On Friday, figuring that the Christmas shopping frenzy would’ve finally have died down, I ventured to this awful place called Bellevue Square where there’s a LUSH store. I did most of my gifts this year from LUSH because I’m a recent convert and I like their politics and can’t get enough of their heavenly stench. I had a few late Christmas gifts to catch up on, so I crossed my fingers and hoped for the least mall-madness and traffic possible and dove in.

We’ll skip the part of the story where traffic was backed up for miles around the mall. Once at the store, I was trying to navigate my way between various overpowering and intoxicating smells and textures (SENSORY! OVERLOAD!) when I felt a tug on my sleeve.

An adorable salesgirl with blue tinted curls asked me (somewhat bashfully — am I that daunting?) if I could tell her where I got a pin on my bag.

Clits up!A pin? I looked down at my bag and remembered that I’d stuck two pins on it after Blogher; a tulip and one of Susie Bright’s “Clits up!” pins. Stupidly, I looked at the sales girl and said “Which pin?”

… Cuz yeah, she’s really curious about the tulip pin.

I asked her if she knew who Susie Bright was, and she shook her head. I explained about how Susie’s a radical feminist sex activist and writer, bla bla. She has a website and I ran into her a conference and she gave me a promotional pin and probably if this nice salesgirl emailed Susie, she could get one of her very own “Clits up!” pins.

The girl shyly nodded and said cool, and life went on. I made my gift purchase (ug, days of dotcom shopping may be coming to a close here) and left and life went on.

A few hours later at a friend’s house, I set my bag down and noticed that the “Clits up!” pin was gone. Missing! Disappeared!

Realistically that pin fell off. But isn’t it a weird coincidence that it would fall off on the very same day it had been noticed and complimented? Was the pin so pleased with the attention that it leapt off my bag and onto the floor to be stepped on and destroyed? Did I fiddle with the pin when I was talking about it and loosen its clasp?

Or! Was the adorable salesgirl so overcome by pin-lust (CLITS! UP!) that she pick-pocketed me! I imagine her so intoxicated by the acquisition-of-stuff dust that they spray all over the mall that even though she knew it was wrong (I couldn’t just take it!) she was compelled, driven to sneakily reach over and pull the pin right off.

I am secretly hoping this was the case because that would be fucking awesome. Sort of a reverse shoplift. A salesgirl driven to compulsive theft by a feminist pin!

So I guess now *I’M* the one who gets to email Susie and ask for a pin.

UPDATE: I wrote to Susie and asked for pins for both myself AND the adorable sales girl. I gave Susie the address of the store, and told her to address it to the “blue haired associate.” I recently ran into the sales girl at the new Lush, and Susie had sent her a pin! It made me happy.