Image via Complex Original
1.
"Have you decided on the wolf?"
Yes, I have decided on the wolf. The essential truth that I'm withholding from the above clerk, however, is that I decided on the wolf months ago. I'm at Sweet William, a store for babies in lower Manhattan, and I just walked in blasting Future's "No Compadre" in my headphones, only to be overwhelmed by a rush of calm, baby moccasin ambiance. Small striped shirts and tasteful wooden figurines populate the meticulously organized space. There is nothing electronic in sight. Soft jazz plays. I'm the only person here.
This is Kanye West's favorite place to shop for his daughter North. In an interview from a while back, he lamented the types of gifts that surrounded her. She was thoroughly unimpressed. "These toys is weak," he determined. But frequent collaborator Vanessa Beecroft seemingly cracked the West code when she presented North with a small, stuffed, unembellished wolf toy. Upon seeing it, North screamed with excitement and engaged the toy with a fervor that Kanye had never before seen from her. He took this as a cue to make his own trip to the store and, naturally, ball the fuck out.
The unadulterated joy with which North reacted is, in essence, what Kanye strives to recreate in his own life. He derives artistic inspiration from the baby version of himself, his creative work often an exercise in reversionist attempts to tap into that well of childhood imagination. I turn Future down, just as he's saying the words "You fuck around get murked today," and find myself in rapture. Something has caught my eye.
On a shelf, just out of reach, sits a veritable squad of stuffed animals so realistic that shock renders me as inanimate as them for a moment. Shit looks like Noah's Ark if the two animal requirement for reproduction never existed. Every young, relevant member of the animal kingdom is represented. The squirrel adjacent to the baby sheep, adjacent to the owl, adjacent to the llama, all with the same "Boy, if you don't get your motherfucking..." look so genuinely expressed on their faces. I have to actively remind my adult self of how broke he is to prevent my internal baby from copping the whole squad. Faced with the same situation, I can only imagine Kanye saying something like, "Let me get the whole zoo," addressing the clerk by tracing his finger in the air around the entire shelf. I reluctantly walk up to the counter with just the lone wolf.
"Is it a gift?"
It isn't, but what could I possibly look like to the clerk were I to admit that I was buying this for myself? A college student with a growing collection of well-made stuffed animals accumulating one by one in my dorm room? I panic. Does she watch Kanye interviews religiously? Have Kanye stans been coming in here consistently to buy this ever-stocked wolf toy, claiming to be thoughtful uncles, all buying the same exorbitantly priced, fuzzy, functionless object for their imaginary nieces and nephews? Did she start working here perhaps because she herself is a Kanye stan and knew that one day she might be granted the opportunity to help him pick out a picture book for North?
I wince, then finally reply, "Yes," assuming the posture of a young father with only the best in mind for my spoiled, nonexistent firstborn, and she takes her time to wrap it lovingly in ribbon.
Fraud though I may be, it really is a gift, I guess, from Lawrence to me because I'm expensing the shit out of it to the Four Pins bank.
I carry the wolf with me, show it off to my friends and begin to grow more and more fond of it. I decide to name it Fütche, which can be interpreted either as an abbreviation for Future the rapper, who was fatefully playing when I first met Fütche, or for that which Kanye West and Elon Musk discuss when they catch up at Illuminati daycare.
Of course, my adult self has way too much to drink that same night, thereby reverting to my childlike sense of responsibility, and I end up deserting Fütche at my friend's crib. To this day, he stands in the same location, in the same bag, shielded from the apartment's ever-present marijuana smoke only by the gift wrapping with which the aforementioned, possibly oblivious store clerk originally swaddled him.
Now, when I close my eyes, I can see Fütche blankly staring back at me, wondering where I am and why I left him to a group of FIFA-playing bros, seemingly for all eternity. I don't have an answer for him. I need to grow up.
Alex Russell abandons everyone that he loves. Follow him on Twitter here.