An Interesting Application For Pythagoras

If you haven't already seen the photos from the Debauched Debutantes' Ball, then take a quick look before reading on, because I want to talk about my first real moment of Middle Aged Empathy, which happened on Friday as a direct result of events leading up to the Ball on Friday night.

Krissa was snowed under at work, which ultimately led to our late-night speeding cab ride through Manhattan, but on Friday afternoon meant that Krissa couldn't spare the time to shop for her costume.

Which took me through the large glass doors of Victoria's Secret on her behalf.

Quite who Victoria was and what she was keeping from everyone is a matter for another time.

I was tasked with buying nude coloured fishnets and some black stockings, and as I walked in and saw the array of minimally dressed mannequins in some startlingly complex clothes, I suddenly understood what it was like to be middle aged and in a record store, possibly shopping for obscure death metal for a teenage daughter...

Not sure where to start.
Unsure of the territory.
Afraid to ask for help for fear of being made to look like an idiot.

Evidently bluster and bravado were the order of the day, and absolutely positively no one wearing a Victoria's Secret name badge should be allowed to talk to me before, "That'll be X dollars, please sir." Above all, I should really take care not to get distracted. (Did you know that the Wonderbra was invented by a Mechanical Engineer? Once you get past the mid-teen realisation that compared to actual women, mannequins, no matter how skimpily attired, are utterly sexless, the design engineer in me can, distressingly, take over...but don't tell anyone I said that)

I walked as confidently as I could into the heart of the ground floor. Bodices and thongy things gave way to fragrances. Thankfully all the assistants were busy. I knew I was in the wrong place. Upstairs we go.

As the escalator rose I noticed a heavy-set teenage boy, around fifteen or sixteen, leaning over the rail on the floor above, mouth slightly open, staring at a video of models in underwear bouncing down a catwalk. I allowed myself a brief pang of sympathy.

Still keeping up the brisk pace so I would look like I knew where I was going, without, you know, looking like I knew where I was going because I shop there all the time, I wandered the top floor. I couldn't help but sporadically stroke my beard with my be-ringed left hand so that the impression I gave off would be more, 'married man looking for wifely accoutrements' rather than, 'perv off the street who came in for a quick lech'.
A girl in a velvet jacket started walking towards me the second I hesitated, and I had visions of the women's underwear version of the scene in High Fidelity where Jack Black acts so horrified that a browser in the music shop doesn't own Dylan's Blonde on Blonde that he browbeats the poor, mortified soul into buying half the store. I'm not entirely sure what that would have entailed in a lingerie boutique...and being a man...but I didn't hang around to find out, for at that moment I spotted a rack of drawers (of the sort that you store things in, not the sort of drawers that you might buy in Victoria's Secret) and made a beeline across the floor, skidding past a male assistant who was berating a hapless girl, "Oh, you haff to own at least one of the angel range," and found myself in front of my goal - the Hose Zone.

The record store analogy began to haunt me once again as I pulled open a likely looking drawer and began to flick through the many subtly different varieties of leg coverings as I used to do all the time with CD cases and vinyl. (Nowadays I do most of this online, and it's more clicking through than flicking through, before anyone thinks I'm old before my time)
Nude satin top. Black lace top. Semi-nude chiarascuro top.
Flick, flick, flick, flick.
Flick, press.
Beep bip beep beep bip bip beep...click, click.
Ring.
Ring.
"Hello?"
"Hi darling. I've got demi-opaque snow-topped, transparent rhino-horn capped, black lace top-"
"Black lace top."
"Okay...and now I'm looking at fishnets..."

The velvet jacketed assistant bristled behind me. I was flaunting the rules. Surely I knew I had to feel foolish before I was allowed to leave?

I joined the line of women at the till who were attempting to hold their purchases sort of low and out of sight enough to disssociate themselves from the lace and elastic in such an open forum, but not so much as to bring security guards their way. I paid, and I left, walking out through the tall glass doors feeling like I had just passed some sort of test...even if I cheated...a little.