I park my electric car in the lot and walk into the mall like a good little soldier armed with my fair trade coffee and reusable bags, wearing a t-shirt made of recycled cotton that they’ll plant ten trees for. The picture of ethical consumerism, really. What would Žižek think? Yeah, I know. I'm a hypocrite. I’m helping maintain the system. Don’t be so hard on me. Maybe someday my kids will dismantle it.
Ah, shopping day. Everyone so easily distracted. Everyone gleefully consuming. A microcosm of the world at large. The comings and goings of all the people. The feigned sense of purpose. The thrill of the buy. The miscalculated bliss of getting something on sale for a measly 15 percent off when everything is marked up 60. The modern day mall rats wearing mom jeans and crop tops curating moments of zen on their front-facing cameras. The vapid fuckboys with Peaky Blinders haircuts strutting around in ultratight joggers that accentuate the bulge of their flaccid hammers. I guess the idea there is that everything looks bigger under pressure.
The elderly people wandering aimlessly just to feel a little less alone. Just to rub shoulders with life. The melancholy washing over me as I let that sink in. The overwhelmed mom carrying a wailing toddler who’s refusing to relinquish the plastic toy she won’t buy. Watching her concede as his screams escalate because now people are staring. What happened to teaching our kids that all our suffering rests on being too attached to our wants? Oh well. A lesson for another day, I suppose.
I wander into a shop, rolling my eyes at the $50 Nirvana shirts being sold to Gen Z, who are all presently living their best ‘90s kids’ lives. It’s strange how people idolize things they don’t understand. They’ll never know Kurt’s pain. The way he turned it off with a shotgun blast. But the ‘blessed, stressed and a little depressed’ aesthetic is glamorized these days. We accept we’re all just a little bit sad and thankfully we have Bell Let’s Talk letting us talk about it while they lay off their workers. And rather than questioning what it is about our society that breeds these shaky internal landscapes, we keep buying shit and falsifying perfect lives on our devices.
I need to feel something that’s real. I check out the music memorabilia store selling vintage Hank Williams records to hang on the wall. I think about the spina bifida that ailed him. The whiskey and painkillers that soothed him. The way he sang “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and you really believed him. The hushed final breaths he took in the back of that blue Cadillac. I think about that more often than I should.
I go into one of the few big retailers I like. I buy what I need and a few sexy extras. The cashier asks me if I'd care to donate a dollar to a children’s charity. I say “not today, thanks” and for a split second I feel guilty. It’s just a dollar. It’s for the kids, you asshole. But then I remember that the store's billionaire CEO could donate half his earnings and he’d still be insanely rich for the rest of his days. Instead of ponying up the cash flow himself, he expects us patrons to take one for the team. Just a small bit that you won’t even notice. As if I don’t already make my fair share of charitable donations, Daddy Warbucks. I'm not going to let you guilt me into it. Fuck that guy. Fuck billionaires generally. Eat the rich.
I decide to make myself feel worse and head into Chapters, which if you hadn’t heard, is no longer a bookstore anymore. Now it’s just an overpriced home goods / toy store with a small and limited book section. Nobody reads anymore, anyway. I peruse the classics. I notice Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar on the two for $10 table. A fucking travesty. In a society like this, it’s no small wonder why she stuck her head in that oven.
Fuck this place, man. Everything is a commodity with arbitrary values. I hate how nothing matters anymore. I gotta get out of here. I gotta take my family and head for the mountains. I gotta get far away from sleepwalking people and art that’s lost its meaning because we’ve perverted it all so goddamn much.
Nonetheless, I return home and show my family what I bought and I surround myself with shiny things. Then I watch bad TV where 20-year-olds resemble sex toy dolls that just came off the factory line and most of the dudes have calf implants and fake teeth, and the girls sleep with fake eyelashes on and their rear ends are constantly oiled. And I find it strange that they all want to fuck each other because it seems like none of them can hold a proper conversation.
I shut the madness off and slip into the expensive bra I bought today and take a titillating picture. I need to put my unnecessary purchase to good use. After all, before my thoughts, my words, my voice, this is what people want to see. This is the only way I might get them to hear me. This is the modern woman’s way to propagate a socialist ethos. You can't just go full commie right away. You have to tread lightly. You have to look like a bombshell provocateur. You have to play the game. What good are you if you can't sell yourself? After all, capitalism has taught us that everything is a commodity, right? Even me. Even me.
And for a brief and fleeting moment, I'm at peace with that.