F-Line Buffet

Do you ever play this game on the train: Who would I sleep with here…hm…that one, yes. That one maybe, but only once unless he’s got a miracle dick. Oooh, that one if I were straight; if I were gay then definitely her.

It dawned on me the extent to which we’re taught as New Yorkers (and as Americans) to shop for our identities. New York is a buffet, let’s face it: sex, shopping, art, “art,” food, and on and on—there’s always more than enough versions of a person place or thing here for you to drive yourself mad with indecision. But decide we must. We make choices constantly, choices we believe say something about ourselves as individuals.

I shop at H&M because I’m young, hip, and poor. I shop at Diesel because I’m young, hip, and have money (or want others to think I have money). It’s a sickening state of being when who you are is what you shop for, what you pick out of life’s buffet. Whatever happened to the “finding myself while sitting on a park bench” kind of self-enlightenment slash identity creation? Walden Pond? Is there no more contemplation? Or rather, is there no more value placed on contemplation?

The way advertising works—these kinds of people like this kind of product so sell it to them…or…find a way to make these kinds of people like this kind of product by making them believe it is the kind of product people like them would buy—can trap a person into believing they are what they buy. I see it everyday—the starbucks crowd, the ipod people, the nike converts. They fill their trains with a sense of self that is fad-ridden and so superficial as to float about their bodies with no more substance or effect than a colorful fog, ready to vaporize in the light of a new NEW product or person or place. Few contemplate—few show the burning innerness of true self-reflexive soul-searching. Who are they then? Just shoppers?

Without being sure of how, I have fought against falling into the current of New York life and letting my body ride. Even on the train, my head is loaded with unanswerables. But still I’m on the train, on the same trip, wearing Nubalance sneakers and sporting an orange Brooklyn Industries bag because I’d never buy from Prada.