Sock Options, Pt 1: Cashmere and Pride Edition

Until a few years ago, I traveled a lot. I had status on airlines, I had a toiletries bag always ready with a spare razor, toothbrush, nail clippers, and little homepoured vials of my artisanal shampoo. For what reason? I guess in case someone called at the last minute, as in a thriller, and was like, “Get down to Houston for an experimental art residency! Now, let’s go go go!!!”

Travel is stupider these days, and my life is more rooted. I go fewer places. But a couple weeks ago, I was in a suburban area, working on a production.

Getting ready to go, I was sure I still had it when it came to packing, and could just lob what I needed into a bag. I got here and quickly realized I had forgotten soap, toothpaste and socks. 10-years-ago-me was scornful. Rookie mistake. Emerging artist mistake.

This morning I woke up and went straight to where I knew would be open, where I could find a couple things I needed, and mostly things I didn’t: I went to a mall Target; the one that, wherever you are in most of the US, is probably less than 15 minutes away.

**

The Target on East Lake Street in Minneapolis was where my friend Sparky and I tromped to on Saturdays in eighth grade, when we had nothing else to do. We took the 21A bus from our houses. We killed time, got warm, cooled off, season by season. Maybe we’d try and swipe a thing or two, or else we’d just chat while we strolled among the aisles of products.

Once we tried to get our ears pierced but the person working the booth wouldn’t pierce boys, so we ended up getting back on the bus and going to 2 Plus 2 Uptown, the neighborhood that is the subject of a Prince song.

Once a security guard followed us long enough that we started singing The Clash’s “Drug Stabbing Time:

”I think, hmmm, black shoes,
good lord that’s bad news!”

I’m sure we were assholes to the guard and thought it was punk.

The Hi-Lake Mall Target was a refuge, mockworthy and comforting; it confirmed our worldview; an inadvertent third space corporate commerce had made. The Uptown McDonalds was similar for kids from that neighborhood. The non-Nazi punks (we had both) would crowd a booth in winter, sometimes sharing a single cup of coffee for hours, or would sit on the parking lot curb with an order of fries in spring. I don’t know why they were tolerated; maybe they had a friend on the inside. They were called McPunks, but they swear it was never an official name. Maybe that made Sparky and me Targunks.

**

Do you know how many body washes your 2025 suburban mall Target contains? It’s like a library, where you realize you will not live long enough to read all the books. You will never bathe enough to try all the brands and scents.

I was in the soap aisle marveling at their featured brand Native’s scent selection, which included “Cashmere and Pear”. I imagined a drenched, fruity rodent. I overheard two people joking an aisle over about something describing itself as gender neutral finishing paste (what does it finish? they wondered). Then one of them also came over to look at body wash and misread another Native soap scent as “Cashmere and Shame.” Which entertained us all. We riffed: Cashmere and Pride. Cashmere and Melancholy. Cashmere and Idyll.

I left with Cucumber and Mint, as well as ankle height moisture-wicking socks, on sale six for $12. Driving back from the mall, I found a walking path along a canal - not a Venice-style canal, more like a remediated-agricultural-runoff canal, but the fall colors were lovely, and the golf course across the water was full of people wheeling themselves from hole to hole with a certain golf-specific tenor of loud cheer that makes me nervous. Packs and pairs of joggers clopped by me on the path. I was glad not to live there but glad to find a way to take part.

I miss being an expert at something meaningless, like packing. I miss the moral ease of being 13 and punk. I like finding these remaining unintended home-aways that pop up when I need to remember, these casinos of brand choices in our unraveling, generic landscape and times. I’m home in the aisles of things I don’t need, joking about the corporate illusion of choice, and I remember that, no matter how far I’ve come, how cosmopolitan I think I am, at heart I’m still just a kid from Target.

Coming soon: Sock Options, Part 2: Soviet Edition.

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