Nick Buys a New Pair of Jeans

I did. They are nice, too. Guess Jeans. Just take a look:



I'm not sure if that is a good brand anymore, but they were on sale at Macys. Then I found a shirt on sale for $20. Here is the shirt:

Not as good as the jeans, but I got suckered in because of the price.

I feel good now, but I didn't then. We got a half day for Roshashana at the Creative Artists Agency, so I figured I'd just head up to midtown and buy some clothes. Really, I thought it would be simple.

I think it was while I was standing in line with an armful of denim in H&M, surrounded by nothing but old ladies, that I realized something. Shopping is tough. How can this be something that people enjoy doing, the browsing, the absurd prices, the insane crowds full of old women who won't move? I've got places to go, I need some jeans. I had to go to five different stores: H&M, The Gap, Levis, another H&M, and finally Macy's, where I went to three different departments.

I don't know why I really need them, call them an extravagance, the needs of someone in need of something. I just figured after three days of moping around, when I had played out Ryan Adams, Wilco, and the Smashing Pumpkins, and none of them had eased my stomach, and the cigarettes and alcohol just felt like a sham, and the thought of seeing people still shook me, I needed something to do. Heartbreak doesn't come with great tragedy, shaking of fists and momentous world events. It's all rather boring and dull. It is, after all, not something happening but something ceasing to happen.

So the idea that I needed jeans sounded like a good chore.

At least I thought that before I stood in front of the display and saw all those freaking styles, I don't know if I want jeans with rips or splattered paint. Workmen jeans, jeans with the crazy lettering, black, white, grey, faded jeans, washed jeans and finally just really expensive jeans. I don't want to spend $200 dollars. Why do levi's look like shit when I put them on? Why can't I find my size? I can't be that skinny. Why do 30-32s look like I'm trying to wear great bags on my legs? I know I'm not the skinniest male. How do people survive.

It was compounded by my feeling of helplessness, the inevitable notion that I had no one to call, that no one really cares that I am buying jeans, that this whole charade is because I'm trying to feel better about myself, because right now I don't. So I'll build a facade.

I kept searching, kept picking through the sales racks of Macy's, trying clothes on in a dressing room without a door where old English tourists would walk in and apologize. I found some I kind of liked, but when I showed them to the checkout they were in the wrong sales pile, and were still $90. I took them back. And when everything was building up, with no one to call, no jeans and a splitting headache, I just looked over found some, tried them on and bought them. Then I walked downstairs, saw a fifty percent off section, found a shirt, and then bought it.

All the frustrating search, the endless roar of my empty stomach (I don't know why it feels empty, I'm not hungry, but it just does), just disappeared. I could very calmly walk to the subway. I just bought some jeans.