10:42 am | 01 May 2003 | right on, Target

Yesterday i stayed home with the same pendulous week-old migraine, veering wildly between attempting to read, attempting to sob in rage/pain, gnawing on pillow, and ransacking house for medication more potent than PHARxM Extra Strength Pain Reliever which is a fucking joke, and also makes my liver throb.

I finally shook the beast, but was still feeling sulky and cheated, so i went to Target to console myself with bright cheap pretty things*.

There is only one Target in the city and it is a friggin' war zone no matter what time you go. Apparently there was a riot there during a Christina Aguilera appearance three or four years ago, and then late last year it was shut down for a week--when i asked why, i was told "TOO MANY RATS" (!). Nevertheless, it remains Target, a realm of possibility and the promise of mass-production. Also it has makeup.

I grabbed a red (duh) plastic basket and tossed a Pink Lemonade lipgloss, a nailpolish called Vanilla Whimsy (it's pink so i have no idea what's up with the name), and some contact lens solution into the basket, then pranced over to Misses and Junior Fashion [sic]. This Target doesn't appear to be exempt from a phenomenon i have noted citywide--namely, that immediately before i reach any clothing establishment, a herd of size-six women stamepede through, crazed-bison-style, and make off with anything i might want to buy, leaving me to either attempt Crisco-and-shoehorning myself into an ant-sized four, or flapping hippie-raver style in an eight. In addition, cheap clothes do not fit me; that is, they are cut for a waist-to-hip ratio that i defy, mainly as i am possessed of slimmish hips and a plank-like torso, which makes the WASPy cuts of, say, Banana Republic fit very well, and the boom-shaka-laka hourglass-shaped near-jodhpurs of, say, Old Navy, fit not at all.

I approach Target sort of fetishistically. Much like binge-eating, i scuttle covertly through the racks of clothes, glance dubiously at the nylon undergarments (that WILL, make no mistake, pinch and/or bind and/or sag and/or cling weirdly), and compose mini-operettas under my breath in Ladies' Footwear (trying against odds to cram my firmly-size-seven-and-a-half foot into the last of one kind of shoe, a flirty little mule. Will a seven fit? No, it will not. My heel droops sadly off the back of the sole. "No! No! No! My feet are too large for you! It was close, and yet it is not to be!!").

I am looking for cargo pants. You would think that, especially since it is a) nearing summer and b) so trendy a trend as to warrant its own hellish Old Navy jingle, cargo pants would be a fad the Misses and Junior Fashion [sic] Department would be simply fraught with. No. So, not to be defeated, I head over to men's, where a cuteish boy is trying on a garish windbreaker. His girlfriend furrows her brow. "No, it's too thin, and--" he rips it open with a loud flourish-- "Velcro-y." She nods in agreement.

I am pondering a rack of Men's Value Cotton Pants (they are actually called this, unenticingly enough). I decide that i am the size of a small man and grab a pair to try on. There are no freestanding mirrors in Target, for some arcane reason, so i take the Value Pants and a few other sundry Misses and Junior [sic] fashions into the fitting-room, where the attendant is violently surly. The number-of-garments-i-am-trying-on tag has a hole far too small to fit on the single chubby clothes-hook in the fitting room, which seems stupid; also, the tag is homemade, apparently with magic markers on thin cardboard and then coated with a layer or four of Scotch tape, which adds a real sense of luxury to the entire proceedings. I confirm yet again that i look retarded in capris (they frown mournfully on my crotch while a weird expanse of calf flops dolefully from the non-cute cuff--i don't know why i keep torturing myself with them). And the Cotton Pants? No dice. Apparently i am the size of an extra-small man, which Target-brand Men's Value Cotton Pants do not accomodate (also what is UP with that name. Are they made of Value Cotton? Is it only a Men's Value? Since i cannot buy any, i suppose that is so).

Back in the store once again, i confirm that this trip will not be different from the last dozen or so trips, in that a child has once again made off with a Novelty Talking Cookie Jar from White-Trash Housewares and is pressing the button incessantly. The cookie jar proclaims in a mechanical, dubiously-Italian-morphing-into-Queens-accented voice, "Nuh-UH! Get your hands aWAY from de cookie jah!" The child squeals in delight, and presses it again. And again. And again. (I note that they are always Latino children, clinging to a cart pressing the cookie-jar button again and again while their mothers smile indulgently/not-paying-attention-ally; and i think, too, that my mother would have been all "For Christ's sake, put that damn thing DOWN!" after the first "Nuh-UH!" had escaped its plastic-mustachioed lips, and that the African-American mothers i tend to see in Target have a one-size-fits-all response to any diversion or annoyance produced by their children, which response consists of a backhand and a shouted "TyeISHA! Girl, i swear to GOD you best be puttin' that down!")

I hate that motherfucking cookie jar.

I studiously ignore both the candle and heartbreakingly-adorable-office-supplies aisles, since they only lead to destruction, and make off with a pair of widelegged jersey pants (sorry, Jeremy) for doing-yoga-in, or, more realistically, watching-Ghostbusters-and-eating-California-maki-in. There are six-packs of cutely-patterned tennis balls for summertime dog fun positioned prominently by the register, so, okay, i grab those too, and then i unload my basketfuls (somehow along the way i got a second basket) onto the conveyor belt, breifly consider an InStyle Magazine before remembering that a) i don't care about The Most Fabulous Parties of 2002 or b) Swimsuits for Every (Model's) Body, and then $135 later it's out the door and heading home, sucking happily on a frozen Diet Coke and rockin' the Nick Cave all loud while a pile of red-bullseye-emblazoned bags rides shotgun. clm.

*Not hookers you guys. I mean baubles, for once.

P.S. I wasn't paying attention but i passed the hundred-entries marker a while back; this is one-oh-two. Woo! Woo!