Casual
SKINNER, DAVID
Casual RECOVERING CHEAPSKATE Growing up among the striving bourgeoisie (teachers, cops, tradesmen), I learned to be suspicious of anyone who was selling something. I remember being told that...
...Still, cheapness stuck to me as an adult...
...This was very tricky of them...
...I mentioned that Cynthia is pregnant, so, after congratulating me and inquiring briefl y about our other children, she gave me a personalized tour of every dress that fi t my rough requirement of something that a pregnant wife could wear to a nice party or out to dinner...
...She asked my wife’s size...
...The club’s staff didn’t live up to my Wodehousean fantasy of how rich people live...
...More than once my two brothers and I literally rolled on the kitchen fl oor laughing at the sight of the super-large bright-yellow no-frills box of dehydrated milk my mother regularly bought to avoid the expense of yet another half-gallon of milk...
...I can remember my lovely mother waving off salespeople, always with a prompt, “No, we’re just looking...
...That’s when I joined a club for the summer so I could use its showers in the mornings after riding my bicycle several miles to work...
...One girl with beautiful long blonde hair—she couldn’t have been old enough to provide the cashier a driver’s license along with her daddy’s credit card— turned to the saleswoman tailing her and held out her long winter coat, saying, “Could you take this and, I dunno, put it somewhere...
...When I went shopping this Christmas for my wife Cynthia—always an occasion for personal refl ection—I checked out a luxurious department store...
...And then she showed me a number of items just because she wanted me to admire their beauty...
...Pulling into a gas station one summer day, she asked the attendant how much a gallon of unleaded was...
...That I had often seen my own parents offer drinks and little bites of this or that, often involving bread, to dinner guests did not make it okay when the same rite was performed by people who expected payment...
...I remember being told that restaurants served you bread in order to make you thirsty for more drinks, on which their profi t margin was high...
...This line became legendary in my family, a perfect soundbite for the frugality that enabled our mother to manage a household in which six children were fed, clothed, and schooled, all pretty decently, on a middle-class income...
...The young guy said something like a dollar fi fty...
...It was exactly the kind of shopping situation that used to give me hives: expensive things sold by an intense salesperson in a small store from which you couldn’t escape without saying goodbye...
...Then it was the honest reward due to hard work...
...It was an advanced class in what to buy for your wife, and charmingly taught...
...I was more comfortable in discount stores or getting takeout—anything to avoid high prices and the people whose job it was to talk you into overpaying...
...As a result I am dubious about the phrase “hospitality industry...
...I’ll drive on...
...Yes, she said, a small number of her regular customers were men like me who bought dresses for their wives or girlfriends—men with, you know, really fi ne taste...
...But I can see in retrospect it was a turning point...
...I’m so glad my mother wasn’t there...
...Too bad it had to end...
...The owner, a petite, middleaged Frenchwoman, told me about her shop and the designers she liked...
...DAVID SKINNER...
...At the time, this fi nancial anxiety seemed to me dreadful, embarrassing, and sometimes hilarious...
...The people who worked at the club were unfailingly polite, though, and the ones I saw regularly called me Mister Skinner...
...Making money was objectionable, except when you did it...
...Putty in her hands, I bought an expensive dress and left wondering why everyone who wanted my money wasn’t so kind and interesting...
...Mom shot him a stern look and said, “Outrageous...
...The seasonal membership was steeply discounted because so many members were out of town during the summer, and I certainly couldn’t afford the annual dues...
...Until two years ago...
...I asked if many of her customers were male...
...Oh, I got used to it very quickly...
...I left empty-handed, but on my way home I stopped at a little dress shop in Old Town Alexandria that sold, I remembered Cynthia once hinting, really beautiful stuff...
...I’d expected solemn old retainers bowing and scraping, before offering sage advice on what to wear, eat, or drink...
...There, amidst price tags my mother would have called outrageous, I noticed a number of young women shopping with an ostentatious, proprietary ease...
Vol. 13 • February 2008 • No. 22
