Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [98]
The only difference between this Kmart and every other is that this one is vertical. Three stories. And the escalator is broken, so I have to walk up. I climb three of these tall, steel steps and feel tired and heavy. I look up and see that I am still very far from the top. Why is this so much harder than climbing a normal flight of stairs? It’s like each foot is a frozen Butterball turkey.
I think it’s because of expectations.
Your brain sees the escalator and tells your body it can relax, make progress while leaning. It’s like a little vacation from walking. But then you get there, and the escalator is broken, and the disappointment starts sinking from your chest, gathering mass along the way until it hits your feet, where it congeals and leaves you with twenty-pound heels.
And it seems pathetic that the escalator is out of order, a sign of failure. How hard can it be to keep an escalator working? All it has to do is go around and around, like a hamster on a wheel. It’s not a ventilator in Lenox Hill hospital. People have to hire attorneys and appear before judges just to get one of those turned off.
I wouldn’t even have to walk up this broken escalator if I were wheelchair-bound. I could have rung a bell on the ground floor, and an elevator would have come, along with a minimum-wage employee with averted eyes. I would be an excellent quadriplegic, not at all like those awful, independent cripples who are always talking about how abled they are. I would sit in my wheelchair, and I would moan and shake my head “no” as though in excruciating pain, until somebody came to assist me, possibly even carrying a beverage. I believe a person must use whatever it is they have. I, myself, am an emotional cripple, certainly. Raised without school or normal parents, I do not know how to mix with others. In a way, I am a psychological transsexual, always trying to “pass” for a normal person but being clocked every time.
I do not belong in Kmart.
Or, if I am here, I should be here ironically. “I’m in Kmart. Wink, wink. Where are the Toughskin jeans?” But I am not here ironically; I am here sincerely.
I need an iron.
I am thinking about my need for an iron as I climb the escalator stairs. I am halfway to the top and briefly I consider turning around and walking back down the steps and going to another store. But this cannot happen. I am being pressed forward by doughy shoppers holding family-sized boxes of Rice Chex and flimsy Kathy Ireland coordinates, which are impossible to imagine on any person with a full set of chromosomes. These grim, fleshy shoppers stomping up, on, forward into their Kmart futures. They add weight to my feet. And they confuse me, because these are not people I normally see on the streets of Manhattan, certainly not the East Village. Where are the pierced eyebrows? The tattoos? Where are the buff gay guys with manicured facial hair and neatly trimmed chests? These people are like ordinary people one might find in Idaho or Kentucky. And while there’s certainly nothing wrong with this, it’s odd to see them here. It is as if Kmart has bussed in their own shoppers along with their own air.
Finally, at the top I am greeted by gigantic posters of Martha Stewart, sneering at me. I must admit that the posters comfort me and inspire me to shop for bed shams and stemware. I was raised by a mother similar to Martha Stewart in that she was selfconsumed and incredibly successful and famous. Except my mother was only incredibly successful and famous in her brain, which was diseased. So I am drawn to women like Martha, Martha most specifically.