Shopaholics Anonymous
No it wasn’t Marithe or Francoise Girbaud. It was a Vivienne Westwood 2004 Silver Pink And Cyan Shooting Star Big Orb Necklace number 2322 necklace. CMYK-magenta outer-rim, cyan center, beautiful insignia in the middle with sparkled gems surrounding it; the chain was a simple interlocking curb. A beautiful drunken purchase. It haunted me— among locusts and black-grey waste, melted into warm and suffocating trinkets, it was hearty. Nights after I went through an animalistic morphosis; the sweat on my skin reflected images of the necklace, I felt organ tissue slowly turning brass, turning silver, turning embossed. The colours are like summer, bright yellow atop violet skies, with it stamped CHANEL. When I choked, I coughed up holographic designer-brand authenticity labels. Flesh was accessorized with studs, and I didn’t mind, you know, when my wallet pumped more than my heart did. March 21st, 2023 was the date I downloaded the RealReal from the App Store.
After a month of spending, two Saudi boys mistook my purse as a knock-off. They showed their disdain towards the offending piece by setting my LB baguette purse onto the bar floor, liquor-stained and peeling. The mint green leather contrasted perfectly as I wore a new Diesel black strappy dress; my shoes were Ed Hardy wedges that I found on Ebay; I don’t remember my underwear, I didn’t buy designer intimates at the time. That same night I asked them, “What do you think is the worth of satisfaction? I wouldn’t pay more than five thousand dollars for it”, laughing as one of them responded “Yes, but for designer, you would sell yourself.”
Maybe I did for a time. Lots of men enjoyed sending me money.
When the package arrived I ripped the cardboard open like a savage. The euphoria filled my body that I had to press my tummy close to the box, hot carbonated somersaults fluttered in my stomach set by the headrest I felt. I imagined that after wearing this purse my vulnerable body would split from my chest and bisected from that sexual husk I would emerge a woman. By May of 2024 I'd spent around $1,352 on designer pieces alone. This list includes scents, shoes, accessories, bags, clothing, and paraphernalia.
By June of 2025 nothing changed. The Side Bar’s bartenders were men who I swore hated me. The place sold $3 lonestars and had free pool tables, so my sweet posse would wind up there somehow after they grew bored of ShangriLa. I knew they hated me, as they wouldn’t give me free drinks unless they were beers. What a dump. Dumps are specifically perfect backdrops for designer pieces to glow. I used an AMEX card to open my tab because I had enough money in my checking account ($55) and my paycheck stubs hit next Friday. I wasn’t afraid of that. I was afraid of losing the bidding war I was currently in between me and some Balkan user l***e7 for the Dior John Galliano Ski Shield Rasta sunglasses— the price was under $100, it was going to be mine, and I waited until the last 3 seconds to push the ‘add bid’ button because I timed it, and it was mine, and I own it. It was a junkie high, my skin was electrified in hot buzz; I took my coat off after sitting outside with a stupid sun-shiny California smile on my face. Joining conversation with my friends was easy, so easy, slipping into whatever plans were going on that night. We started sharing our little trophies in a casual way, simple hierarchical recognition of what we’ve scored, where it was imported from, you know. It was almost a way of recognizing our collective efforts the same way cats show off their prey, a primordial pride humans have yet to shake off. Either way, amidst the pile of designer we each examined our finds: a Quilted Cambon wallet in black leather, Balenciaga Le City bag, archival Galliano, a MiuMiu 5MB060 style leather logo wallet coin case in jewel berry blue. A brown leather Hysteric Glamour wallet. A deadstock pink Dior Lucite Cheveux Hair Stick.
A little further on, I was sitting on a bare oak wooden bench outside a pool hall bar with a cold Moscow mule in my hand breaking my year-and-a-half long sobriety vow. A destructive force seems to tack onto time, where love and hate, money and materiality, heredity and prosperity, was all the same. It whispered to me the names of new friends across the bay: Chanel Quilted LA bag, Alexander Wang Freja Zip Up Boots size 38, Dolce and Gabbana ss 2002 wrap around ballet chemise with red sex shop tights, Versace Haute Couture Autumn 2012, Acne Studios Lip Bag… A mantra of beauty. Everything was a game to me, money meant nothing at the bank of Micaela, I had $438,6346,349 dollars there, and it was a sexual thrill, I would get so wet when an item was in my cart, I would buy and admire these pieces on my skin, my beautiful fantasies. I eventually bought the last one. So what if it was $300? I would’ve worn underwear and ugly cross-bone heels down Melrose street panhandling under the greedy, hateful, selfish sun until I gained what I lost. I devoured archival pieces. I drank Moscow mules. And on that night, I was surrounded by beautiful friends.
A few nights after that vodka-induced fever dream I stumbled upon my sexual goldmine. I wasn’t drunk, nor on coke, or any substance, I was stone cold sober that day. I bought it. I spent two hundred American dollars on this purse, this beautiful purse, and haggled so well that for two hundred American dollars I bought a Japan-exclusive Vivienne Westwood purse alongside a gold Margiela dress. The hunger that ravaged inside of me quieted for a while after that purchase, but it hadn’t satiated. There was something wrong with me, I noted.
My hands were sweating at this point from excitement. We were all so beautiful. Jona, the owner of the Cambon, and I were laughing our asses off over the bartender and how much we spent to drink. This is also around the time where I realized I had to immediately close my $24 tab because I had to use my credit card to pay my car insurance and phone bill in few days (that was $160 at the time) so I opened my AMEX credit limit to the shock that I had no more wiggle room to spend. I broke out in a brief sweat at that realization, and the skin of my shoulder underneath purse strap began to itch. The physical distance between my bone and my skin was thin, thinner than the distance from my arm and my 2010’s Vivienne Westwood orb accord tote bag. Commerce was more of a hobby to me than anything else that Summer. I glanced at Jona’s woven shellac Chanel wallet; this was the beginning of my months-long intervention.
By July I was on a strict no-buy diet. Checking my statements had me realize I didn’t have enough money to cover all of what I was buying; I was $3K in the hole at that point. Fuck. I was starving. I was surrounded by tempting purchases, by beautiful items, and I couldn’t consume any of it. I could barely afford a bottle of the Dsquared2 WOOD female perfume! At a ROSS! I had felt so humiliated as I had soiled the principle of a designer piece… The issue with the archive-revolution we currently are live in is that it is a fine, purebred hobby. The garment has a lineage of ownership before it which is meant to be respected- I wasn’t buying the label, I was buying the look, the story. It is something with weight that honors the designer’s craft— thats why Slimane does the same damn anorexic thing at every fucking house he goes to. It WORKS because it is coveted. What did purchasing at the Ross make me feel like? A suburban mother. My therapist said those thoughts were classist in nature; I retaliated that it was purist. That fragrance line was meant to sell to the general public anyway. I was a further $85 in the hole after that session and was running late to my damn print job.
I’m not ashamed to say I was starving. That vain, parasitic part of my mind was screaming at me to buy, to rip off that price tag, to place that eBay bid, Depop offer, buy that RealReal item, Something. Time ticking by was a death march that made me realize shopping wasn’t a religious craving for salvation anymore. It was food. Sustenance. No longer was it incorporeal as it traversed into the essential. Chloè locket bags or Stella McCartney banana tops hummed like peaceful beasts across my mind. Morning song grew distant in my brain, imperceptible. My reality had no integrity. I could not feel my steps on the earth as this pit burned brightly. I learned then that hunger is a sickness which burns hot. It slowly gnaws at soft organ tissue, but to keep our bodies’ homeostasis our stomach acid has to burn. The burn is integral. No matter how cold I was in air conditioned bars, shops, pubs, I had my personal hearth that ate and ate and ate at every part of my being. I Had to shop. I had to. By August I stopped breathing completely; I couldn’t think! I was being ripped apart by this white hot burning of temptation, of pure need.
I Had to shop. I just had to. Regardless of all the consumerist theories I’ve read, regardless of the anti-trotskyite reality of this obsession, it was either I spend or I kill myself. That’s valid, right? I had to shop! My life depended on it! My irregular thoughts became a black miasma of want, no longer was I a woman but I was withering into a husk. I've come to realize that I am unlike you in this sense.
IF I DIDN’T SHOP the following would occur:
1. There was no drive into continuing my life
2. I would eventually become a naked vagabond who prowled around West 6th street in broken pumps and a small coin purse
3. The greed would turn my fingers into brass
4. I would smell pennies on my breath
5. Due to the penny smell, my teeth would eventually rot
6. I would be toothless
7. I’d have to burn my clothes to start a fire (as I would become depressed without buying designer clothes, thus no will to live, thus no will to work, thus no money to pay my bills, thus…)
8. I would become a shell of myself. I would no longer be a woman, I’d be a child again. I’d dress in whatever I could find, I would allow my hair to grow out, I would stop shaving. I would lose my friends. I would lose meaning. I had no meaning. I could no longer tell myself who I am.
9. I would relapse into being an alcoholic
10. See Above.
In the midst of writing this list I decided to wear my white Los Angeles apparel booty shorts, a white thong, and nothing more. I realized I was getting nowhere by not shopping. This chosen starvation was a strange form of self-oppression on my being. I was allowing hunger to defile my body; penetrating myself with a sick sense of This reflecting something in Me, constantly, in everything. It wasn’t like I was in debt— on the contrary, I had money to spend and nothing to wear. I pushed myself off of my bedroom white lambskin run to stare into the floor length mirrors I had installed in front of my closet. My eyebrows were constantly pulled into a frown, I noticed. I’d tell myself how Mediterranean men had at least the decency to scowl with their chest. Coward.
Let your pretty long lashes flutter more. Keep your beard stubble but not your mustache. Go barefoot. Wear sunscreen. Get a breast lift. Buy a Frederick’s of Hollywood bra to wrap around your raw perky breasts. Let their natural heaviness hang on my body as I squeeze into a size 2 Herve Lager dress. I put on 6-inch Gaultier off the rack heels. I go out of my front door. I dress up nicely for my morning walk, dog on a leash, nobody knows that my headphones are not playing music but my mind is retelling of the brutal torture and eventual murder of my clothes drought. Restraint is entertainment like the news or celebrity gossip.
#untouched #cantfuckme #mysterious #outtheway #datgirl
AS I WAS BEING TORN APART by my hunger, my mind had never been more present. Droplets of water traced patterns atop my flesh, rendering myself cleaner, sharper. Cooling my fervent skin that had taken on a glossy-latex sheen. Everyone on the street covered their bodies. Not only did they cover, they submerged themselves in whatever fabric they could find. I used my hands to touch down my shoulders, my breasts, my stomach, my legs— clothed. I was not naked as I had earlier feared. I paid off my credit card. I had savings for the month.
Thoughts swirled inside my head
I smelled this naturalist change. My mind recognized it as rain.
