Notes on a Candle

I went shopping today with a straight friend, which is akin to going to the mall with a grouchy accountant who hasn't paid retail for an article of clothing since his first job interview. Every time I tried to pick out something that was lovely — but was not necessarily practical — I got a disapproving look and often a stern rebuke. 

"Do you really need that?" he asked.

"Well, no," I admitted. But then an Asian candle shaped like a monkey is hardly something one ever requires as a purchase essential to his existence, though he may greatly covet it. "But I want it."

I was thinking it would look great on my book case, next to some painted oriental snuff bottles and a small Buddha figurine. I figured this waxy primate and that inanimate wise man could become good friends over time, but my buddy was having none of this.

"What the hell do you need this thing for?" he asked, picking up the monkey candle as we stood in an aisle of Target. At first he accused the poor primate of self-pleasure, though he wasn't spanking the monkey, as there was no "monkey" there (in other words, this candle was anatomically incorrect, sad as that is). "It's $4.99!" he said. I was about to comment on what a great deal that was, but it sounded like the price tag had already inspired a certain amount of outrage on his part.

The truth is ... I'm a candleaholic. When I'm downtown, I can't pass the Illuminations store without popping in to see what votives they have, whether they be meyer lemon, lychee or hyacinth. While pulling in a particularly good haul of pillar candles in scents such as Asian Pear and Provence Sorbet, a clerk at Cost Plus World Market once asked me, rather rhetorically at that, if I was a "candle guy."

It's not like men in the 16th Century had their masculinity questioned by the number of candles they owned. Back then, I'm sure the size of a man's candlestick collection was a measure of his power. But try telling that to a snide saleswoman while purchasing a set of sea-blue tealights redolent of a Mediterranean breeze. I'll have the last laugh when a major power outage hits and I have enough paraffin paraphernalia to keep my apartment looking like Stevie Nicks' coke den for the next three years.

You see, this monkey wasn't merely some decorative whim. He provides a purpose. I'd hate to disfigure this monkey, but if it came down to it, his skull would melt on lightless night. I was justifying him through practicality, but my straight friend managed to talk reason into me with some simple logic.

"You could get a margarita with the cost of that monkey." And he was right. Perhaps not a good margarita, made with a Grand Marnier float, but a decent happy hour cocktail could be purchased. He was using the only reasoning (alcohol before all else) that could get through to me in my crazed candle lust.

So I let the monkey be, as I continued to shop (though I did buy a couple candle sets with spring scents). As I filled my cart, he watched but didn't participate — as if shopping with a homosexual were some deviant rite that would lead to his emasculation. This point was driven home when we made a sojourn in the bath and beauty section. As I carefully checked the labels on spa products, creams, lotions and soaps, my friend stood by anxiously like a flasher in a schoolyard. "People are going to think I'm a pervert for being in this aisle. It's obvious I don't belong here," he confessed, as if his proximity to the Burt's Bees Almond Milk Beeswax hand creme belied his degeneracy ("Do the gays use that stuff for their sodomy," I imagined him wondering). I told him to check out the sponges and scrub brushes, but he said that would be even worse, and I had to grudgingly agree. He was being a pain in the ass, but he was keeping me more financially sensible.

Of course, the only reason this friend tagged along was because he wanted to go buy a TV at BestBuy (next door) and didn't have a car. He spent $800 on that HD flat screen, and though it was a nice television, all I could do was wax poetic in my mind all the way home about how many wonderful candles I could have bought for that enormous sum.