Macquarie Park Shocking Centre

I’ve just got back from the odious pit of boganity that is the Macquarie Shopping Centre. It’s an artificially lit, subterranean nightmare of a place, so unsettlingly disordered, I imagine Satan couldn’t do better if he tried to recreate in Hell one of those horrifying labyrinths you get trapped in in nightmares. In addition, the people clutter up the escalators instead of standing on the left, and I just hate that!

Anyway, I’m extra pissed off with the place today. I was wandering around this lunchtime, wondering if I’d ever find the Post Office in time to queue for half an hour and get back to work before my lunchbreak ended, not quite at the tears of frustration phase, but you know, close, when this young woman standing next to a stall accosted me and asked me if I’d ever been to Israel. I said “What?”, all confused and distracted. She said, “I think we might have met before…I am Israeli. Have you been to Israel?” My heart sank as I was sucked into this horribly contrived conversation about where we might have met; I say contrived because I realized about three seconds in that it was simply a ruse to get me talking so that she could sell me something expensive that I didn’t want.

She asked me how long I’d been in Australia, was it because of A Man? – ooh, how lovely! – etc etc. Did I meet him here? No, in Saudi Arabia – oh my gosh, how exciting! And I’d never been to Israel? Why ever not? She hopes to visit Saudi Arabia sometime soon! (I’d love to see an Israeli Jew get a visa for that, ha ha ha – nice to see the Arab-Israeli conflict has left some minds unscathed). I was forced into this girly, mock-intimate chat about my life, even though I frankly find it boring to go over for the millionth time the very unremarkable story of how I came to Australia to someone who I know doesn’t give a shit anyway. I also find it rude and intrusive. And there was something kind of creepy about this girl.

So I should have walked away, but I always feel I have to maintain at least a pretence of politeness, even through gritted teeth. She ignored my plea of “I’m in a hurry. Could you tell me where the Post Office is?” and gushed “But first, I have something very special for you!” Defeated, I went over to her stall and underwent a hand scrub with some Dead Sea salt scrub. It was actually pretty nice.

Then she said “Come close, I am going to tell you a very special secret.” There was something a bit psycho about her, so I was almost intrigued. Giggling coyly, she whispered something about how when I’m in the shower with my boyfriend, ‘playing games’, (chess? Cluedo?) we can rub it on each other, especially our ‘intimate bits’. Apparently he’ll love it.

Now, maybe this is something that all the kids are up to these days. Maybe scrubbing your sensitive private areas with salt whilst frolicking in the shower is the latest In Thing. Maybe everyone’s doing it. But I can tell you I was feeling distinctly uncomfortable about receiving sex tips from a nastily ingratiating stranger, especially since it was taking so bloody long and all wanted to do was get to the Post Office before she decided she’d invested too much time and free samples on me to let me leave alive with wallet. It’s not a nice feeling, as you’ll know if you’ve ever been reluctantly sold at by a fake friendly person.

And she did indeed get rather shirty when I told her I wasn’t going to buy it. Apparently it was a special offer, half price at $75 for one day only, blah blah blah. I said I was saving like crazy for my trip to England (true) and she told me I should buy one for me and one for my mother for a Christmas present. I told her I didn’t get paid until tomorrow, so she said I should buy it on credit. Then she asked me if I have many nice cosmetics at home, and I said I love Lush. She said that Lush is so expensive, if I buy that, I should buy her stuff. I was beginning to think I could see flames in her eyes and could almost hear a chainsaw being revved up.

Fleetingly I considered giving in and buying some just to get her off my back and wipe the barely concealed fury off her face. I mean, how bad could it be? It was pretty nice stuff, and I could always try tackling the Man in the shower, salt scrub in one hand, chess set in the other , and rubbing him with it to see what happened (he’d probably recoil in terror, poor sweetie).

It would have been easy to give in, and I’ve always been a bit spineless where bullies are concerned. But I am getting a bit better these days, so I simply said I wasn’t going to buy anything really politely about thirty times and left. Of course if I were perfectly Karmically evolved I’d have refused to be drawn in right from the beginning, leaned in really close to her face and screamed, “I said WHERE’S THE POST OFFICE, BEEATCH?!!”, foam and spit splashing everywhere then gone up to her cosmetics stand and thrown it over. But you know, small steps.

My only consolation is that she looked pretty peeved. I hope she felt as annoyed as she looked!