Please don't talk to me in the razor section at Costco.
I will feel very uncomfortable.
Part 1: I Just Wanted to Shave My Outer Labia
Yesterday I went to Costco, which is an awful thing to do at any time (except Tuesday nights between 5:30pm- 6:00pm). I had a list of important items. I planned to get in and GTFO as swiftly as possible.
My list:
Cheesecake
Gyoza dumplings
Butter
Razors
My daughter, age sixteen, requested the cheesecake and the dumplings. One thing I’ve learned about teenagers is that they like to eat ONLY TWO OR THREE TYPES OF FOODS for months at a time. My daughter is currently surviving solely on hurricane sriracha poke, cheesecake, and gyoza dumplings. It’s not a bad life, but I worry she’s not getting enough vegetables.
She heats the gyozas in the microwave using damp paper towels.
“Why don’t you steam them? I can show you how.”
“No, I like them microwaved. It’s faster.”
“I can show you how to fry them, too. They’re good with soy sauce. Want some asparagus?”
“Stop!”
Costco on Sunday, April 2nd at 3:00pm was a fucking zoo. There were only a few carts left. As usual, certain types of white boomers blocked entire aisles to visit with each other, catching each other up on the accomplishments of grandchildren after winters in Arizona and Mexico, oblivious to the exhausted hordes of shoppers attempting to maneuver around them.
I made it to the gyoza shelf. Two couples were parked and visiting right in front of the gyoza. Worms of dread crawled up neck, but I did it anyway— I said, “excuse me, can I please just slide in behind you there, haha!”
They didn’t hear me. I have a quiet voice, so I got that it wasn’t their fault or anything, and I decided to just… wait. I named them Linda and Tom and Susan and Jeffrey. I learned that Linda and Tom had a dog that recently had to be put down. I learned that Susan and Jeffrey are building a home in Qualicum (Susan, on landscaping: “It’s going to bankrupt us!”), and I learned that Linda and Tom would also consider moving to Qualicum, if only they didn’t have to pick up their grandchildren from school every day.
It’s an amazing thing to be able to take up so much space in the world so confidently, to have bubbles so opaque and impenetrable that you can have long, relaxed conversations and remain unaware of the other humans waiting around for you to finish. I wondered what would happen if I just climbed right up on Susan and Jeffrey’s cart and reached for the gyoza. But really, who was I to feel so entitled to gyoza so immediately? Who was I to feel that these people were being rude and self-absorbed? And what about the people who worked in the gyoza factory, what would they think of all this? Really, who was I to disrespect these elders by sighing passive-aggressively and shaking my head and rolling my eyes to signal to the other woman now waiting for the gyoza alongside me that Linda and Tom and Susan and Jeffrey were destroying both of our entire lives in the same way at the same moment?
The other waiting woman cleared her throat and said, “Excuse me. EXCUSE ME. You’re blocking an entire cooler, can you please make some room?” And Linda said, “Oh” flippantly and without eye contact. She moved the cart a few feet.
I grabbed the gyoza. Then I grabbed the cheesecake, the butter.
Next I needed razors. I pushed my cart to the other end of the store, to the razor section. A wall of razors. All the brands. I use men’s razors to avoid the pink tax and because they’re generally better quality. I usually get whatever’s on sale, but I was still feeling shaken up from the gyoza situation, so I needed to just stand there for a minute and stare at the wall of razors until I calmed down.
I stared and stared. So many razors.
A man approached. He didn’t have a cart. He was about my height, and he wore glasses and a buttony shirt tucked into his pants, a dad belt, dad jeans. Brown hair, probably mid-fifties. At first, he just stood beside me. He was looking at the razors, too. Then he said, “look at these prices.” and I said, “Yeah.”, and I thought that would be it, but it wasn’t. I walked along the razor wall, away from him but casually, to signal that the conversation was over, but then he walked right along with me. He was too close to me. Too close for Costco. He started talking about some new type of double-sided razor that “everyone’s using.” I nodded. I felt frozen.
This was an impossible position with the man in the razor section. I began to resent him for interrupting my recovery from Linda and Tom and Susan and Jeffrey. He was still talking.
I said, “I haven’t heard of that type of razor before. Wow.” and felt frantic. I looked around for my boyfriend, who I knew was somewhere in Costco doing his own thing.
The man said, “looking at these razors and the prices makes me want to grow a beard again.” The new type of double-sided razor was very cheap, he said, and apparently it got a really close shave, very few nicks or cuts along the jaw. Then he started talking about what a pain it was to shave every day.
I wondered if he was a secret shopper or an undercover store detective. Why was he still talking to me? Did he own stocks in the company that made this new type of cheap double-sided razor? I wondered if I had visible facial hair, if he had somehow mistaken me as someone who shaved their face, or if he knew that I was buying razors specifically to shave my outer labia.
It had been too long. The man wasn’t going to stop talking to me about razors. I had to get away. I realized that both my hands were in fists, that my shoulders were tense, that I didn’t know what to do with my face to show the man realize that I wanted to either punch him or run away. I couldn’t even concentrate on what was on sale because my heart was thumping and I was breathing all weird.
I walked away, quickly. I left the razor section without any razors. I could have grabbed a package, but I didn’t because all I could think about was fleeing the scene.
In the lineup for check-out, I saw the man again. Now he was examining towels. Luckily, I’d found my boyfriend, and so I pressed my entire face into his armpit until I could be sure that razor guy would have either moved on or recognized that I was safe and protected from him, nuzzled in the armpit of a very tall man. The first thing you’d think if you saw my boyfriend is: What a handsome, tall, friendly-looking man. The second thing you’d think is: this man looks exactly like he was born in Scotland in the 1400s and led his clan in a surprise midnight slaughter of thousands of Englishmen. I always feel good pressing my face into his armpit in line at the grocery store, and I realize this all makes me sound like a bad feminist and a giant baby, and I also realize that shopping at Costco makes me a participant in the destruction of local food systems and a massive hypocrite when set against my values and that I should always only ever eat food from the (relatively) cheap local farm boxes that are available at the community centre on Wednesdays, but please understand that I really just needed the cheesecake and the gyoza and the butter and the razors.
I will buy the razors at Shoppers Drug Mart today.
Part 2: Meet the parent
The other day I introduced my boyfriend to my mom, by which I mean I made him sit with me and watch a video she made while she was dying of cancer back in the mid-aughts.
For whatever reason, my mom thought it would be a nice idea to hire a professional videographer to interview her, but what she didn’t anticipate (I assume) and wasn’t aware of (I’m sure) was how having another person— a stranger— behind the camera would shift her behaviour. In the video, she’s clearly addressing someone off-camera and to her left, and she’s overly-animated in the way she was when she performed for others. My mom was a nurse, but she pivoted to more of a teacher/facilitator role in her later years, and teaching/facilitating, for her, was a performance. Her gesticulations, her cadence. Her face. All so exaggerated. Don’t get me wrong, she was a gifted teacher, but in a video meant to be viewed posthumously by those closest to you? I don’t want a recording of teacher mom, I want mom mom. And so this video is uncanny valley shit for me, and I hate it. I’m so sorry, but I hate it. So much so that I’ve never made it the whole way through. My siblings feel the same— none of us have been able to finish this thing, and all of us feel the same overwhelming sense of guilt for being so put-off and anger that this is all we have of her. It makes me sad, because I know she meant for it to be something we would cherish, something we would share with the grandchildren she would never get to meet.
My eight year-old came into the room while I was showing the video to my boyfriend.
“Who’s that?”
“That’s my mom.”
“Your mom?”
“Yeah. That’s her. Your grandmother.”
“Huh. I don’t like her voice.”
This, I know, would break my mother’s heart. It broke mine a little.
I made it further through the video this time. Right before I turned it off, the videographer asked, “What do you think your children will be doing in twenty years time? What do you envision for each of them?”
“Chelsea will be active in the environmental movement. She’ll be protesting and fighting for the planet. She will be married and have children, and a dog. A golden retriever. And she’ll grow all her own food. She’ll have a vegetable garden.”
A lovely dream, mom. Sadly, I have the blackest thumb that has ever thumbed. I did read The Lorax to my kids though, and I recycle, so two middling participation points for me.
She thought my sister would become “a lawyer”.
“If you’re going into law, Jessica,” she said, “make sure it’s law that makes a difference. Like environmental law, or family law.”
She thought my brother would become “a humanitarian” and “a really good dad.”
Then she asked the videographer, “Can I just go back to Chelsea for a second?”
She looked directly into the camera. She said, “I forgot to say this about Chelsea. Chelsea will be writing. She will be writing. She’ll have a novel published by then, because she’s got at least a few in her.”
Let me tell you how strange it is to watch a video your mother made seventeen years ago, when you were still a seedling blowing in the wind, speaking directly to the camera, at you but not to you, because it’s in the third person.
Until next time!