Here is a snippet from
The Drought by Steven Scaffardi. We pick up the story in Chapter 20 (Shop Horror) where our unlucky-in-love hero Dan has agreed to go shopping with good friend Kelly to help her pick out a present for her boyfriend Paul.
By Sunday morning, I was
already starting to regret agreeing to meet Kelly. The previous day I had
played 14 hours straight on a new football management game I had bought the
previous week. It had taken me two hours just to get through pre-season as I
had taken time to carefully organise my scouting strategy and had shrewdly
delved into the transfer market. As a result, I had picked up a couple of real
gems in Brazil and Argentina
and was sitting second in the league after 22 games. At one point, I pretended
to hold a news conference in my living room to discuss my upcoming top of the
table clash against Manchester United.
The
thought had occurred to me to text Kelly and tell her that I was not feeling
very well, but I didn’t want to let her down. Manchester United and the Premier
League crown would have to wait for a few hours.
I made my
way to Oxford Circus via the Northern and Victoria Lines. The tubes were packed
with tourists and couples heading into the hub of London’s shopping capital. I got off the Tube
and the crowd dragged me up the escalators to street level. My phone beeped the
second I stepped outside the tube entrance with a text from Kelly: Meet me
in Top Shop xx. I groaned inside. Top Shop on Oxford Street has to be as close to hell
on earth for men as you can possibly get.
There
should be warning signs for men at the entrance to let them know what they are
about to let themselves in for. I took a deep breath and entered, scanning the
place for the impossible task of finding Kelly. I made the plunge and started
weaving in and out of the hundreds of women who had dragged their boyfriends or
husbands out to go shopping.
All the
men have that same pathetic look of defeat on their faces as they trail behind their
women around like shadows, carrying their bags, and holding up items of clothes
so the women can inspect them more closely. We all share a common bond, a
common misery. We could be in the pub with our mates watching the football,
which is what Sundays were created for. Shopping is not a sport, and we are
never going to think of it that way.
Even the
layouts of these shops are designed to trip us up, like some sort of assault
course which has been put together specifically for women. While the gaps in
between the rails of clothes are big enough for the female physique to glide in
and out of, we are left to clumsily follow, knocking clothes off rails with
great frequency. Then we have the questions.
What do I
look like in this?
“You look
nice” is the wrong answer. “You look good” is the wrong answer. “You look okay”
is definitely the wrong answer. You might as well get Roy Walker to follow you
around and every time you answer this question he can jump in with “It’s good,
but it’s not right.” If she wanted us to respond with “amazing” or “fantastic” then
she should hold up a Brazilian football shirt signed by Pelé and his 1970 World
Cup winning team-mates. This is the only item of clothing we will ever get
excited about.
Which one
do you prefer?
Hmm, let
me think. I don’t care! Just pick that one, pick any of them! This question is
designed to catch you out. On the outside it might look like a simple 50/50
question, but despite the flip-of-a-coin odds, you will never get this question
right. Whichever one you choose will be met by the same response: “Really? I
prefer this one.” If you have already made up your mind, don’t ask us.
Do you
think these shoes will go with this dress?
Let’s get
one thing straight here. Most guys will own a maximum of three pairs of shoes
at any one time. So how does that make us even remotely qualified to choose
which pair of shoes – out of the dozens upon dozens of pairs you have made us
look at already – will look good with your dress?
Even when
she eventually decides she likes something, the torture doesn’t end. Now they
have to try everything on. Whose bright idea was it to put the changing rooms
bang in the middle of the lingerie department? Groups of men are forced to
awkwardly stand around, trying their best not to look like pervs. The problem
is, the more you try to look like you are not hanging around sniffing women’s
underwear, the more paranoid you become that everyone thinks that is exactly
what you are doing. It doesn’t help that the queue for the ladies changing
rooms is normally a mile long. Don’t be surprised either if after hanging
around in the underwear section for 15 minutes trying not to look like a nonce,
your girlfriend suddenly returns having not even tried the clothes on.
I like it
but I don’t really need it.
Why the
hell did you queue up if you were never going to buy it? Of course, you can’t
say that. So you put up with the other pointless questions, which you neither
have the answers to, nor really care about. Questions like “Do you think I
can pull this off?” or
“does this match my skin tone?”
With
Stacey I used to just smile and nod, safe in the knowledge shops have to close
at some point and I might make it home before dark if I’m lucky.
Some guys
try to come up with a different strategy, but I can tell you for a fact that
nothing you try will make the experience of shopping with your girlfriend any
less painful. For example, the worst thing you can do is say that you are going
off to the men’s section. You may think this will kill a bit of time, but after
you have scanned everything you wanted to see in five minutes flat, you will
return to the women’s section only to find that your girlfriend is nowhere in
sight. Now the hunt begins, and if history tells us anything, we know that it
will be a good 20 minutes at least before you manage to locate her. There is an
old campfire horror tale about a guy who has been wandering around Top Shop for
the last five months after letting his girlfriend out of his sight.
I really
didn’t want to start hunting for Kelly so I pulled my mobile out to call her. “Dan,
over here!” I heard her call out and turned round to see her standing about 10
yards away, a big grin on her face. “I have been following you around for ages.”
“Please,
get me out of here,” I begged her.
“Come on,”
and she took me by the arm and led me out of my misery.
We
strolled along Oxford Street,
her arm linked under mine. “Your face was a picture when I found you,” Kelly
giggled. “It looked as though you might spontaneously combust if you had stayed
there any longer.”
“You are
not far wrong,” I said. “These places should come with a warning sign, or at
least a designated area for all boyfriends and husbands, like a bar in the
basement or something.”
“What are
you talking about?” she asked with a smile.
“They
should have special men-only members clubs in all female retail outlets. They
would make a killing. Men would be queuing round the block to sign up. We’d
gladly pay a yearly membership fee.”
“So what
would be in this members club?”
“They
could stock it out with table football, big screen TV’s, pool tables, Space
Invader arcade machines. Free counselling sessions should be offered to all the
men who have suffered identical shopping scenarios, so we could sit together
and commiserate as we relive our horror stories while the women shopped until
their hearts content.”
Kelly
burst out laughing. “I can’t believe how much you hate shopping.”
“It’s not
that I hate shopping, I just don’t understand the way a girl shops. It takes
you guys about seven hours to finally decide to buy the first thing you saw at
the start of the day.”
“Oh
really?” Kelly said, raising her eyebrows at me. “Seeing as you think you can
find the perfect present in record time, let’s put it to the test today.”
“Challenge
accepted,” I said. “I just need one or two details. What is Paul into?”
“Let me
see,” she pondered. “He loves his sport, and is really into boxing. Rocky is his favourite film of all time.”
“This is
going to be too easy,” I said. “Come on, follow me.” I directed us away from Oxford Street down Argyll Street. A
quick left on to Great Marlborough
Street, and then we took a right to cut through on
to Carnaby Street.
“Where
are we going?” Kelly asked.
“Patience,
we are nearly there,” and we arrived at a small shop on the corner of Carnaby Street and Beak Street called King
of the Jungle. This place prided itself on having Original Gifts for the
Lion in Your Life.
“What is
this place?” Kelly asked as we walked in.
“Are you
kidding me? This is probably the best shop in the whole of London,” I told her. It was the type of shop
you wouldn’t find on any high street, yet it was full of little hidden gems.
One side was full of football memorabilia, with framed photographs signed by
some of the best players in the world, past and present. Next to that was a
selection of gadgets and boys’ toys, like icy beer mugs, remote controlled
cars, and an alarm clock with a small pole dancer figurine that would wake you
up every morning with your very own lap dance. The back wall featured a
selection of T-shirts with witty slogans.
But what
I was looking for was in the film memorabilia section. Here you could find
talking Tony Montana toys, a Goodfellas poster signed by
the complete cast, and framed film cells from The Godfather. I resisted
the temptation to start playing with the Al Pacino Scarface doll, and picked up a black luxury bathrobe with gold
trim.
“A
dressing gown?” Kelly asked with a bewildered look on her face as if I had gone
crazy. “You brought me to this place to buy a dressing gown?”
“Yes, but
not just any dressing gown,” I said and turned the robe around to reveal the Italian
Stallion motif and logo on the back. “This is Rocky Balboa’s dressing
gown.”
She
looked it up and down. “Are you sure he will like it?”
“Trust
me, he will love it” I reassured her. “If he doesn’t then I promise I will go
shopping with you every weekend for the next six months. If Stacey had bought
me this when we were together, we probably would have never broken up.”
I handed
her the robe and she took one more look, before she turned to me smiling, and
said, “I’ll get it! But it will be on your head if he dumps me for buying him a
dressing gown for his birthday.”
Kelly
paid for the robe and had to practically drag me away from the gadgets in the
corner. We made our way back up to Oxford Circus to get the Tube home.
“Why
don’t you come to Paul’s birthday party next week?” Kelly asked as we got back
on the Victoria Line and sat down. “You can bring your friends with you.”
“Yeah,
why not? I could do with a good night out.”
“Thanks
for helping me with this, Dan,” Kelly said and kissed me on the cheek. “You’ve
gone all red,” she teased.
