Steven's Retail Drama Continues...This Time at American Apparel

Today I decided I would buy a new pair of underpants, so I drove over to the American Apparel on the Ave. Then I walked in and instantly forgot why I was there.

There were so many new things, new colors, new shiny jackets, and oh-what's-this dog clothing!?

Without meaning to, I found myself face to face with the wall of underwear, and remembered oh..yes..I need to buy one of these. There were so many different colors to choose from. Did I want my crotch to be the color of a forest, or a lake? What size was I? I didn't even remember. 30? 30 sounded vaguely familiar. I picked up one bag of underwear and studied it. It looked so hip. So painfully beautifully hip. I couldn't tell you why. Maybe because of the white lines which ran up and down and around the crotch sack, which looked like ribbons, perhaps adorning a present.

Above the little baggies of colored underwear was a picture of a man who looked very tired, wearing the same underwear before me, and sitting against a wall with his head bowed down. He looked hungover, like the photographer had burst into his room the night after a party and found him against the wall vomiting on the floor. The vomit wasn't pictured though, it was implied.

I bought a pair of underwear and a lackadaisical man with a big arm tattoo rang me up. He handed me my receipt and I left. I got into my car and opened up the underwear package. Here comes the climax of the story; the underwear was huge! It looked like a pair of long johns. I imagined myself walking around town, my underwear bunched up in my butt and people asking me if I had a "problem back there?" And I couldn't just go and return it...it was underwear. You can't return underwear. Who knows what you could have done to it in the time it took you to return it! No one wants your pubic hair all over their products.

But I had to return the underwear. It was freakishly, comically large. So I put it back in the ziploc bag, stepped out of the car and went back to the store. I took deep breaths. It was important I appear calm, and assure the manager I hadn't worn the underwear around town, but that I needed to return it because it was too large.

When I went back, there was a different man behind the counter. A gay man.

"I have to return this pair of underwear," I said to the gay man. "It's.." I stammered as I realized what I was about to say, "It's too big."

I expected something. Maybe a cracked half smile.

"Oh that's no problem," the man said to me, and allowed me to pick out a new pair of underpants. He seemed utterly calm, as if he had just shot up in the back. Of course he didn't smile. Expecting a salesclerk at American Apparel to express emotion is like expecting Gotchalks to one day stop "going out of business." It just won't happen.

I am now wearing the smaller pair, as I'm typing this sentence. It feels too small, but I am definitely not going to try and return it.