I’m a bit of a whore, like many. But I’m not talking about the
kind of whore – from either gender – who uses a busy street-corner after
midnight, baiting clients with smooth or rusty marketing skills learned
from the Do-It-Yourself School of Charm, nor the veteran from those
corners who has learned to advertise who they are into discreet
information on business cards that directs potential costumers to their
pimp’s phone number. I’m talking about whorishness derived from
excessive habits to satisfy specific needs, the kind akin to mental
habits that make one a media whore, vampire-movie whore, trend whore,
or, yes, thrift-shop whore. These habits can easily be categorized as
obsessions, although that description must be used with caution, since
these kinds of whores, in general, have some awareness about being
controlled by their fixations, and are, therefore, wary they don't
fall into traps that convince them they have, indeed, become
qualified, resolute suckers.
I’m a thrift-shop whore, not because thrift shops are great places to
hang out and connect with other people from Facebook or elsewhere who
like used stuff, but because, as many of you know, there are
great merchandise there that probably won’t hurt you, at the cash
register. However, I’m not always seduced by the lure of cheap
merchandise in these stores, but only spend on things I can use, and do not
go through withdrawal symptoms or anxiety attacks, if I end up empty
handed on my two previous visits there. Thus, in the arena of
thrift-shop whoredom, I’m, categorically, a mild thrift-shop whore.
Although I may have been an intense thrift-shop whore once, for a brief,
unmemorable period, spending mindlessly on anything, even though I
didn’t have much to spend. Indeed, these stores are heaven for the
underpaid, although the parking lot of most used stores I patronize
somehow tells me my co-shoppers have healthy bank accounts, can easily
splurge at pricier stores, or may even be donors themselves of
merchandise sold in these used stores. But then perhaps they have been
thrift-store whores since their undergrad years at a public or private
university, a period sustained by student-loan programs or depleted
trust funds, and cannot evolve out of being bargain hunters.
Years ago, I became a regular at a neighborhood used-store, to look
for brand-name sneakers. Adidas, Nike, and Puma were the usual
brand-names I looked for. I used to shop once a month there, and only
spend fifteen to thirty minutes at the men’s shoe-rack, looking for a
great steal, then a few minutes to browse t-shirts, before leaving. But
those were the good old days, before I became a thrift-shop whore. These
days, I’m a weekly bargain hunter, not only looking for shoes and
t-shirts but also for sweaters, pants, bags, books, and music cds.
The cd display shelves have become my focal-point, in these weekly
two-hour visits, which now consumes half of my time, looking for
anything that catches my eye, such as any old albums by U2, Maroon 5,
Nora Jones, Marvin Gaye, Chopin, Cher, Schubert, Madonna, or Carlos
Santana.
But the music section has not derailed me from the men’s shoe-racks,
which I check carefully, because a great catch could be hidden under the
gigantic size-thirteens or fourteens. Usually, shoe-racks for men, in
most used stores I frequent, are nothing compared to shoe-racks for
women. Women used-store shoppers have more selections to choose from.
This probably means women think more about their feet than men, in terms
of care and ways of dressing them up. But just because men used-store
shoppers do not have an array of shoes to choose from doesn’t mean they
are locked out of getting a great steal. In many ways though, this
particular scarcity -as in life, in general- summons sharpened
hunter-gatherer skills among men shoppers there, to not only look for
shoes around the men’s shoe section, but into the women’s shoe section
as well.
Now this ceremonious spatial-expansion, in shoe bargain hunting, does
not mean these men are trying to satisfy the feminine aspect of their
tastes, nor are they necessarily expressing some uncontrolled fetish for
women’s shoes, revealed in a thrift-store public-sphere, that may later
inspire details for a story or theoretical paper. Not quite. These men
wander into the women’s shoe section to look for stray men’s shoes,
amidst the general chaos of voices, leathery shoe-smell, and, yes,
feet-smell, in that section. Often, men’s shoes are misplaced in the
women’s display racks, because of children who make toys out of anything
that catch the regimes of their tastes, besides shoes their mothers are
trying to browse through; and since their mothers are busy fitting
shoes, these children wander to a nearby rack -the men’s area, usually-
where they can resume the summer of boisterous play, while still within
the general scope of their mother’s or auntie’s highly-distracted
peripheral vision.
For the full-text that - I think - needs editing, please visit Thought Catalog.
