HOW TO: Shop Online When Drunk
Here at somethingyousaid.com we like to provide you with important life advice. This week, Bianca Cornale has come up with a ‘How To’ guide that every fashionista/closet alcoholic should take note of. We’re talking online shopping, while shitfaced.
In this era of increasingly digital lifestyles, instant gratification and rampant self-indulgence, a new online danger has arisen. And no it’s not online predators, or rich, distantly related princes from Nigera. It’s ourselves. It’s booze. And it’s online shopping.
STEP ONE:
Go out for casual drinks with a close friend. Wear something unimpressive and much abused through its frequency of wears. For me, it would be an oversized white button-up with a red paint stain on the shoulder (how?). Meet your beautiful and stylish friend and admire their very well presented ensemble of amazing. Where everything matches. Where everything is washed and ironed. Where nothing is splattered with red paint (seriously how? You don’t even paint). Misgivings begin. You’re already on your way to drunk online shopping.
STEP TWO:
Enter a trendy bar in a trendy suburb. Suddenly your beautiful friend seems to have split and multiplied enough times to fill an entire room, à la, B-Grade sci-fi. So much American Apparel surrounds you it’s like you’re breathing in a smog of thinly justified overpricedness. You keep staring at cute people in an endeavour to suss out the secret source of their trendiness, but instead they think you’re creepy and smile uncomfortably before moving away. Do you blame them? It looks like you’ve got a blood splatter pattern on your shirt, dingus.
STEP THREE:
Enter booze. Maybe you drink a martini to feel classier. Maybe you drink pints of Tooheys because fuck it – you’re already feeling like a mongoloid. Things start to pick up, as most things do when you’re four drinks deep. Who knows, perhaps you’ll go home satisfied with your life and your appearance and not blow your month’s budget. But let’s be honest, this isn’t a “HOW TO: Have a Meaningful and Shameless Night Out”. I’m unfamiliar with those.
STEP FOUR:
You spot someone you have been eyeing off, and hope ascends from the usual cynicism. You wave nonchalantly from across the room, slowly and carefully migrating closer like it’s a complete accident. There could be a hug or a cheek bump. They could see your serial killer shirt stain and slowly back away. But you are filled with optimism. Maybe you’ll be seen as alluring by a beautiful individual and this strange thing called mutual attraction occurs. Apparently it happens to people sometimes.
STEP FIVE:
Drink more!
STEP SIX:
DRINMOAR!
STEP SEVEN:
See beautiful friend talking to an equally beautiful someone and feel a sense of excitement for them. Good on you, friend! You go and get that gorgeous love interest, yeah!
STEP EIGHT:
Drink is spilt on you by an unapologetic ass-face. Suddenly shirt is stained with blood and smelling like VB. This isn’t Kings Cross; that look doesn’t fly here. Quickly run to clean off in the bathroom only to see potential-love-of-your-life-cutie sucking face with someone next to the toilet door. Someone who is model material and not covered in beer/blood. Fantastic.
STEP NINE:
DRINK MORE DRINK MORE DRINK MORE. GET MORE CASH MONEY. DRINK MORE DRINK MORE.
STEP TEN:
Stumble home while everybody else in the entire world is falling in love. Listen to Rowland S. Howard and cry. Put shirt in sink of water and turn on your computer sans logic. Decide you need to be cheered up by shallow consumerism and instant gratification. Also in the vein of instant gratification you move from Shut Me Down off Pop Crimes to Never Ever by All Saints. You sacrifice music quality to match the state of your evening.
STEP ELEVEN:
Click with uninhibited glee.
Where-tha-fuuuuck-is-ma-debit-card.
Wha-tha-fuuuuck-is-a-CCV?
STEP TWELVE:
Wake up the next afternoon and attempt to buy cigarettes, wondering why you are singing “never ever have I ever felt so low, when you gonna take me out of this black hole”. But what is this? Card declined? The convenience store clerk is glaring as if you did this on purpose. You go to check your bank balance and the ensuing heart failure doesn’t remedy the serious cash deficit.
You run quickly through the seven stages of grieving:
– Denial (surely there is a serious mistake here, i’m looking at you, Commonwealth Bank!)
– Anger (why!? Why!? I’ll have to eat baked beans for three weeks, goddamn)
– Bargaining (maybe I can cancel that order, or refund it later? Please!)
– Depression (I hate myself and want to die)
– And finally acceptance (maybe I can sell them at the markets for full retail).
STEP THIRTEEN:
Ten to twelve working days later you stare blankly at the mesh and PVC mullet dress that has appeared in your mailbox. Alongside it is a gold brocade sports jacket and terrifying dark red suede stiletto heels. You wonder why these items of intense ugliness appeared once attractive to your drunk mind, or why anyone would consider these worth five hundred dollars. You vow never to drink again, never to impulse shop, and worst of all – never to do both at once.
Words by Bianca Cornale.
