I use to pretend to be a proof of purchase wardrobe drinx. A drinx is a greeting card seller who steals the occasional box of Doral cigarettes. I worked for Cheap John’s bargain store, (as if you thought it was a luxury Cheap Johns for drinxes during more solvent times!) I would wander around the aisles pursued by Chubby Lisa. I was 16 or so mind you, and had a proclivity for writing on walls with permanent markers. I would draw a sort of female Michelin man and caption it ‘Chubby Lisa.’
Lisa was furious with me more for the tepidness of this rank out; it’s mitigated blow to her Lisaness, than and surface insult that might have been touched off as they say. I would wander the aisles looking for items where a certain amount of proofs of purchase would procure me any item a generous company was willing to send to me if I included my proofs and some ‘handling’ money.
I will never forget the day I got my Morris the cat 25th anniversary shirt in the mail. It was a white cotton shirt with that wry cat’s visage perfectly screened in the center of shirt ringed by a golden circle where the 25th anniversary text was placed. I will also never forget that day in college in a truck with my friend Paul Bliss and Mike Goss when the fatal cherry from a lucy-special plopped on this treasure, burning right through it. I tried wearing it sewed up and what have you, but I couldn’t deal with it. It was over. It wasn’t the same. What ever is the same? Well, something always strangely seems to be fixed, and it aint god, and it aint Morris’s trit trot to the bowl in the break away halo court.