Resistance is Futile
There is a quote on a folded piece of paper that I carry around in the back pocket of my Moleskine joke notebook, so that if I get tired of reading punchlines and premises, I can opt for something more earnest.

“I have been asked many questions in my life about poetry, religion, life, and I have given precisely the same number of answers, but I have never, I repeat, never, satisfied a single interlocutor. Why? Because all questioning is a way of avoiding the real answer, which is really known already. Every man is enlightened, but wishes he wasn’t. Every man knows he must love his enemies and sell all he has and give to the poor, but he doesn’t wish to know it—so he asks questions.”

I read it over and over, thoughtful, and when I eventually tire of it place it neatly back in its pocket and pull out the only other reading material on my person, which, at the time, is a J. Crew catalog.

“My life is complete,” I think to myself, calmly flipping the pages. “There is nothing in the world that I need.”

”Except this sweater,” says the catalog matter-of-factly. I blink quickly, becoming alert as I examine the item in question.

“Shit,” I think. “I made that blanket statement about completeness without having known about the existence of this sweater.” The sweater, which I like a lot, is a heather grey cardigan with dark brown buttons.

“But it’s not like it would change anything,” I say to myself. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, now I own this sweater, now things will be different. Now I’ll enjoy my job and my comedy career will take off and my relationship issues will fall by the wayside. Nothing is going to change.”

”You don’t know that,” says the catalog. “Something might. You have a propensity to generalize rather than learning from experiences.

“That is sometimes true,” I tell it, impressed by its insight but wary of the backhandedness with which it is baiting me to purchase its commodities. I am looking at a picture of a sweater and feel like I am standing with my ear to a megaphone operated by between four and seven screaming copywriters.

“BUY IT,” one screams.

“Do you think you can WALK AWAY FROM THIS?” yells another. “FROM A CASHMERE BLEND? ARE YOU SERIOUS?”

“You haven’t gotten a new sweater since last Christmas!” a third points out.

“Of course not,” I counter. “Most of the months between then and now were extremely warm. Also, I have a budget.”

It is at that point that I feel the fourth stealthily creep up behind me with a cold, three-inch blade at my throat.

“Buy the fucking sweater,” it whispers.



* * *



It is fairly rare that I buy a large item (anything, on average, that is more than $60). It is something about a large sum all at once that frightens me, though I will, without giving it a second thought, purchase two fifteen dollar books a week without blinking an eye.

Perhaps even more frequent than my impulsive literary purchases are my “basic needs” purchases; things that I am in a constant cycle of “running out of.” No sooner have I purchased soap than I need toothpaste and no sooner have I purchased toothpaste than I need shampoo, or Saline Solution, or Deodorant. In a perfect world I would show up at a counter, utter the word, “Soap,” and a man would hand me a bar of soap and I would walk away.

It rarely transpires in that manner. The last time I went to buy soap, despite being loyal to a specific brand, it took me fifteen minutes to stand in the aisle going, “Well they all have moisture, but is it more important that I have a “healthy glow” or that I smell like cucumbers? Should I go for the one with aloe or the one that claims it is anti-aging?" I wonder briefly if the anti-aging one actively helps stop aging or if it is just “against” aging in a generic sense, sort of like Joan Rivers or Janice Dickinson.

Each of the soaps cries out to me like crafty orphans begging to be taken home, playing up their strong points in the way they will eventually learn to do on a resume, assuming that orphanhood does not lead them directly into a life of drugs and homelessness and violent crime.
Soap, I think. Soap soap soap. I cannot decide what I want my soap to focus on. It feels vaguely like I am setting up my strengths in a video game or role-playing character and must sacrifice some things to excel at others. I have four points in hand-to-hand combat but only a two in pore minimizing. I am angry that packaging is making it more difficult for me to buy the soap I truly want, which is any, goddammit. Any soap.

As I walk through Duane Reade I notice two girls independent of each other who are wearing false eyelashes. I walk until I find an Indian woman who looks like she might possibly work there and ask where I can find toothbrushes. Looking disgruntled, she motions for me to follow her as she carries a large box up the stairs. She is wearing bright, turquoise blue loafers and is stepping on the backs of them, crumpling them under her heel. Silently (I don’t believe she said a word to me throughout) she extends her arm, hand palm-out, directing me toward the toothbrushes, and there are, of course, a thousand of them.

I look for a package labeled “Basic, boring toothbrush,” but find it nowhere. I must choose between cross-action and “Elite Angle.” I must differentiate between Pulsar and Pulsar “Pro-Health” (Neither Pulsar Anti-health, nor Pulsar Anti-aging seems to be available). I must take in “The Navigator,” (designed, I suppose, for people with so little sense of direction that cannot direct their toothbrush into the correct orifice) and “The Arctica,” whose name seems only to apply to the packaging, which is designed to look like ice. I want to cry. I want to abandon my teeth to the ravages of nature or rub the inside of my mouth with hog bristles. Another girl wanders over to peruse the toothbrushes and also becomes trapped—two flies in a web of oral health.

“I can’t find the one I had last time,” she complains to me. “Mentadent makes it.”

“I don’t know,” I say, shrugging. “I used to get mine from my dentist but I haven’t gone for a checkup in a while and the brush I have looks horrible.”
That is putting it lightly. The brush I have now looks beyond horrible—like an elephant’s doormat, its bristles splayed more wildly than the false eyelashes I continually see on people around the city.

“I’d also sort of like to find one that’s under four dollars,” I say, toting out my pipe dream.

“I hate coming here,” she offers.

“I know,” I say. She is picking up toothbrushes and putting them down again. I begin to back away from the entire endeavor.

“Where are you going?” asks the Navigator, leaning toward me with a sinister friendliness. “Look how aesthetically pleasing my handle design is!” it offers.

“I don’t have time for this now,” I say.

“Don’t have time for what?” asks the Pulsar Pro-Health. “My vibrant color scheme and multi-dimensional brush head? That?

“For any of this,” I say, sighing. Without looking twice I grab the plainest brush I can find in a pack of three (to further put off my next expedition), and pay for it. I become briefly nervous that it will not get far enough into the crannies of my teeth or massage my gums enough, but manage to assuage my fears with the realization that I am leaving the store.

Pulling the toothbrush out of my bag I find that I am much happier with it when it is not surrounded by other toothbrushes. I feel that I have won this particular round but do not delude myself into thinking that I am anywhere close to winning the game. I feel a bit like Odysseus, wishing my crew would tie me to the mast so that I might hear the sirens as I sail down Fifth Avenue without being lured into their stores to purchase more things I do not need.

Someday, I hope to myself, I will have a greater success rate in withstanding their allure. I glance into a store window and decisively glance away. I pull my heather grey cardigan tight around my body as I walk to the subway.