The girls

The most important thing I can tell you about bra shopping today is to stay away from department stores.

It's true, you only try them when you are feeling very, very gullible, or insanely dopey and optimistic about the chances of there being a single item of clothing on the second floor of Macy's that you would ever want to put next to your body. Maybe some well-meaning coworker lured you there with wild talk of sales and rebates. Well, sister, I am here to tell you DO NOT GO THERE.

Honest to God! Does anyone shop for bras there? It's always tucked away on the topmost floor, just past the ugliest bedspreads and remaindered crockpots. There's some saleslady up there guarding her treasures like a goddamn minotaur, pawing at the ground lest you molest the Bali minimizers. I swear to god there is dust on those girdles in the back corner.

So off you go, fleeing into the black maw of the mall, where you are so deeply and inexpressively thankful that they have moved the Victoria's Secret ever closer to your favorite mall entrance. Or perhaps VS is now like the Room of Requirement, appearing only when you truly need it.

And Honey, you have been wearing those utilitarian bras from Lands' End for far too M.F. long. And beige?!? Please, child. If anyone needs Vickie right now, it's you. Say what you want about it, but at least within those walls of throbbing pink you can buy intimate apparel that has at least a chance of getting you laid.

Fortunately for you and the unsuspecting sales staff at the World's Pinkest Bra Store, you have been serenaded in your slumber for two full weeks now by the steamiest, most energizing sex dreams you can remember having since the night you first saw real porn, and you are therefore feeling unaccountably delectable these days. I mean, all those nocturnal hallucinations can't be wrong, right?

So you, my sultry senorita, are what they call at Lex Wexner's Palace of Puerile Pleasures an easy mark. OK, so maybe you won't succumb to the oft-repeated siren song of 15% off today's purchases when you apply for a VS credit card. Maybe you won't veer disastrously off target when walking past those silky nighties they have splayed out for their Valentine's Day come-on.

But they know. They know from the way you know which drawer they hide the double-D underwires in. They know when they see you stride off to the fitting room with two pawfuls of lace and spandex and a grim set to your well-defined jawline.

They know. You, my friend, are not leaving this store without the bra. The one you have been dreaming of, literally -- the one you were wearing in that dream Sunday night, just before cruel dawn stole the dream away. That. Bra.

Good Christ Lit Up in Neon, if Victoria's bloody little Secret -- on the week before Valentine's Day!-- doesn't have a slinky, lacy, underwire push-up bra in Elvira black for the D-Girls down there, well then I just don't know a damn thing about a damn thing.

And they do, of course. And you, my sizzling little poptart, will wear it tomorrow while engaging in witty banter with your new friend and when he stops midsentence and looks up at you and asks you what that smirk on your face is for you will breathe in ever so slightly and hold it for a moment so as to feel the silk embrace your ribcage then release it and softly say

nothing.