, and the other one uses his toe to straighten an imaginary lump in the tiled floor. I continue on for a few minutes and repeat the process. Finally I leave the mall through the food court and double back around into the mall via the department store at the far end.
I reemerge in the mall itself and I spy the security guards, so I start to follow them. They stop to give directions to some old hag who looks like she’s had one too many plastic surgeries. One of the security men looks over at me so I pretend to be interested in a potted plant. The second man points in a direction near my general vicinity. Now he notices me too and I look him up and down, disdainful-like. The men turn and walk on a bit, but I jump on the up escalator and walk on the opposite side of the great hall, spying on them all the while.
The only mildly amusing thing about it is that, like me, they’re working class men in an upscale shopping Mecca, and they’re being spied upon. I ease on over to retreat to the art shop to look at posters. All the while I chew on it. I’m not boiling per se, just mildly irritated that a couple of seven-dollar-an-hour pukes have the nerve to follow a fellow working man around like a suspect. I make 14 an hour and I don’t act like that. Granted, I’m dressed in the skinhead style while they’re wearing their bland inoffensive maroon sport coats. You can polish a turd, but it will always be a lowly turd.
I’ve decided that, perhaps, I should buy my wife a Chagall print for Christmas. She loves Chagall, but the print would be a decoration and really a gift for the whole family. She likes the Fauvists, too, but I’m bent on getting the woman something just for her. Maybe some diamonds or a new coat.
I’m not finding Chagall prints on the rack so I start thumbing through the catalogs. It’s a crime. A working man isn’t to have art in his home, to judge by these prices.
It’s odd, last week I was in a huge retail chain store that stocked everything from soup to socks, clothes to chemicals. I found a great Monet poster for a few bucks. It was a good-sized poster for less than five dollars. I have a cheap, but no less beautiful, work of art in my home above the TV stand. That’s where it is. Right above the damned TV. You can’t help but notice it. It naggingly reminds one that the crap on the boob tube rarely approaches art or education.
So I make up my mind to head to the same bland chain store to find one of those pillows that allow you to sit up in bed. She’d like to be able to sit up in bed while she breastfeeds the younger child. If she could sit comfortably in bed she could read her lit book or stare at the idiot box or count her toes, if she likes.
The place is an eye scab but the people there are more like me. They don’t walk past me clutching their belongings to their sides like I’m some kind of purse-snatching lowlife. They say, “Pardon me,” and, “How are you?” Occasionally their children act geniunely grateful for nothing more thasn a six dollar action figure.
Buy a twenty dollar spaceship to hold the action figure and they are so joyful they can hardly contain themselves. Buy them a kiddy meal and they’ll be your best friend at least until they’re hungry again.
Try that with one of those spoiled brats from the mall. It’s their birthright. You aren’t treating them, you owe them, they think. Does the government thank you for paying your taxes? No. You owe them. Does the phone company thank you for paying your bill? No. You owe them.
Give a working man’s kid a woodpile and he’ll make a fort. Give him some blocks and he’ll make a racetrack for his toy cars. The old cardboard box in the basement is a moon base, a log cabin, a submarine, and a handy spot for hide and seek. Give a cardboard box to a rich ten year old. His head will flop back like that of a hydrocephaly baby and a piteous moan will emote from his lips.
I’ve got to get back to the Megalo-Mart. These people piss me off. I’m getting so irritated at this vacant consumerist cathedral that I’d rather get my wife a present from a thrift store.
It’s the first of the month and every welfare recipient will be at Megalo-Mart. That’s okay, they have to stock up, too. My wife used to work in the health and beauty section here. On the first of every month there was a run on douche. She’d completely restock the douche shelves two or three times in a shift on welfare day.
Do you want to reduce the number of children living in poverty? Outlaw the manufacture, distribution and sale of douche.

Navy Kurt