To the Bonafide T-Wat in the Coventry Mall

Dearest ma’am,

      I want you to know that I was going to drop a $70 sale right in your lap…

As those close (or not so close) well know of me, I’m a fragrance enthusiast. And when it comes to cologne, I don’t venture far from the house of Calvin Klein. Escape is my favorite, followed closely by Eternity and Obsession. I love One, Be, Man, the summer Eternities, IN2U and pretty much anything else they offer. So, when I noticed while browsing that there was now a fragrance called ckFree, I was as good as sold.

It was a perfect pack: 3.4 oz. eau de toilette, hair & body wash, and a damned soothing after-shave balm, for $66. To treat myself, as I haven’t in a good long while, I was going to risk a month of living on a high-wire just to smell new, different, interesting. My priorities are in no way straight when it comes to new smells with which to adorn my flesh and clothing and, though I recognize the sickness, am fully willing to be ill for a lifetime in such a way.

     It was between ckFree and Escape, and I chose via coin-toss. ckFree won, and we brought it to the register, where your shoulder continued to chill the room. I handed you my debit card, and you asked for my ID. Not totally out of the question, despite the fact that my face is on my debit card, but brownie points are not being earned.

     When you then saw my license, you asked me to recite both my credit card # and my License #. Now, having seen my face three times, I’m being forced through hoops on a sale that’s more favor to her than to me. I could’ve come home, dropped about $20 less online, and been just as happy. Irked as I was, however, I obliged, even trying to make kind-hearted small-talk along the way!

Her cold face building a scowl by the second, I did one thing I truly adore doing when I’m buying fragrances from a department store; I inquired as to the availability of sample fragrances.

The shop is called Boscov’s. If you’re from the South Florida region, try crossing a Beall’s with a JC Penney that wishes it was a Dillard’s, and you have Boscov’s. It tries and fails, but it wants a lot in this world. It could get there, but what it needs is sterling customer service.

It has gleaming hope in pockets; a man on a ladder was changing sale posters and talking Calvin Klein cologne shop with me at the same time, sharing a brief moment of kinship as it related to men who are into smelling pretty. My assistant and cashier was not a part of this club whatsoever. She might have been angry about that, or just angry about life. Whatever the case, she was angry, wasting my time in comparing two perfectly legitimate ID cards because I represented a punching bag of sorts to her. She wanted to give me the pain she could, take the time that I’ll never regain to make sure I wasn’t some wild-eyed criminal.

“No, we don’t do samples anymore. People come in here and just try to get nothing but samples, and we run dry in 2 weeks after a shipment. So we’ve just stopped the practice altogether.”

At that moment, I stopped her. I stopped her because I saw a box, about 5 feet behind her, chock-full of sample vials. Acqua di Gio, Fossil fragrances, other CK masterpieces and a dozen different perfumes which would have greatly pleased my love at home, all resting comfortably in a box which had no dust on its wares. She had samples, just none for me; none for the monster.

The prick who’d done her no wrong. The kindest gentleman she’d met all day, about to leave with items meant to entice customers with fragrance addictions like mine, was left stonewalled by a woman who begrudgingly scrutinized my information time and again.

“Ma’am, please cancel the sale. I suddenly feel very uncomfortable about spending this money with you.”

I’m sure she thought that the problem was mine. It couldn’t be her scowl, her crack-pusher hard-sell on the store’s credit line, which I’d refused because I’m actually trying to be responsible about the kind of credit I have. I was some fat monster, most likely, spending 70 bucks while wearing a t-shirt, shorts and sandals.

“Obviously unable to buy such things on his own,” I’m sure she mumbled. $70 bucks is a lot of bread, recession or not, for an item as ultimately trivial as cologne, but she was within seconds of securing a sale, making a better day for the sake of her quota.

She continued to ring up the sale, in credit when I asked for debit. I had to (quietly) apply my firmest voice to her, become the dick she knew I was, just to get her to stop. She finally got the hint, fought off the urge to cut my card in half, as she still didn’t believe that the long-haired man with my face could possibly be the short-haired man with my face who stood before her. She took it, I pocketed it and left, hearing “sneaky” and “crook” in hushed tones beneath her breath as I walked away. Cologne had suddenly become a true luxury item, something I might worry about again once the cable bill was paid. I left the Boscov’s at the Coventry Mall with a touch of anger, a touch of sadness, and my self-esteem shot with a couple of little guns. Injuries, but no death: I’m not that weak.

The rest of the ride was amazing. I found way on winding, wooded hills, seeing deer being deer  as I marveled at the sheer natural beauty all around me. I sang my lungs out of my body, smiled and sweat out my soul as I ultimately approached West Philly once more. Home sweet Hipster Home…damn it, do I miss the amazingly kind black people who lived here a mere five years ago!

That aside, I used key #1 to get into the lobby, key #2 to open the mailbox, saw my bills and sighed. Sure, I have money for cologne, but bills? For what I owe, it might as well be a million bucks, because I have neither amount.

But as my head turned, around and down as I began to pout my way back up to my apartment, I noticed a box on the top of the mailboxes. It had my name on it, but no return address. No postage, no postal stamps to indicate where it had been: just a simple brown bag.

Simple brown bag…porn?

I opened it right there in the mailroom, finding myself aghast as I stared at a gift set of ckFree (3.4 fl. oz. eau de toilette spray), and two small tubes of body wash and aftershave. This wasn’t just the brand I wanted, a facsimile of the item I’d come within two twat-hairs of buying from my favorite woman in all of Coventry. This was the precise package, the precise elements. All of what I held in that mailroom is all of what I would have purchased just a short while ago!

There was no return address, no note. There wasn’t a single indicative marking on the whole parcel, which immediately makes me think that this was a beautiful tease-joke played upon me by my partner in this life. But it wasn’t.

I then imagined who it could’ve been. A few people here in Killadelphia know of my affection for CK cologne brands, but there are many questions which I simply can’t answer in trying to solve the puzzle of, “why would they spend 70 bucks on me and not even want me to know?!?”

I thought of gifts I’d given women in my past, gifts to express my feelings for them. I think them foolish now, but the idea that I might be on the other side of just such a situation made me simultaneously terrified and giddy. It’s a feeling we should all have at least once, I’ve discovered.

I walked up the stairs. I took my shower with the new gel. I also used the amazing soaps I purchased in an amazing sale at Bath & Body Works (if I ever do become gay, I’m going to be the best gay that ever was, judging by my simplest shopping joys in life; Craftsman can go fuck itself with its best drill; I want to know where I can buy a lavender diffuser lamp!) and scrubbed my scalp down to an immaculate layer of beauty with my sulfate-free Tea-Tree-Oil shampoo. Fresh, clean and feeling amazing, I immediately recognized that bedtime was the best time in the world.

So, immediately after watching Man on Fire, I did just that. 4 hours later, the alarm awakened me and I barely dragged my own ass around the office all day. Despite 4 energy drinks and 4 Coke Zeroes, I was falling asleep at my desk, something I absolutely loathe in any sort of workplace. Do I have to work? No! Must I offer a person who has achieved in academia or professional skill as much attention as I possibly can? Absolutely…but I almost lost that fight.

Still, I can’t believe the luck afforded me from somewhere, something. I highly doubt a God is in the business of giving a poor man expensive colognes, but these are different times. For all I know, Scarface might be God’s favorite movie, thus definitely declaring him an on-all-cylinders poser of the highest caliber.

I have no idea what happened. I’m so pleased it did, but I’m wholly confused. I don’t ever need to solve the mystery; this confusion is actually very beautiful. But I’m finding it more and more odd by the day, that such intensely coincidental and once-in-a-lifetime things are happening to me in a rather rapid succession.

A couple of weeks ago, I got to punch an old man in the mouth in self-defense. This week, an Anonymous gives me a cologne I’d only known I loved for about 2 hours. Anonymous…perhaps it’s because “Anonymous” is quite often one of my favorite authors. Such a description is far-fetched but clings with a pinky to plausibility. That might be enough, but I think the better gift given me was a stunningly interesting mystery. From chicken wings to sleep-overs with every woman who ever caught my eye in college, I’d love amazing gifts, but this time, the curiosity is as riveting as the smell of my new cologne.

I’m a Leo; I don’t necessarily believe in astrology, but that does make me a cat. And we all know what curiosity did to that poor creature. So I’ll leave the interrogations alone. Really, it just feels good to share a story I’d thought I’d never have. It’s nice to say something that has rarely ever been said. And when the surprises are as nice as they’ve been lately, I think that a life left in mysterious darkness might be just what I need.

Dear Crotchety Old Lady who Jockeyed the Men’s Fragrances register at Coventry Mall’s Boscov’s: you, ma’am, were a bit of a bitch. And while it means we might never split a large, moist slice of carrot cake with a couple of glasses of almond milk, it does mean that your dying presence added more beautiful moments of life to mine. So “thank you” for being a twizz to me. Without a shred of insincerity in my heart, I proclaim that you’ve done me a great service. I appreciate you, with as much of my heart as has not already been taken by others.

Seriously, though: straight-up bitch. Two finger-snaps and an “I wish I was in a Jay-Z video, even though I’m pushing 60″ more, and you would’ve been an outright cunt. I suppose it gives you a goal, and while I hope you fail miserably at your goal, I think that being a bitch, for all the word implies, really suits you. Wear it proud, and thanks for sucking so much that you managed to simply exist me out a sale.

You’re either the greatest or the worst. Regardless, “thank you.”

-C