Come Shoplift With Me

When I was fifteen, in 1986, my parents would drop me off at the skating rink for a few hours of semi-supervised teenage recreation. There, I met up with my friend Alexis, and we’d run across the highway to the mall and commence to be free: smoke cigarettes, gossip, occasionally shoplift. I wasn't very good at smoking—eventually I would get the hang of it and keep it up for 35 years—but I was raised to feel like utter crap when I attempted to steal. I got shaky. I felt sick.

One day I was in a dressing room trying on a creme-white top woven from a rich cotton. Not something I would typically wear, but I liked the fantasy of it. Alexis peeked in, nodded her approval, and told me to just put it in my bag. At home, I placed the top in a drawer and never wore it. Though I took it out from time to time and considered it, I had not bought it: it was not mine. A couple of years later, I stole a bracelet while working as a stock person at a department store. I felt so bad that I threw it out the window of my car.

Salvation

Once, in college, I ate food in the cafeteria line before I got to the register, thinking it would be cleverly concealed inside my stomach. But a cook had seen me down that Thai chicken wrap. “Charge her for the wrap!” he shouted. I felt terrific shame. I will likely hear his words on my deathbed.

Lately, though, stealing is on my mind again. As retribution. As salvation.

I am speaking of stealing from centers of corporate commerce that have stolen from me. And you.

Recently I saw a photo of Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos’ fiancée, carrying a cleverly designed handbag that looks like a paper coffee cup. It costs $5,750. Is this a metaphor or something? I feel like they’re mocking us. Like, Lovely purse, darling. Where did you get yo—oh, is that a real coffee cup? Tee-hee-hee-hee-hee.

I was in Bezos’ grocery store, Whole Foods, recently, getting a slice of pizza. I usually don’t shop at Whole Foods because I’m not a fool and don't want to spend twice as much on groceries. I was just there to meet a friend for coffee and use the wifi. I decided to help myself to an extra slice—took two, then paid for just one. I’d seen my stepson do this years ago and told him it was wrong. His parents under-report their earnings to access subsidized medical benefits, and I have cast them the side-eye for that for a long time.

Here I was doing their son’s pizza theft!

Bezos’s yacht, which I'd skimmed an article on a few months back, pulled into the front of my mind, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel guilty for stealing something. I took my time and enjoyed every bite. I was thinking this was a little jab, a little sticking it to the man, but I would’ve stolen a week’s worth of groceries.

Roll on through

At first, I thought: ‘something has gone very wrong in our society for me to be feeling this way.’ But why wouldn’t I feel this way? Why am I paying ten times what this pizza is worth when Jeff Bezos’ girlfriend is carrying a $6000 coffee cup handbag? When I’m paying out of pocket for my kid's health insurance?

As I waited for my friend, I watched shoppers move through the self-checkout, mentally estimating Bezos’ profits per minute as they scanned and bagged their items then rolled through the automatic doors.

I shoved the last bite of crust in my face, touched the corners of my mouth daintily with my napkin, and marched straight back to the hot bar. I filled one of the larger containers with their so-so chicken tikka masala, adding several ladlefuls of sauce over the rice, something I typically wouldn’t do given that each ladleful jacks up the price by five dollars. I’m always aghast at how a very small portion of food from Bezos’ hot bar always comes to $15.

This time, me and my tub of curry would be bypassing the self-checkout. I added some of the heavier vegetables to the tub, and on my way out I grabbed a six pack of those colorful macarons that so delight.

At home, my family descended upon the macarons, devouring them gratefully. Later, I microwaved the Indian food and served it for dinner, which saved me the hour I’d usually spend cooking, so I headed to Target to purchase moving supplies.

Ever since Peter, my partner, got laid off from his federal job, we can’t pay our mortgage. We’re in an expensive neighborhood that we chose for the public school. Our trans teenager, JJ, is thriving there. But it’s time to leave.

We’re not sure where we’re moving yet, but I wanted to get packing.

I needed plastic bins, and Target carries the cheapest ones in the greatest range of sizes. I stopped shopping at Target when they celebrated Pride Month by withdrawing their righteous Pride Merch after a few transphobic losers made a fuss about it in their stores. The way Target capitulated wasn’t only disappointing: it shocked me.

Crazed

Haha, I was so naive back then. Nowadays, it’s rare to see a big company, law firm, or elite institution of higher learning not capitulate to the crazed demands of this sadistic administration.

We grabbed several bins, and as Peter rang them up, I muttered behind him, “Ring up only one bin, ring up only one bin, ring up only one….” He did as I said, and I estimated in my head how much merch we were taking. Not enough. I reached around him and ripped our credit card out from the reader before it could process the sale.

We were going to need a bike, too. Because it’s time JJ had a new bike. It really isn’t safe to bicycle where where we live because our road doesn’t have a shoulder, so I grabbed a bike rack for the car—we can hit one of those bike trails near the beach! Why not get new bikes for me and Peter too? JJ isn’t going to want to ride alone. And we should get an extra, in case one of their friends wants to join. Plus a couple kayaks for the summer months, and a little camp stove so we can cook out.

Now that Peter is jobless, we’ll have the time for things like that. As a teacher, I’ll be laid off too once Trump is done collapsing the Department of Education.

As Peter and I dragged our haul through the housewares aisle, I saw Charlene Epstein and panicked. I had a strong feeling Epstein knew what I was up to, and she was the leader of the Girl Scout Troop JJ was in when they were little. Did you know the Girl Scouts include trans kids? Good on them! JJ always sold a hell of a lot of cookies. Charlene tilted her head toward the cart she was pushing and winked at me. Then she rolled out of Target, just like that, with a brand new flat-screen TV and a load of scented candles cleverly smushed between a pair of couch cushions and a full set of towels.

Peter and I looked at each other and shrugged. We rolled straight out to the parking lot. Three shoppers behind us did the same. As we exited the store, I noticed one family unbolting a self-checkout station from the floor.

Giant balls

We were trying to load the bicycles and kayaks into our truck bed when a Black family pulled in beside us in their Jeep with Florida plates. The driver’s eyes meet mine and we exchanged a series of blinks that spell “INTERSECTIONALITY” in morse code. That’s an easy test to pass. The dad stepped out of his car, smiled warmly, and started helping us load up. I saw the “I’m pro-library and I vote” sticker on his bumper and said, “Wait, can you list five texts that promote critical race theory?”

He rattled off “Menakam, Sayeed, DiAngelo, Lewis, Kendi,” and so we got to work.

There was jubilance in the lot as a myriad of families strained to push heavily loaded carts, some of them tied together like train cars, toward their vehicles. A creative family had managed to loosen one of the giant red balls emblematically stationed at the store’s entry. The family of five pushed the 2-ton concrete sphere off its perch and laughed riotously as it rolled down the hill toward the Comfort Inn.

“Does anyone need to use the bathroom?” I asked my family with a knowing look. Tyrone, our new friend, and Peter both nodded, though JJ still insists they don’t need to go. We let JJ wait in the truck while we returned to what was left of the store to very deliberately relieve ourselves in the bathrooms not designated for our so-called biological genders.

But by this point, most of that Target had been scraped from the the earth it was built upon, so we sidled off to the bushes instead. It had been an exciting night, and we were all fueled up on the macchiatos we sucked down at the Target Starbucks. How could we resist? The barista was handing them out for free!

While I scrolled Google to find out where Bezos’ yacht was docked, Tyrone logged in to cheapplanetickets.com with a handful of Target gift cards. We headed home, moved our bounty into the garage, grabbed our go-bags, and left for Miami.

Cheers.

Bezos’ yacht, the Koru, isn’t as big as I envisioned, but it’s big enough for a Pilates studio. We interrupted Jeff’s fiancée mid-Pilates to claim the vessel as our own. She tried to object, so I treated her like an Amazon return: BOOP, scanned her QR code, swept her into the bin.

The crew on the Koru were so gracious! As the yacht carved a sleek line down to Cape Canaveral, Tyrone and I raised glasses of the lightest, most nose-tickling champagne, while JJ sucked down a mocktail. Peter, who never day-drinks, declared that he’d never tasted a better espresso in the United States.

Our timing could not have been more perfect. The Falcon 9, my personal favorite rocket, was ready to launch at SpaceX. Just as Elon promised the American public, the journey was remarkably simple. We were so psyched when we reached Mars. It’s a boiling planet. You barely step out of the rocket when you feel your hair frizz inside your helmet.

Given that it’s uninhabitable, I think Mars will be the perfect place to build our Supermax Prisons for Billionaires. Yeah, that’s right, we’re taking Mars too!