Cross Stinging Reality C2

Behind me are bags of shirts that came from Pac-Sun, American Eagle, and Old Navy. Yes, they're my shirts, and it was at my father's behest that my cousin, Jen, take me up to Toms River to get them.

As a male, I find it hard to fathom why women like to shop. There's the argument that dressing up dolls has manifested itself in them after ten or so years, which for the sake of this entry I am going to assume. Indeed, it was with no regard to the clothes I recently washed after a two-week laundry cycle and wear when I'm not working, and that the shirts I wear to work are given to me by Acme corporate. In the winter months, I have no use for more clothes unless some have torn apart or gotten too small. Yesterday's expenditure of over $200 on clothes from the three aforementioned stores more than makes up for these shortcomings — a waste of money and an example of horrible timing.

The day before began innocuously enough — I went to visit Jen in the hopes of meeting some of her friends, which I did at the Applebee's in Manahawkin. The next day we were supposed to go there again at the same time, but due to some people falling ill or not being allowed to go, it ended up being me alone with Jen and her friend at the Ocean County Mall, trying to guess which clothes would suit me best:

• The stores I went to, with the exception of Pac-Sun, have a habit of acknowledging themselves on their clothes, which is a decent thing to wear if you're a girl but a warning sign to the community if you're of the opposite gender. I met one guy over the summer who happened to be gay and leant heavily toward Aéropostale — to be fair, this brand is associated more with girls whilst American Eagle and Old Navy lend themselves enough to rustic atmospheres. This aside, I hate having writing on my clothes — I don't intend on being a billboard for a company; much less do I like having symbols or cult designs on them.
• I got a lot of thermals. They work, since the heat in this room is being controlled to conserve energy, so they at least are practical. The brand-name shirts I got, though, were purely to appease the gods.

If there's anything I need right now, though, they are twelve hours of precious sleep, a pair of better work slacks, and a washer and dryer for my room instead of queuing for the ones that exist for the other five members of my family. I don't need to stave it off by buying more clothes, and it seems that that's all that happened.

Or I could just use my own money to root out summer clothes on my own and throw what I have accumulated on the top wire shelf out. I have two other trash bags to go, too.