Where Do The Non-Douche Bags Shop - Part II

Larchmont is dead. So far, I've purchased a lame pair of khakis and a tee shirt because a hot chick talked to me. I've spent about $100. This is not going well.

"Where can I find a French Connection, for chrissake?" I yell.

"At the Beverly Center," a gay guy working at Banana Republic says. (Yes, time and space shift in this narrative).

I'll be damned if I go to Beverly Center. That might promptly cause me to shoot myself in the arm with an Uzi. Even though they do have a French Connection.

Where do all the Non-Douche Bags Shop?

I drive up to Melrose. I park. The meter says, "fail." I leave a note on my car - no ticket - failed meter.

I walk into a store. A really tan, hot bodied chick is working. "Can I help you?"

"Looking for a jacket." Only partially true.

"Leather?"

"No," I almost laugh.

"Blazer?"

"Maybe a casual one."

She takes me to the blazer section and pulls out a black shiny one.

"Do I look like I'm in Yakuza?"

"Ya-what?" Okay, this part of the conversation didn't really happen.

I look at another jacket. It says Tony Montana across the front. Jesus Christ.

She pulls out a blazer that I could plausibly see myself wearing. I try it on. She says it fits me perfectly. It does not.

"Do you have a medium?"

She looks around as if I asked her about Jimmy Hoffa. This chick is really starting to annoy me. She yells at her co-worker. The co-worker can't hear her because the Fugees are playing too loud in the store. Her co-worker runs out of the store.

I tell her that I can look around the rest of the store, she doesn't need to pulls things off the rack and help me try them on. She says, "I'll find you some shirts."

She runs around to the racks and pulls shirts off and brings them to me. I don't like this process.

I find one shirt that I could conceivably wear. I try it on with the jacket. They look okay.

"How much are these?"

"The jacket is normally $300, but on sale for $150 and the shirt is normally $120 on sale for $60."

It seems like a decent deal. The co-worker comes back with a white jacket.

"This is a medium."

I try it on. The arms are too long. But I kind of like the white. OH GOD! What the hell am I doing? I freaking look like Don Johnson. I look at this tanned, stupid girl, and I get really uncomfortable. I hate the smell of her make up and this creepy store that has jackets with Tony Montana across the front. What the hell am I doing?

It's amazing how lame certain girls come across when contrasted with a cool girl. I think lame girls get away with a lot because well, they are girls and I don't know, have breasts and stuff. But when there's a cool girl to contrast against a lame girl, it's sort like how a quiet moment right before a loud one makes it seem REALLY loud.

Anyhow, this girl working at the store is really irritating me in contrast to the hot boutique girl. I tell her politely that I'm going to look at some other stores. She warns me that the jacket is the last small one they have, that it might be gone when I come back.

"Do I look like I'm in a flea market in the Middle East?" I don't actually say that.

"I like the jacket. But I don't love it. I might come back." Only the last part is a blatant lie. She knows it. I know she knows it. It's the most polite way I can think of to say, "I don't like you or your store, you skanky slut."

Walking down Melrose, I notice more jackets with dragons and numbers and other stupid shit on them and incense smells and am beginning to realize that rather than finding where the non-douche bags shop, I've come to douche bag central.

I know there is an Urban Outfitters somewhere, so I figure I ought at least try to salvage my shopping trip. I continue to walk down the street and there's a cute Asian girl standing outside a store. I'm walking past and she yells, come in, we're having a big sale!

"A big sale, what could be wrong with that?" I think to myself.

She escorts me in and asks me what I would like. I again come back with the jacket line.

"Oh, were you the one who wanted to try on the white blazer?"

"Yeah, how did you know that?"

"She got the blazer from our store."

So that's where the co-worker at the shitty store had run off to. Odd.

"We are the same store."

"Oh." This is incredibly pathetic.

"What didn't you like about the blazer?" Because of my leftover displeasure from the other girl, I'm associating her with this girl and already don't really like her. I don't even respond.

She pulls down the same black blazer from the other store in a small.

"I've already seen that jacket."

"Come on, you should buy it."

Have I come to the red light shopping district? She looks at me with this droopy, pathetic eyes, the eyes prostitutes in Amsterdam stare with, the eyes of an inexperienced woman trying to use her sexuality for a meagre profit. The only thing more pathetic being the men who go for it...

"If I wanted to buy the jacket, I would've bought it at the other store." I say very curtly.

She smiles and shrugs, sort of holding out the jacket. The phone rings. She turns to answer it. I leave abruptly.

Onto to Urban Outfitters. I wish I could be writing. Is that a weird thing to think?