Black Sweater.

I think it was in Dharma Bums where a woman that Jack was seducing said something about him being "a nice sweater boy." I always thought the "nice" was him, and the sweater was a sign. I have no sweaters these days, though they used to be the pride of my wardrobe. So I went to Meier and Frank looking for a black sweater. Simple, crew neck, nice material. Even, perhaps, cashmere.

I look around, see only cashmere v-necks in off-black. A beautiful CK sweater with diamond designs. A hopeful, but ultimately disappointing little number that has a blue stripe where I really want flat, unflattering black. Black. Black sweater with a neck like this . This is what I say to the saleswoman, who refers me to the English speaking salesperson, who looks confused and refers me to the head English speaking salesperson. She totes me around the store showing me the same sweaters that attracted my initial interest, then shakes her head in disbelief at each one.

"I'm sorry, we don't have any black sweaters."

"I am glad to know I am so out of fashion."

"You should try the Gap."

Now, I am at the mall, a place I find myself in rarely these days. I woke up doing cost benefit analysis. I am unemployed, I need to look good. I will parlay the money in my pocket from washing dishes into the trappings necessary to get a job that does not require washing dishes. I need a sweater, and maybe the mall is the place to go. I like to wear black sweaters over white collared shirts and a tie. It makes me look like the drug-dealing teenager from American Beauty but I sometimes dig on the dance of plastic bags and it makes me comfortable.

The smells of the mall do not wash across the senses like those you find on a scooter. They linger, they reek, they infest. It is one curse I have found of my job. I smell things. Most often me. And though I don't often smell very good, there are many things in the urban world that smell worse, get catalogued and show up in my tasting notes. Mall massage table man, arms extended and I even think he took a shower today. Donuts frying having wafted over an indoor ice rink, suffering reduction and a spritz of digital energy from the cell phone counter.

And then you have the human traffic. The human traffic at the perfume counter overloads my brain. I am wearing sunglasses and earphones plugged into nothing and wishing I had latex gloves and a hampster bubble that would let me get where I am going without any possible sensory contact with my environment.

No dice, I am at the Gap. It smells like tissue paper made for wiping away adolescent tears wrought from showing up at school wearing the same clothes as the cool girl and getting hazed for it. I want to leave. I am my own vehicle.

"May I help you?"

"I need a black crew neck sweater."

"We have this one." It has a blue stripe where I want there to be black, unflattering black.

"I left my keys in the scooter" as I turn to go, taking in embarassment and simultaneous pride as I realize the hole in the ass of my pinstripe pants is probably glowing my skinny white ass for the skinny white ass I am walking away from.

Updates later on the wardrobe. But for now, buying a plunger was easier.