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Memoir: Bonobos

Do you hate your day job?

Do the words "just checking" make you want to commit homicide? Or: "just reaching out" --? Or: "I am re-sending here the following information...." --? Or, perhaps: "There is no lesson plan but maybe you could cover and just do storytime..." --?

I have a suggestion for you.

The suggestion is Bonobos.

Combat all of your anxiety, your depression, your rage, your helplessness at this small brick-and-mortar store on Court Street, in Brooklyn. Perhaps you will see Britain's Emily Mortimer, or even "Felicity"'s Keri Russell, as you shop.

Drown your sense of existential helplessness, your questions about the possible futility of existence, in the contemplation of a seventy-dollar pair of swim trunks. Do you already own a pair of swim trunks? There's nothing wrong with having two. Particularly if one set has a fun festive striping pattern--a little gay, but not something that would make your friends and loved ones wonder if they still know who you are.

Push aside all of your hand-wringing about that upcoming work event--about how basic bits of data have not been submitted to you, and about how your colleague won't share information you're requesting, and how she will feign incomprehension at the actual event when you confirm that the information you requested is in fact information you've never received--put all this aside as you fondle a soft ninety-dollar gray tee shirt, with the ambiguous letters "OK" on the pocket. The letters are striped in rainbow patterns, which makes you wonder if the tee shirt is saying something: Is it saying that it's OK to be homosexual? Is it saying that the state of Oklahoma is *particularly notable* in the way it embraces gay people?

Others are able to sail through pedestrian desk jobs with minimal stress--or at least with a *performance* of minimal stress. Why are you so high-strung? Why did you study year after year, only to take a job that several ninth-graders could perform (and surely they could perform it better, and more calmly, than you) --?

Don't think about these things. Think about the forty-dollar pair of boxers with the alluring pineapple print. Think about the fetching button-down with the repetitive pattern of tiny paper cranes, tight in all the places one would wish for, forgiving where it needs to be forgiving. Think about those pastel neckties, as subtle and dazzling as a canvas you might spot at the Met. Do you not wear neckties? It's never too late to start.

Seek your therapy at Bonobos.

Let your mind make a heaven of hell!
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