"I Have Found the Promised Land and It is Beautiful" or "Dad, You Can Skip This One"

I have huge breasts.
I'm not bragging, just narrating.
They're massive, heavy, and require industrial scaffolding to keep from swinging like the new century Barry Bonds.
I'm not alone. There's my mother. Her sisters. The women on my dad's side. And, since I come by my breasts honestly, I resent them.
Buying bras has always been an epic mission. As a teenager, I barreled through all the dainty bra sizes, never even owning an A or B cup and only briefly pausing at a C. My mother noted my progress (wearily, almost sadly, as I stood bare-chested at the dryer looking for a bra: "Oh, honey. Looks like you got 'em, too.") and took me to her "special shop" to get fitted.
The saleswoman was a five-foot tall Eastern European woman with a formidable shelf of her own. She stripped me, measured me, pinched the skin at my bra line and disappeared, only to come back with an armful of the ugliest, most matronly nineteenth-century corsets I'd ever seen. Each one was like a toy castle - if you fastened the back and set the bra down carefully on the floor, it could stand up on its own, cups arched like flying buttresses, straps hanging like flags, the bottom band as thick and sturdy as any fortress wall.
I put one on. It stretched from my bellybutton to my collarbone.
"Perfect," the saleswoman said.

Since then, I've been a bra migrant. Macy's, The Gap, Nordstrom's - for years I've wandered through their pretty lingerie sections to the back wall where they keep the ugly stuff. Large breasts, it seemed, were only to be found on fat women no longer interested in anything near the realm of attractive. Or on strippers, whose buoyant implants had no need for underwire. I tried on bra after bra, decided to believe the sixteen-year-old who fitted me at The Gap and insisted I was a 36 DD - a size that, while too big for the assholes at Victoria Secret to stock, was occasionally possible to find at some out-of-the-way department stores - and spent a decade fighting muffin-tops and peek-a-boos.

And then my life changed.

Earlier this summer, BKD (before Ky died), I went to a party and in walked Kristy, dear friend of Megan, who is a dear friend of Kate, who is a dear friend of mine, and we were all like, snap! The girl had it going on - thin, massive breasts, flawless silhouette. They're so perky, someone whispered. And they were. They were glorious and, after some backroom gossiping, confirmed to be real.
I grabbed Kristy's wrist, holding on maybe a little too tightly as I tore through my purse looking for a pen. "Kristy, sweetie, where do you buy your bras?"
Here, dear reader, I'll pause for you to run and get a pen of your own, because if you yourself are not a bra migrant, surely you know someone who is, and if they don't happen to live in the NYC metropolitan area, surely they'll find themselves here sometime or another in the years to come, and if so, they absolutely must visit this store:
Town Shop
I'm not fucking around. 2273 Broadway, btwn 81 and 82nd Sts. Write it down.

So today at around 12:30 pm, I went. I must've hit a lunchtime rush because the place was busy. In the front of the store, loud Jewish women pushed through racks of bras and panties with menopausal authority, shouting across the store to their daughters and friends, It's here! It's here in Wheat! and Cup size, darling! I need your cups!
The fitting counter was in the back. I wrote my name down on a waiting list while the Town Shop employees - unsmiling black women with dozens of bras looped around their arms - squeezed past me as if I wasn't there.
And then my name came up. I was shown to my fitting room, a curtained nook with a chair and full length mirror. In the room next to mine, I could hear another loud Jewish lady: "I don't want 'em minimized, I don't want 'em maximized. I want 'em to look how they should look, so you bring me the bra that's gonna do that."
My own saleswoman was petite and very pregnant. Not a promising sign. Even with a six-month belly, she barely pushed a B cup.
"What do you want?"
"I have nothing. My bras are all old, they don't fit, the underwire is snapped. I need something I can wear with a t-shirt."
"Take it off."
I undressed. She looked at me, turned me around once, and disappeared. She didn't even pull out a tape measure. When she came back, it was with one bra. One.
She held it out for me while I looped my arms through the straps.
"Lean forward."
I did, my ass pressing against her round belly as she reached around me to give each one of my breasts a firm jiggle. She turned me to face the mirror.
"Oh..."
I couldn't say anything more. My breasts, finally slung in cups large enough for them, actually looked smaller. The bra was cut attractively low, supportive but still V-neckable. My stomach remained bare. The band neither dug into my spine nor rode up to my shoulder blades. And it only had two hooks. Two!!
I tried a tentative bounce. Nothing. I jumped. They stayed where they were. No jaw-dropping heave. No busting out the top. I turned to the side and, at the sight of my smooth, seamless silhouette, burst into tears.
"What size is this?" I managed.
"34 FF."
Fuck The Gap.
"How could you possible have known? You didn't even measure me."
She just rolled her eyes and popped the tag off my brand new best friend.
"You should wear it out. That thing," she waved distastefully at my 36 DD, abandoned on the floor, "should be thrown away."

So thank you, Town Shop. Thank you, Kristy. My breasts look amazing. And even in the shittiest of times, the value of a good bra cannot be denied.