It is not my body that feels ill, it is my brain. I have, through years of frugality birthed into more recent years of hating consumerism, especially of new products, conditioned myself to be disgusted by retail purchases. Perfect, it could be said, for a man working retail. Handy, some may think, when you are in a record store on Record Store Day and can’t justify buying a record because it is just another twelve inches of plastic in your parent’s basement. And the debate between my frugality and my supporting a good cause begins: But it is Record Store Day, man. Do you even like music, or are you just one of those record collecting, long-haired posers? Support your local record store, you dickhead. Instead of spending my money on a circular piece of music-generating vinyl, I will pay a crooked Air Canada to fly me to a city of whimsy and loose-walleted people. Instead, I ended up buying a jacket that was on the border of necessity, that is, not a current necessity but is a potential necessity, depending on several things that may happen in my future. I could justify any purchase with that logic, from a carrot-juice maker, to an automatic machine gun, to a tube of toothpaste, to a jetpack with oxygen tank. These, based on my predictions of the next fifty years, will be essential to life. These, and a decent rain coat. It might rain next week.

The only thing that suggested that it may be a good idea was a gift certificate that I found on the ground to the store that I work at, the store at which I already get handsome discounts. The fact that I got a jacket at the price I did, makes me feel guilty in another entirely different way. But in an attempt to justify, the debate continues: The rare, necessary and well-thought-out purchase isn’t a bad thing, is it? Yes. It is. Buying something when I know not if it is sustainable made or ethically made. It is perpetuating the mindset that I claim to be at war against.

When I finally made the purchase, credit card inserted in the terminal, my heart convulsed, I got panicky. Too late: Approved. Pay me later at 11% interest. Queue the next track on the album, Black Flag’s ‘Beat My Head Against the Wall’.