Secret Habits

Amy and John each make a little confession

By Amy Kean and John D. Schwartz

AMY:  My favorite guilty pleasure on this website is "What's your secret" where women from all walks of life anonymously confess their darkest, most shocking, often funny secrets. Most of their confessions are pretty standard: "I can't stand to be around my husband"; "I love cigarettes"; "I'm a stripper and no one knows"; "I do nothing at work...I mean nothing."


But lots of the secrets revealed are much more surprising: "I haven't paid taxes in ten years"; "I'm a mom and a full-time student...and in my free time I'm a dominatrix"; "Other than my spouse, no one knows I'm a Wiccan"; and my personal favorite, "I love acting like a cat." (Hmm, the witch and the weirdo who likes to pretend to be a cat should get together for Halloween.)

It must be very cathartic for these women to purge these secrets out into the blogosphere, right? So I thought I'd like to get in on the fun, and tell a little secret myself. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of anonymity (since my byline is on this blog) but, hey, what the hell.  

So, here goes:  I think I'm a shopaholic.

OK, you're probably thinking--big deal. Every woman on earth loves to shop. That's not exactly a deep, dark secret. But, trust me, my habit's gone way beyond loving to shop. I buy way, way too much of everything in the clothing and accessories category: underwear, hats, jewelry, shoes, boots, sandals, coats, bathing suits, socks, scarves, dresses...you name it.  It's definitely a sickness. And living in a smallish New York City apartment makes my little secret impossible to conceal.

Just the other night, my sister, a magazine editor, invited me to a big, glitzy fashion event here in NYC. Great! But I only had about twenty minutes to get sufficiently glammed-up. OK, I thought, "I'll just have to be quick and keep it really simple; I know, a no-fuss sexy black suit."

As I rummaged through my large (at least by New York City standards) closet, I discovered one, two, three, four, five--oh my god!--seven fitted black suits which all looked almost identical. Who needs seven black suits, except an undertaker?! And five of these suits still had the price tags attached. (Not that I have any intention of returning them.) The part that really worried me though is that I don't actually remember buying most of them. It's like I bought them while I was walking around in a shopper's trance or something. And now I felt like I was browsing through someone else's closet. Isn't that a flashing shopaholic warning sign or something?    

There you have it. I'm starting to feel better already.



JOHN:   As far as I know, Amy and I have very few secrets between us, so this shopaholism is not news to me. But she's never actually admitted out loud that she's an addict, so this confession is actually pretty encouraging! I assure you:  She's not exaggerating. At one point, I seriously considered holding an A&E style "Intervention" for her. Unfortunately, several members of both our families are also shopaholics, so I'd probably be the only one to show up. For example, if I asked my own mother to help me "cure" Amy of this addiction, she'd say, "Oh that's ridiculous"; "So she likes to shop, so what?"; "She always looks so great, you should consider yourself lucky."

As for me, if I'm being forced to reveal a secret on this personal blog, I'm not going to say something that might scare people like "I occasionally stop, watch and enjoy "iCarly" when flipping through channels"; "I don't hate George W. Bush" or "I have a nose hair problem."

Instead I'm going to say something tame and safe like: "I sometimes drink milk straight out of the carton" or "When I'm alone, I listen to "Harry Potter" books on my iPod - on repeat."

You know, nothing too embarrassing.