Becoming Mall Trash (part. I)

It all started a couple of years ago. It happens fast, really. You're single, you're 25. You think to yourself, well I have another couple of years, this will pan out. Then you're 27, you think, well I'm at the tail end of my early adult years but I still feel youthful enough. Then you're 33 and after mild panic has fully run a course through your veins and your joints have stiffened you think, "I think this is gonna be it." It's at this point you've exhausted all of your potential options, you've dedicated yourself to a back-breaking job for the paycheck, the security. You've gone the distance in attempts to secure a partner, despite your balding head, your aching joints and you disappearing interests. Suddenly nothing makes sense, and this is where you start to wander around abandoned buildings, and parking lots. But that's a little too dangerous. You find businesses that are surely going out of business and explore those first. But Kohls isn't enough. You have to think bigger. You find yourself in the local mall. And that's exactly where this story begins.

At first I didn't even like it that much. The stores were empty. A lot of gift shops. There's no Abercrombie and Fitch at the place I go. But once in a while, there's some hope. A cute girl, late 20's, she has on grey yoga pants. She's standing awfully close to me at the discount clothing store, next to the racks of down jackets I've been paging through for the past ten minutes. She catches my eye, I look back at her. What she doesn't know is my routine. Or my intentions, or should I say, my ambition.

I start entering the mall exclusively through Macy's so I can walk through the Fragrance department. There are younger women there who are wearing hundreds of dollars worth of makeup and perfume and beneath their lab coats they have on baggy cargo pants and black thick-soled shoes. They seem mildly interested in me as I walk past, but the catch is, I never stop. I always keep going as if I don't want to even be in Macy's.

Once I release myself into the wild, I walk past some couches that look as if they've been repurposed from a Holiday Inn Express and now sit inside the mall. There's always old men sitting in them. At first I thought, this guy is a creep why is he sitting down just watching people walk past. At least have the decency to stand up if you're going to people-watch, but after awhile I start to sympathize with the old bastards who sit in the couches and never move. I can see it in their eyes. I had them wrong. So very wrong. They are only sitting down because they're waiting for their wife, or their grandkids, and they can't get up. Their eyes pierce through mine and say, "This is my fucking life. I can't even walk anymore. So I sit." After a few weeks I see them differently. They can't move. They're stuck. Sitting down is a "Fuck you" to their aging bodies and arthritic joints. They're lucky if their creased and cuffed Dockers khakis don't have immeasurably bad stains running down them when they stand up. That's why their wife Joann always keeps the house stocked with adult diapers. It's for the weekend trips to the mall. "Do you have your underwears for today?" The wife asks. The husband never replies, he just puts them on in silence. Then, in the car ride over he pulls up his discount-label plaid shirt and shows Joann the top of his Depends. Before he parks their silver SUV.

Once I walk past the old bastards I no longer completely loathe I head first into the bookstore. Because I'm a fraud. I'll tell you why. I always enter and I'm a big fat poser for the first ten minutes I'm there. I head straight for the Science Fiction racks and I stand there and page through at least five books, and never buy any of them. The fact is, I don't even like Science Fiction. I want to like it. Trust me, I do. But I can't read it. It's just stupid. I'm a big fat poser. The truth is, I saw a beautiful woman once in the Science Fiction racks and I thought to myself, "This is where it's at!!" But that was months ago and I haven't seen another like her since. Now it's just me, standing, no doubt in the residual body odor of some obese dork or lonely 50 year old man who hasn't properly shaved his face in years and wears thick, horn-rimmed glasses and lives alone where he eats deviled eggs at night and hope no one notices how greasy his hair is and how he hasn't showered in three days. I make sure I'm alone when I enter the Science Fiction racks, and of course I'm always alone when I leave them. You could say, "That's life" but Science Fiction pretends it's something different. It's not. It sucks. I then head to where I belong, in the Fiction racks that are always completely empty. The people of the mall want action! They don't want comedy!

Once I leave the bookstore all bets are off. For a couple of months I walked around to the various claw machines. "I'm a claw machine guy" I told myself, and anyone else who would listen. Plus, the claw machine directly outside of the bookstore is South Park themed and I saw an easy win for a Cartman plushie that's about the size of a grapefruit. Slightly bigger, actually. It would've been a score. Two dollars later I realized the claw is rigged like a carny hooked it up. What a joke. It slips away before it even reaches the depository's opening. Unbelievable. I deserved Cartman. I left without my two bucks and kept walking.

I have absolutely no interest in buying anything at any of the stores. Almost less than no interest. I walk in though and pretend like I'm going to buy something. I walk into a gift shop and look at a hoodie with "New York" embroidered onto the chest with fuzzy letters, like a varsity jacket might have. "This is pretty nice" I say to myself as I rub the fuzzy letters. I check the price tag. $39.99. Unaffordable. I enter the arcade and spent $28 getting scammed on more claw machines. As I'm playing Ms. Pacman, completely alone I think, "I should've just gone to the casino," but that would be the same thing as this. It's all a scam. I go to turn my card with points on it into the attendant, who is a younger Hispanic guy. "Did you have fun?" he asks me. He's dead serious. "I wouldn't go that far to say I had fun, no. I'm sorry I can't say that." I say, dead serious right back to him. He offers to give me one more chance at the claw machine. I take up his offer. I lose. I exit and walk back towards the escalator. It's time for the main attraction.

I always walk past the food court, and the Sbarros and I inspect the pizza casually. I never stop and gawk at it, but it always looks at least one day old, if not two days old. This is why I never get any food from the food court. I love Sbarros actually. I've had amazing slices from Sbarros, but not this one. This one isn't run correctly. I keep walking. The girl attendant at the Dunkin is pretty cute. Only three people in line. Iced coffee at the mall seems like it wouldn't be as good, for some reason. Maybe it's the air quality. Or the burning smell that lingers in this part of the mall. I never stop at the Dunkin. For better, or for worse. The mall itself, the stores... they're still going. The food court somehow has lost it's appeal for me. I swear it used to be much better, at a different place I used to go to. I'd get a two hot dog meal at the Nathan's and listen to "Moves like Jagger" pump over the sound system while I thumbed at my new Aeropostale jeans inside a cardboard paper bag and waited for my cell phone to alert me to several new text messages from local girls, all who wanted me. Those were the days. I can go back to those days, I know I can. I head back towards the escalator and think about spending more money. But first I go into the discount clothing store and that's where I meet Ms. grey yoga pants.

I wait for an opening, but there is none. I say nothing. I leave, I head back down the escalator. I think about getting a pretzel. I don't. I head towards the discount fragrance counter and start looking at all the colognes. After a minute the attendant asks me directly, "What do you want?" I immediately return serve. "Imagination by Louis Vuitton." "We don't have it." She was ready. So was I, though. She offers me two options. The first one is too strong. The second one is actually pretty good. I enjoy it. It's branded with a Middle Eastern name and it's over a hundred dollars. "I'll be back next week," I tell her. Maybe by then she'll have the Louis Vuitton cologne. If she only knew. The girl in the grey yoga pants was hot. She was on fire, but she's gone now. I'll never see her again. She wasn't even mall trash. If she was I would've said something. I would've told her how I wanted to be just like her. "I want to be mall trash," I'd say, then put my head down and wait.

The problem is, I can't figure it out. How do I become trash? I need the Louis Vuitton cologne that's step one. Then I need some ripped jeans and whatever the newest version of Ed Hardy is. See, that's the issue. I don't know what that is. What shoes do I wear? How much money do I have to drop. And how can I land the girl in the grey yoga pants? I walk out of Macys and feel the thin soles of my shoes as they scrape against the wet pavement. I hope water doesn't leak through as it will make the drive home with soggy socks uncomfortable. Luckily I get into the car without any sesnsation of cold water seeping through to my socks. A small win for the day. My cheapness knows no bounds. I feel immense guilt of twenty eight dollars spent scammed by claw machines and a half-hearted game of Ms. Pacman. But then something changes.

Halfway home I start to rethink everything. Before I left the mall, while no one was looking, I sprayed myself with $120 Valentino cologne. It started to click from there. It's all a game. All a show. Here I am, walking around in earnest, with my knit cap on, swimming in my actual thoughts. Wrong. I must cultivate a character, become a showman. I need bags, even if they're completely irrelevant to the mall. I have to be carrying a bag. I need to spray the Valentino on myself as I walk in. Get a large trucker hat. Studded belt. Pants must sag. Maybe I'll pretend to want to buy a watch, but walk once they don't meet my demands on price. Just for the rush. Go into the bookstore and head towards the Vonnegut section, pull one out and say something ridiculous so everyone can hear. Then go straight into one of those gift shops and buy that forty dollar hoodie and pop it right on. Who am I kidding? It's 2026. The mall scene is beyond dead and even the trash is burning. I'll never be one of them. Unless... (To be continued).