It’s good you’ve come. Of course,
that is your job. So it’s expected.
So gratitude or congratulations
are not in order. At least not yet.
There is much work to be done.
We have a lot to do. We can’t waste
another moment talking about the shit
we must accomplish together
on this day. Lots of ground to cover.
No more of this idle chatter. Faint
heart never a fair maiden won,
as they say. And this maiden that we
must win is actually just a bunch
of tasks. So please, let’s focus here
for just a single and brief moment.
We must pass through these glossy
spinning doors, which—they’re wonderful,
aren’t they? An orbiting entrance,
a sweeping push inwards, driven by
your own hand, as if patting yourself
on the back. Which reminds me: feel free
to compliment whatever you see
in my shopping complex and as often
as you like. Oh no, not me, please sir,
goodness! I’m married! But thank you,
I have been working out, due to the stress
primarily, but you! You’re too kind,
you little rascal! It’s part of my job
to look this good. As the owner
of this prismatic establishment, there are
certain appearances I have to keep up.
I must try always to communicate
directly, a walking business memo
full of blood. I have mental problems.
I’m always asking these questions
that no one answers. I’ve hired you
to fix my store issues. Highly specific issues.
We have so much work to do.
Why does it always feel that way,
anyway? Why do I push myself
in this endless rotating circle, never
entering into what I deeply desire?
Shut up! Enough. After you—

It stands for Specific Sunwear.
I’ll tell you, I didn’t even know
“sunwear” was a word. Is it a word
or did they invent it? All words
were invented anyway, right?
And once you copyright something
it’s like the glowing matter
congealing into a star, correct?
You know, in outer space? Up there?
It’s like… Carbon? Mercury? I’m sorry,
I didn’t do my research. Forgiveness is,
as they say, celestial and nebulous.
The problem in this store should already
be obvious to you, in that it’s less
a store and more a perpetual “beach rager.”
Hence, obviously, my illustrious tan,
but also hence obviously the fish smell,
the sand spilling into American Apparel,
the mostly-shirtless beefcakes spinning
through the impossibly gilded sunlight
with surfboards carrying blonde goddesses,
the oceanic body of water beside
the changing rooms. How did this happen
you ask? Slowly. A few boxes of incoming
tank tops would contain a dead crab,
a coconut, a mysteriously empty Corona
sans lime. Then they started to arrive
brimming with sand, so we just dumped it
all on the floor? Then came the box
of the sun, the boxes of constant
unreleased Diplo beats, and the box—
the beautiful sapphire box!—full
of the ocean. Then more neon green
tank tops. And then various ocean-
dwelling creatures to balance the
ecosystem. Then tank tops. Beefcakes.
Cigarette butts. Dog shit. Molly.
Tanks. Some ironic Iron Maiden shirts.
Some unironic Sublime tank tops.
A creepy guy who sits alone in a
lawn chair on the beach and looks
at the women. Women. Sunwear. Nighttime.
Lust. Palm trees. Sunglasses with
weed leaves on them. It’s a problem
because due to the constant raging,
they haven’t sold a single piece
of specific sunwear in years.
The tank tops, adorned with neon green
confetti and palm trees, just lie there
crumpled up on the sand, echoes of
escapism in clothing, in fabric,
as though if one wore them enough,
one could become a beach externally,
beige skin the sand, blue eyes
the skies full of jets and mimosas.
Do we all really just want to be
beaches full of sweaty, sandy love?
And aren’t we all beaches internally?

Here we have an American tradition!
Like jaywalking, or yelling at service
industry workers! What? Like genocide?
No, I’m sorry, we don’t allow that word
in my complex. I’d like you to block
that word from your lexicon right now.
When you get home, in the comfort and privacy
of your room, you can light one of these
candles and say the g-word to yourself
as much as you like: genocide genocide
genocide genocide. That’s American tradition—
whispering genocide to yourself with
the free speech and what have you.
But there are children consumers here.
They don’t understand the systematic
extermination of people according to factors
outside of their control and the profit motives
that go with it, so don’t say that word like
it’s nothing. Especially in a sanctuary
like Yankee Candle. Now, to the problem:
this store sells unusual, uh.. experimental
candles. Trying to pick up a classic
Fresh Baked Cinnamon Bun candle today?
Too bad. You have to settle for candles
like this one: The Grief of a Mother.
That’s horrifying. Or how about this candle,
simply labeled Racism. Who wants their house
to smell like racism? Which apparently
smells like licorice and gasoline?
How about this bad boy: Crushing Ennui.
Oh yes, another relaxing night honey,
let’s light up a candle and fill the air
with crushing ennui before we make love.
Not really a good way to get the motors going
if you know what I mean. Not really a smell.
More of an abstraction. So like I said,
American traditions, yes, always good,
but no one leaves with these candles.
Oh great, and now the employee is
lighting up the Genocide candle.
Hey, wait, you can’t sell that
so cheaply. At least mark it up a bit.

Before we continue to the next shop,
I want to do a little thought exercise.
Just picture this as best as you can:
the general average Joe Schmo walking
down the street. Picture him. He’s drinking
a drink. Having a stroll. He’s listening
to the Kings of Leon. Now, I ask you,
is he wearing a hat? Is this Mr. Schmo
regaling his skull with poly-synthetic
fibers, a sports-type logo emblazoned
above the sturdy, cocksure brim?
Of course he is. Because the average
consumer? He fucking loooves hats.
Which brings me to Lids here. Now, my friend,
I know what you’re thinking: a store
that just sells hats? That is a problem.
But no, surprisingly, if this store sold hats,
that would mean it was operating perfectly.
That would be normal. And acceptable.
No, this store somehow sells everything
except for hats. They sell bats and cats
and birds and bears and snacks and chairs
and songs and bongs and rods and pears
and flags and rags and cubes and orbs
and tubes and doors and rocks and locks
and shapes and grapes and shards and parks
and words and whisks and grass and lard
and beaks and trees and tips and leaves
and skis and fees and blogs and trees
and bills and thrills and cars and stars
and bards and whores and lips and pops
and flips and cops and parks and arks
and big sharks, sharp swords,
orange trees, strong wards, blue moons,
beast bees, sweet cakes, mace lakes,
sad men, tin glens, sockhops, karate chops,
but yeah, no hats in sight. Nothing even
hat-adjacent: no top hats, no yarmulkes,
no sombreros, no fedoras, no bowlers…
you get the point. And the poor woman who
works here is walking around with all this
random shit on her head. She keeps dying
from all the weight. But since this place
sells talented doctors, they just
bring her back to life. Absolutely tragic.

Our food court, jesus christ.
Our food court is a nightmare.
No, no, more of a nightmare
than food courts typically are.
That’s because this food court
is actually a court. As in a court
of law. Every time I come here for
lunch the judge sentences me
to six more years of Sbarro’s pizza.
And it’s also a tennis court?
I’m not sure how that happened
but apparently it still adheres to
building and health codes?
As well as tournament regulations?
The A&W sometimes accidentally sells
tennis balls, and that’s like,
not kosher? I have to draw the line
somewhere so that’s where I draw
the line. It’s also become a place
where teenagers court one another?
Which is a lot less wholesome
than I make it sound, as you can see
from the people sucking face
by the garbage cans over there?
And next to the jury booth over there?
And in front of the scoreboard over there?
So yeah, this one is a mess.
What does the future hold, I ask you?
More lunches I hope? A beautiful 3-bedroom
in a nice neighborhood? How exactly
does the future hold something?
Is it like a pair of delicate, cupping hands
shoving dog shit in your face slowly and
deliberately? Sorry, I’m getting ahead
of myself. My mind is thundering.
Judge Courtney keeps banging her gavel
and it’s hard to concentrate
over the racket of the rackets.
Something about that sound makes me hungry
for pizza, makes my mouth water
like a teen’s mouth into another’s.

My teenage daughter loves this place.
I’m not sure I quite understand her.
Sometimes, after work, I’ll come home
and find her alone in the house, curled
on the couch like a bundle of darkness,
watching her favorite film— Duchamp’s
1926 experimental Anémic Cinéma—
wearing her Bertolt Brecht hoodie,
web-chatting with her friends about which
absurdist theater movement did more
to dismantle fascist power structures
in inter-war Italy. And I think to myself:
do she and I exist in different worlds?
When she stares at me coldly over reheated
dinner, do any of our thoughts parallel
one another? So then I ask her how her day
was, and she answers, Fine. And I wonder,
what does that actually mean? Does that
word mean different things for her?
By virtue of the art and media we consume?
No, I’m sorry, my detached and fading
relationship with my daughter is not
the problem I hired you to solve, but
it’s related to the problem at this
unusual Hot Topic, which carries not
the usual fare of Tim Burton patches
and Legend of Zelda snapbacks and
Blood on the Dance Floor vinyl reissues.
Instead it’s occupied by unwashed people
distributing out-of-print communist tracts
ironed onto cheap graphic tees, Dada paintings
as posters glowing in ominous black-light,
ecopoetic manifestos stitched into pairs
of socks, avant gardists worshiped
like decaying gods in the cave-like dankness
of the store. Listen, I don’t mind
if the kids get a little weird. Their art
is supposed to scare me, right? But
why can’t it scare me with creepy masks
or weird hair or lyrics about making women
do things I have to google. All this…
this is too much. My daughter keeps talking
about power structures and something called
dialectical materialism? About slitting
the throats of the bourgeoisie?
About Walter Ben-ya-min? The other day
she called our house a “panopticon”
which doesn’t sound at all pleasant
or normal. That’s all I want is normalcy,
I think. In my stores. In my home.
In my life. In my thoughts.
And still these logic knots arise.
And still my daughter demands I submit
to abject Maoism. I dread my own dinner table.

I don’t really want to go in here.
This place gives me the creeps;
something about its atmosphere,
its inability to cater directly
to my needs, its garish ideological
color palette. The moment you enter
this Claire’s, everything becomes
black and white. Not literally.
Every issue just becomes a matter
of yes-or-no, this-or-that. Customers’
thoughts are constrained, drained
of their nuance. It’s a mysterious bubble
of binary thinking, in which every issue,
every iteration, is a choice
between itself and its opposite.
No longer can I feel the complexity
of ambivalence, the freedom of paradox,
the power of contradiction.
Things are penned between perilous poles,
peppered with ridiculous reasons,
reduced to a yin or a yang, good or evil,
I like it or I loathe it. How do you feel
about this rhinestone-laced halter top,
bedewed with delicate frills? You love it
or you hate it. Should you buy this
tasteless sparkling iPhone case
that says “INSTA-FAMOUS” across the image
of a grinning flamingo wearing
sunglasses? Yes or no? How do you feel
about America’s tendency towards
political deadlock, the inability for you
to look your neighbor in the eye
for fear of discovering something ancient
and hateful between the formerly
docile and inviting surface
of near strangers’? Huh? Pretty bad
or pretty good? Too long in here
and you start to default to something
you never previously believed.
If you like the rhinestones, you decide
you like other gemstones too,
and if you like other gemstones,
you probably love diamonds,
and if you like diamonds, you like blood
diamonds, and if you like blood diamonds,
you’re quite suddenly okay with the system
of oppression in which the world’s poor
are driven by warlords to use ecologically
questionable methods to extract diamonds
from the earth, and in turn you think:
maybe my culture’s hideous oppression
of another for mere trinkets and novelty
is a pretty cool thing? And then from there,
you swing your credit card around like
a strange-colored blade, slicing through
what could once be a moment of befuddled clarity.
Claire’s makes all that so simple. Flip a coin.
Now, please don’t change much about this one,
it turns a healthy profit. Yet deep down,
the employees say they feel very bad,
that something’s not right.
And they want to feel good.

Step through this immaculate
ivory portal of white light
into this incredibly futuristic
store that is actually just from
the present. What do you think
of them apples? I don’t remember
how this store got here. It kind of
just blipped into existence,
bluetoothed into the world like
a miraculous digital messiah baby.
I’m unsure if this store has a problem,
but in some ways it’s just odd. First of all,
every employee is named Clayton for
god knows what reason, and they’re
all totally identical and gorgeous.
The women are also named Clayton, yes,
but somehow they make it work?
So they’re either clones or androids
or, like, pod people or dimensional
aberrations or cult anomalies.
And they all have this odd sheen
as if they were dipped in the lightest
coat of goo. The products, too,
are unconventional, not only in price
but also in that they don’t exist.
This store seems to charge very high prices
for some empty, meaningless energy.
It looks like a little puff of fog
about the size of a basketball
and it just kind of absorbs into
the customer, who then feels somehow
as if they have “it.” They “get it.”
And other people who have also
purchased the cloud energy field thing
recognize this “it”-ness in everyone else
who has it, so it becomes
this little necessity that they keep
having to buy to keep up with the “it”-ness,
and the longer they hold “it” the less of “it”
they have, so they have to buy more of “it”?
Do you get “it”? I don’t know if anything
illegal is going on here but I’m wondering
maybe it should be illegal?
Don’t look now, but a Clayton is approaching.
Let’s hide behind that other Clayton.
It’ll confuse the Clayton.