Retail Therapy

I don't know if it's the comfortable nostalgia of the 70's era couch, but I am seriously considering charging a small fee for the emotional vomit women unload on me every day at work.

Prefaced by the standard, "I don't know why I'm telling you this but," I constantly have total strangers confessing loneliness, despair, last night's sexual trust, and the desperation of finding oneself trapped in a loveless marriage with three rugrats.I probably look unthreatening in jeans, tee-shirt, and sandals, just another salesgirl offering solace in the form of stilettos. I am nameless, faceless, no way the information bequeathed could reach the ears of involved parties.

A prime example:
She walks in looking harried and suntanned. As per the tried and true David's shoes sales method, I compliment her purse as a way of opening up conversation(God I can't believe half the shit that comes out of my mouth. I sound like a badly written fashion editorial for a women's magazine. "Your purse is so bohemian, broken down, very vintage. And that color would go with EVERYTHING"). She breaks into a long story about how she got on sale at Saks Fifth Avenue when some rich lady pitied her and took it off hold, blah blah whatever. This is going to be a good one. Three shoes in, she starts to mention her daughter, her mouth pulled into a tight pout. Saying, "Oh, I'll probably never see you again", she falls into a rant about her alcoholic 24 year-old daughter who got wasted at some birthday party in Long Beach and was picked up for a DUI in a bad part of town. The back story is that her daughter was "very popular in high school" but remained "straight-edge-didn't drink at all" and now as she heads into a quarter life crisis she is getting repeatedly "shit-faced" and has gotten alcohol poisoning at multiple occasions as well as seizures. Oh and I guess she's getting fat? "She gets really shit-faced, then goes and eats crap food late at night. And she claims her weight gain is because of the long commute to work".

Kate told me last night after her friend went to the bathroom that I have a gift for getting people to open up. It's slowly starting to become a curse. Like a sponge, I tend to get emotionally invested and empathetic when people tell me their stories and I have to get away once in awhile to recharge.


So happy to be home.