Cranky Is The New Perky

A strange thing happened to me on the way back from the library.   I had gone to pick up some books (spring break next week, I want to go wild and read fiction all night) and read back copies of Vogue.  Mass purchase of shiny fashion magazines is not in the budget and I would never get a chance to enjoy it at home.  There are the interruptions and the noise and must of all the harsh illustration of the difference between the beautiful dream-like world of Vogue and my own reality.  When I say my house is falling down around me, that is not hyperbole.  It is a shrine to unfinished projects and my own bad housekeeping.

I had this rush of hope and excitement. I was imagining this poufy, strapless, layered plaid dress I had seen in a shop.  I saw it over jeans or leggings, with the black leather jacket I saw once and am still searching for (thin, narrow armed, fitted to the body, glove-soft).  I got distracted, clutching my books to me, and nearly walked into traffic. 

There is a difference between the world in my head and the 42 year old reality that will confront me when I eventually look in the mirror.  I don’t mean that in a bad way.   I don’t have a lot of issues with growing older.  Due to financial constraints and personal preference, I don’t spend a lot of time and money on beauty regimes or anti-aging.   I am low maintenance to the point of slovenliness.  I forget that what would have looked great on my 27 year old self wouldn’t work now.

I spend the time I can escape from the office and from the family wandering around shops, preferably little boutiques with nice people who have the same insane love of fashion and design.   I look at shiny things and cute tops.  I don’t buy (again the budget) but I look and I dream and I try on and I style outfits in my head.

My love affair with Vogue (sometimes open, sometimes secret) began in the tiny library on the lonely top floor of a failing school in a forgotten neighborhood of DC.  I would finish my day’s worth of schoolwork easily and early.   They would send me to the library rather than try to teach me anything more.  At school, and at home, which was a library in itself, I worked my way through anything I could get my hands on, War and Peace, Vanity Fair, The Odyssey, whether I understood it or not.

The first time I opened the heavy, glossy covers of Vogue I stepped into a world of beauty and creativity I never knew existed, stuck in a still-small southern city in the late 1970s.  Later, as a punk rock girl, I tried to deny my love of fashion.  I soon found it was just another way to express it.   I assembled outfits of Victorian bed jackets, homemade long black skirts, corsets from the Dor Ne Corset shop.  I wore an Edwardian dress to a show on my 19^th birthday and the lace was so old that by the end of the day it hung in tattered strings from the silk under dress, which thankfully remained intact.  Lisa took me to get sewn in extensions in a squat in Notting Hill and Nina Hagen showed up.   I couldn’t turn my head to see her.  I spent hours haunting the designer floor of Woodies downtown, stroking the Donna Karan (literally), ignored by the salesclerks, followed by security.  I worked at Dream Dresser (never underestimate the power of a little black latex dress).  And then Betsey Johnson (where we spent more than we made, crackheads working in a cocaine factory).  In London, I mainlined outfits.  I can remember every item of clothing I ever owned, but I have trouble recalling ex-lovers.  In each item I purchased I thought I was purchasing the power of transformation and adventure.

What I had a glimpse of the other day before I jaywalked into the road was the joy inherent in playing and trying.   I don’t mean just clothes.   Playing with and transforming how I look was just one of the ways I dealt with the soul sucking dramas of my youth and the joyless twin overlords boredom and frustration.  What I was riding was the rush that comes from inspiration and the mad urge to do something creative and fun.  The foul mouthed cross stitch samplers my friends and I dreamed up the other night had me all riled up like a three year old on a sugar binge. 

Someone asked me why I wanted to make my writing public.  I write everyday in case as Bukowski said, “being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder.”  But to write to myself anymore is not enough.  I fear I will end up wandering the streets of this seaside town muttering lines of poetry to myself (I memorize poems – it gives your mind something to do in bad or boring moments).

I still have some of my old partners in crime.  We got dressed up and went to shows, finding other misfits.  We made friendships that still last where we can speak in inside jokes and random memories.  Or we suffered through elementary, middle or high school together.  We shared the powerlessness of childhood and the suffocated frustration of adolescence, where everything is desired but little is possible.

I promise it wont be all doom (but if you expect perkiness and positivity, move along, you’ve got the wrong girl).  There will be humor (dark, the only kind I do) and visuals and odd stories (I have some good ones, I bet you have too).

In the words of Dante (re-read the Inferno, it is new and amazing every time):

“Abandon all hope all ye who enter here (but wear a good outfit).”

            

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