Barney's NY Warehouse Sale :: Whatever the Opposite of Love Is

The entrance to Barney’s Warehouse Sale nestles next to D’Agastino’s, the overpriced yet still vaguely ghetto grocery store across 17th street. I went in because Tom said there were a lot of shoes. Unfortunately they were not my kind of shoes-- mostly slinky strappy numbers providing inadequate toe protection for my calamity-ridden lifestyle. I like to think of my footwear as a weapon. It should hurt if I kick you.

I was rolling toward the exit when a warehouse-themed cardboard box came out of nowhere. For a tense moment, I thought I was going to plunge headfirst into a tangled snakepit of price-slashed but still $400 belts. I skirted the box like a retarded ballerina balanced only on one toe.

Already shaken by the almost-catastrophe, I finished my pirouette nose-to-nose with an impeccably coiffed Chelsea boy trying on a silken peach-colored space suit. My eyebrows ratcheted into my hairline in a very non-NYC-acceptable manner.

This did not go unnoticed. “So is that a yes?” he said.

I smiled like an idiot and didn’t reply because from the gleam in his eye and the tone of his voice, that boy was poised to take me down. The only way out would have been to come back with the right answer. Sturdy footwear be damned, I did not, and still do not, know what the right answer was.