clothes horse

...or, memoirs of an aging fashionista. If you haven't been paying attention to fashion trends over the past three decades you may be wondering why young people are paying someone else to wrinkle their clothes and splatter them with bleach before they buy them, something most of us have been able to do for ourselves in all that time. 'Distressing' is not new but like everything else, it has gotten prohibitively expensive. This will not be a forum for railing against nonsensical clothing choices, in any age. It's the inseparable point to it all, sensible equals dowdy. I just thought it all needed to be put into a time line for others to see the rhyme if not the reason for it all. My own story begins in the early seventies when I first wrested free of the husky corduroys and button down plaids my Mom used to dress me in. Up to that point it wasn't all bad. I was usually able to bring her around to buying the shoes I wanted (She was/is a shoe nut, thank god). And at the time we were close to the same size so she just started wearing what I was jettisoning from my wardrobe. The first trend to seize me was the resurrected interest in the forties. It was not something many of the kids in my high school were hot for, but the few of us who were had an uphill climb finding clothes to suit. In the year that Mr. Blackwell described Bette Midler as having taken "pot luck at the laundry mat" we were scouring thrift stores on the Main Line hoping to strike pay dirt with some deceased GrandMa/Pa's finery. The girls I would accompany always had the best luck (they always do). They would find things cinched and gusseted six ways to sunday, scarves, turbans, beaded bags, and rhinestone clip-ons. I was lucky to find a hand-painted tie. Once I found an impossibly small German tuxedo, still in the dry cleaners bag and every bit the Joel Grey I was hoping for. Alas, his size, but not mine. I had to settle for another tie, this one red satin covered with Miro-esque thingies. Most desirous was the high-waisted pleated front trousers with the pegged legs a la Cab Calloway. When I finally realized the real deal was not to be had I ventured into a woman's clothing store and bought a pair- pleats but with a wide leg. A forties girl herself, Mom ran 'em through the Singer and I was stylin'! Emboldened, I pulled this trick a few more times and quickly made a name for myself at school with my new threads. I won't repeat it here, though. The truly magnificent platform shoes were not to be had at the mall so I would cut school to shop for shoes downtown. What drew me to the city kept me there, a tribe of like-minded slaves to high-fashion (read: setters of trends yet to be). After painstakingly making pariahs of ourselves in our respective home towns, we drew together to sew for each other and swap accessories. After a brief flirtation with the more readily thrift-shopped fifties look, where I affected a rumpled Jack Lemmon sensibility, I fell in with the Punk Rockers. Let the distressing begin. Most of what we had been trying to pass off as polished a few years before was already half way there. What I remember most about this time was the giant heap of communal clothing I and an ever-changing mix of transient roommates would dive into, customize, and wear to death. A rumpled white button down shirt would make the rounds, loosing first the cuffs, then arms, buttons etc. until down the road it would be a gray vest with a circled 'A' spray-painted on the back. Teased hair with some plastic cutlery stuck in it for good measure and we were ready for a night on the town. Practically the only thing we didn't share were our black jeans, whip-stitched on the inseam so as to render them irremovable. In a strange slant on Orwellian uniformity, by 1984 the look was mass-marketed. I worked for a time in a punk clothing emporium (formerly a Glam emporium) with lord knows how many Vietnamese men living upstairs silk-screening rude T-shirts around the clock. Embarrassed for the parade of kids eager to throw their money away on cheesy skeleton jewelry and pretty bored with making the effort to dress (down) up, I adopted a uniform which would carry me through for the next twenty years. Uninscribed cotton tees, Indigo Levis, and Converse high-tops. I had begun my painting career and these would eventually end up looking very much like what's selling at Abercrombie & Finch today. They would lose the legs and sleeves for summer and be replaced with a new ensemble in the fall. A certain black leather jacket (layered over a hoodie for winter) lasted me most of that time until I left it in the back of a cab. These days I've kind of fallen in with the pre-washed crowd, though I've jumped camp from the ass-quartering Levis to the more callipygious Lee jeans. My favorite shoes are Adidas 'Daroga' or flip-flops- no breaking-in required. And after kind of making peace with a gut that won't go away, I go with 'wife-beaters' and/or fitted button downs. I wasn't fooling anyone with untucked larger sizes. It's enough work just keeping my face slim. I tried wearing a polo but synthetic collars are just too torturous, plus Rhode Island 'boatie' just rings a false tone on me. And of course I wouldn't be caught dead in a pleated pant or a pegged anything. I've put together a few respectable outfits for dressy if not formal occasions with one clumsy but shiny pair of shoes. 'Didn't-overthink-it' casual takes all of my best effort. The work attire is unchanged- plasticized with dried latex paint they last twice as long, except for knees. Here is where I may have lucked out. Even in a progressive century men's fashion is extremely slow to evolve and most men even slower to pick up on it when it does. (I'm still seeing mid-thigh jean cut-offs, though mostly at the farmer's market). I've stubbornly resisted that six foot jump across the aisle from young men's into a world of sad raiment for color-blind golfers. Other men my age have side-stepped into athletic apparel but I'm firm on elastic waistbands being just one more way to spell defeat. If I'm lucky and the young men's doesn't go completely off the deep end with the extra large sizing and the cartoonish contrasting stitchery, as it now threatens to do, I'll get another ten years out of it. A few designers out there are looking after me. Needless to say if I were adequately funded I'd stay out of department stores altogether. But back to reality. I'll know when I've gone too far, I know what that looks like on other people. One night an older female friend of mine tried to pull off fuzzy boots, tight jeans, and a lace cammie. It's hard to look out of place in an Atlantic City casino but she managed it. If she wasn't letting me drive her convertible I would have taken a bus home. I learned then that large footwear is only forgivable on teen-agers and winter Olympians, some arms require sleeves (stay ever at the ready to concede on their length), practice any illusion at your disposal for de-emphasizing the neck even if you have to employ props, and arguably most important of all for any age- carefully scrutinize the ass for fit. You don't want to look like you're hauling around a bag of mice.

save a tree

Here's another attempt to deflect the disorder in my life onto someone else. What makes all these people with their bulk and presort mail rates think they've purchased the right to bury my house in unsolicted litter. Real checks don't have the dollar amount peeking through the window (but they generally do have real return addresses). I know exactly what my mortgage needs protection from. And I'm not fooled by personal note sized envelopes addressed in a 'hand-written' font. Now, I could be happy placing a waste paper basket directly on the other side of the mail slot. I rarely take time to read the important mail all the way through. And if a real check ended up in the trash I would smell it out. The concept of paying bills online might actually be convenient if the statements were posted there as well. Instead, both junk offers and statements with junk enclosures from the same companies arrive in the mail at a ratio of about three to one. Think what kind of overcompensation those CEOs could be talking about if they at least put all that crap in the same envelope. Hey!, Sierra Trading Post- save some trees, four catalogs since last Christmas is a bit much (or is there a timely trend in windbreakers I need to be apprised of). Formal portraits of real estate agents?? Save your clever subterfuge for the settlement table. And for everyone else who thinks they know enough about me to 'target' my 'demographic', listen up. I live in a seven room house, not a collection center. There's barely enough room for people and furniture (we keep the Great Dane because she discourages drop-ins and cleans up stray food items). Unopened mail forms the lower strata of debris. Books and newspapers I started reading in February are on top of that. Then a layer of things we bought but never bothered to take out of the bags, piled on by more unopened mail. Somewhere in March I reckon the IRS started sending me more notices of the Paperwork Reduction Act, but they too have been obscured by gym bags and elementary school artwork. Amping it up with glossy paper is not enough. Is mass-mailing really more cost effective than, say, skywriting?, sparkly billboards?, or people by the side of the road dressed in foam costumes? I'd hate for that to be true. ([Call me old-fashioned but] for me, one gigantic cartoon boy in red checkered overalls is worth a thousand words. Put him on the roof and I'll beat a path to his door! ) People seem to forget that effective solicitation demands a bit of entertainment value- and I don't mean "Place your acceptance sticker here". It might be the only thing left for a floundering U.S. Postal system but a clear reason to pray for their demise. I can already sense that people who share my demographic are getting more spiteful.

self-evaluation

Does anyone else out there live with a Depressive, Over-Reactive, Manic-Obsessive, Under-Satiated Ego? (DORMOUSE). My family lives with one. Since it is me and since my perception can at anytime be clouded, I can't be certain there isn't more than one of us in the house. One of the symptoms is an inflated sense of responsibility for communicating the disorder to others. Interested in knowing if you, or any of your loved ones might be a sufferer? Take this simple test;

1. Is the distress caused by forgetting important obligations outweighed by the distress of being reminded of them?
2. When someone comments positively on your hair-style, are you likely to cut it the next day?
3. Are you antagonized by people who smell like soap?
4. Does the term 'Easy Open' fill you with dread?
5. Do you shop for clothes that make your head look smaller?
6. Would you rather sleep than eat?
7. In the course of a week, are you likely to be compared to Imelda Marcos?
8. Are you the one in your household most likely to 'silently muse'.
9. Is the only manufacturer whose name you are not embarrassed to have emblazoned on your clothing 'Converse'?
10. Are you only able to remember someones name if it is one shared by someone whom you dislike?
11. Are you tortured by elastic (whether worn by you or someone else)?
12. Do your foibles outnumber your idiosyncrasies?

If you have answered 'Yes' to six or more of these questions, you may want to seek a more thorough evaluation. DORMOUSE sufferers are five times as likely to rage against inanimate objects, ten times as likely to be thrown into a deep sulk by polite flatterers, and a whopping fifty times as likely to be mischaracterized as 'easy-going'. Sufferers frequently display an irrational reaction to being awakened by singing [I say, arguing] birds or being 'remembered' by over-friendly sales persons. He or she displays extreme discomfort at being cast in a cooperative role such as a phone tree or clapping in time. It is not unusual for them to describe their unease as having been born in "the wrong time'. The only known relieve from this malady is shopping for shoes and frequent napping. Again, extreme caution should be used in awakening a DORMOUSE. Under no circumstances should this be attempted with harmonica music or tickles under the chin.

delaware

Yes, barely significant on maps and in elections, the 'First State' dodges every attempt to be ascribed a cohesive identity. Even 'The Simpsons' have joked about it. We've spent plenty of money on state slogans, there are five official ones, but the closest any of them come to capturing a shared experience is 'The Home Of Tax-Free Shopping'. Falls trippingly off the tongue, eh? We in the northern-most county have been in effect decapitated from the two southern counties (sLower Delaware) by a canal to the Chesapeake Bay. There's an Air Force base down there and, oh yes, our Capital. But really, it's all just a blur out of the car window, speeding to the beaches. I have tried to instigate a seize and conquer movement to claim the entire DelMarVa peninsula as our own, but I kind of like the straight line which separates us from Maryland's Eastern Shore. It gives our State a bit of a backbone in cartographic renderings. (that's how desperate we are for an identity). It plays nicely off of the lovely arc that was somehow decided upon when ceding from Pennsylvania. (It markates a twenty-mile radius from the colonial capital of New Castle). If Virginia had any of that brand of vanity it would cede the appendix to us, in my opinion their noncontagious little plot only makes them look careless. We could have a backbone and a tail! So, other than providing southeastern Pennsylvanians a place to get a slightly discounted deal on large appliances what do we offer? Well, Baltimoreans flock to our Shore Points. We're home to a slew of major credit cards. The Nascar RV village sets up camp in Dover every year. (but something scared the LPGA away). A primary reason for most non-natives to relocate (and natives to remain) is that a better price on real estate is rare to be found directly east, north or south of here. 'The Diamond State'? I don't know what they're talking about. I guess at some point they needed to be talked down from calling it 'The Every Dream Realized State'. Wilmington, our largest city, has a slogan; 'A Place To Be Somebody". Pretty deep. I propose the Tomlinean tag line- "..but I realize now that I should have been more specific." The best part about living in a small state: it really is a smaller chunk of a small world. Just the other day I saw our Senator (the one who isn't running for anything) and former Governor trying to get a table at a restaurant. He was alone. The hostess did not recognize him and probably told him what she had told me a little earlier- "forty minutes." I was surprised, he's probably shaken hands with everyone in the state by now- he's had his picture taken with my kids more than once. I watched him skulk off in the direction of a Subway's sandwich shop. Harsh. Our now deceased former senior Senator used to show up with his stinking St. Bernards for any gathering of more than fifteen people. I've never met the current Governor, though. She hangs out downstate mostly. She looks like Boris Yeltsin in a dress. When even the pithy 'Small Wonder' failed to incite the imaginations of the millions of annual tourists who stay away in droves we spent, I think, upwards of two hundred thousand dollars for this little pearl. 'It's Good To Be First' Does that smack of decision by committee, or what? The 'small wonder' is that they keep trying. Here are several of my own, and I offer them free of charge. 'A Home To Delawareans', ...'Land Of The Synthetic Fiber',... 'The Smallish State', ...'Bob Marley Slept Here',...'PhilaMore',...'A Four Lane-Interstate Runs Through It',...'Christina's World',...I'm not even getting tired, 'The Little State That Gun Powder Built',...'A Place To Bill Somebody',...'The Other Pennsylvania'...'Got Cigarettes?',...'Incorporate Us!',...

flamers

Being Gay Pride month there's a lot of jibber-jabber on YouTube about feminine guys. Criticism is coming from gay men as well as straight. A lot of the talk seems to me to be grounded in misogyny. " Why do you have to 'talk like a girl'." What exactly is it that bothers 'manly' men about 'girly' guys? They are at the same time comic and contemptible. Straight men don't seem to have a problem with lesbians. Lesbians enjoy a rather prominent status in their fantasies. Of course they are severely tarted up in the translation so as to affect an aesthetic few lesbians I know would dare (they'd be laughed out of the club). But it seems that the spirited foppery of fluffy young men is regarded as an unforgivable betrayal of the stony countenance real men were supposedly born to convey. Most of the YouTube noise employs pseudo-science, sweeping generalization, and a very sloppy glossary of terms. But that's only when the postings rise above "I'm going to find you and make you a red smear, QUEER!" (that one, I've deduced, was from a young lady. ) I invite you to read those lines, if you're so inclined, but for the moment let me try to read between them. Nasty hate talk from teen-aged girls, I'm guessing that could be from your daughter tapping away in the other room. I know she didn't get those ideas from you. Girls have to plunge onto a social scene at this age in order to cut out some of the competition. Of course they're fresh from playing Barbie (maybe Bratz) with boys they now threaten to kill, but it's no revelation that they're fickle creatures. The hate-speak is culled from and is re-spewed for the benefit of the boys they hope to impress. It is my theory that most men are thoroughly opinionated by the age of thirteen and that it takes a life-altering experience like; the girlfriend who used to do my laundry left me all of a sudden or, my boss won't let me talk to the clients, before it would occur to them to revisit any of their firmly held isms. Rarely reexamined is the one formed the day the grade school coach put the boy who spent most of his time practicing calligraphy out into right field. Someone should have told that poor boy that although you will be left to stand alone in the middle of a grassy field with time to ponder sources for illustrations for your next report on the six wives of Henry the Eighth, rare life-altering occasions will present themselves in the form of balls falling from the sky. If you do not wish other things thrown at you for the next decade ( like milkshakes or rude epithets), catch that ball! Not catching it is something that cannot be made up for later by good form in floor exercises or being the most sought-after square dancing partner. What, other than 'games' lost to homo incompetence, could incur such a vehement life-long response? Later. This is exactly when the transformation into a riotous queen begins, with the acceptance of the obvious things about one's self that one might still choose to alter- if there was any use in doing so. Some people are just not equipped to base their self-worth on an ability to deploy and recover errant projectiles, no matter how invested such a proclivity is in the 'nature' of one's sex. Young queers, very much like young girls, seek to punish and intimidate the people who reject them. Could this be a source of the animosity? Or, as in the case of the upwardly mobile homosexual who might have had these options and made different choices, does the femme represent a height of 'fabulous' yet undeserved. Does the clownish mincer make being taken seriously in a serious world all the more difficult/ imperative? Suggested reading; "The Naked Civil Servant" by Quentin Crisp. What I'm hearing is that, aside from being "rounded up into prison camps and gassed", flamers should stop 'denying' their gender. Arguments to this end come dangerously close to calling women 'unnatural'. The ideas are presented as if endowed with a universal wisdom. - men shouldn't act like women, it disgraces them... and anyone else who sees them doing it! I have a one word response; Stopallthisgettin'uptight'causesometimeswhenyou'rewatchingJoey
onFriendskickbackinhisLazyBoyyougetafuzzykindoffeelingandthen
youdreamabouthavinglonghairwithblondehighlightsandeveryonce
inawhilemanagetotalkyourgirlintoslippingafingerinyourbum.
You're Not Gay! Leave the nancy boys alone, and go shoot some hoops!

IKEA

What can I say about it that isn't already funny. It's like an Asian grocery- "ooh, look at this bag of dried quids". Like a inner city wig store- "try on 'Chakka' next!". Like the Moroccan bazaar at EPCOT-" look! the gigantically curly-toed slippers I've been looking all over for." The Scandinavian aesthetic has that appeal of being other-worldly. Lingonberry? Prast? With so many novel things to entertain themselves, you'd never guess their suicide rate would be so high. I suppose a lack of sunlight for chunks of the year is to blame. It always cheers me up a bit to shop for home furnishings. It must lighten their mood to bring a touch of ergonomy to trivets and magazine racks. I'll pass on most of the furniture, though. Chairs are either ingenious or they are comfortable, rarely both. And I think we've probably all learned our lesson about bureaus made out of newspapers and glue. It would take more Aquavit than I can get past my nose to come close to falling asleep on one of their mis-sized platform beds. But the sheer novelty of the highly-colored plastic whatsits will keep me coming back. Whether or not I will ever sit down to a game of ice cube tic-tac-toe is secondary to owning the trays that would make it a possibility. (a good 'snow day and the furnace isn't working' activity, could happen) And who is immune to the charm of a red spatula? No one I know with fifty cents in their pocket! I remember my first trip through IKEA, without children. The high-concept worked on me like a drug. First, the showrooms; the seductive balance of line, color, and texture in bite after little bite. Get your tiny pencil ready! Next, the interactive melee of sofa bouncing and drawer pulling; free rein to the kind of behavior that would make a 'sales associate' at Ethan Allan blanch (from afar). By the time you'd hit the Marketplace, any sense of restraint would evaporate. If you had somehow gotten there from the wrong direction, the anxiety over not being able to locate a shopping cart would be almost too much to bear. Even waiting in line to check out created the feeling of it all being over too soon. "Let's do it again!" With children it's almost the same experience except, with a new window of opportunity opened up by the only instance of entirely free baby-sitting I know of, it happens at warp speed. Showrooms are for dreamers. Pulling on an expertise at Chutes and Ladders, I am able to customize my path through the Marketplace all the way to 'scratch and dent' with just enough time to shop in the allotted forty-five minutes. (Once we even waited for them to page us before going back for the kids, tee hee) This last trip we shopped with an eleven-year-old who's now too tall for free baby-sitting. &*#! He was trying to work us for a piece for furniture that experience has taught me would have been destroyed in ten minutes. We bought him off with a sticky bun the size of his head. I realize there's less to it all than meets the eye, that I'm being manipulated into creating a sales receipt as long as my arm, and that I'm leaving the store with bags and bags of what, melted down, would constitute a $100. brick that could fit in my glove compartment. But the genius of the store is that the experience of buying oven mitts elevates them beyond their utility. Some guy out there with too many vowels in his name has really thought about shelf brackets. We have to trust the Swedes to invent colorful objects that ward off the grayness of the day-to-day that threatens to swallow us. And really, you can't get a lamp at a better price.

smoker

I still smoke. It's not as though after thirty-five years there were anything left to enjoy about it, except perhaps a sense of reliability. A dejected Susan Tyrell nails it on the head in Andy Warhol's 'Bad' with this line. "I just love smoking... it's always there." I am aware of how glamorous I look; cowering in the rain outside of restaurants, huddled around a trash can at one of Disney World's designated smoking areas. I've put myself and everyone around me through the hell of quitting several times. My greatest success has never been more than a few smoke-free months. Remembering the nightmares and every waking moment in despair, it was hardly worth it. I know they say not to, but I've smoked wearing the patch. I've chewed the gum. I've taken pills. I've had needles stuck to my ears. I've 'visualized' myself as a non-smoker. I've set my resolve so firmly at times the ultimate failure has left me with none. Funny how you only get a certain ration of personal resolve. You might use it up any number of ways; trying to be more environmentally conscious, less judgemental, a more trust-worthy friend. Then you finally arrive at a clear understanding of how full of shit you are and it's gone. Resolve this. Does it make me a weaker person? I can still ride a bike. I can run a couple of miles. I'm a good friend. But I shudder to think what might happen if I 'resolved' not to kick every person I met. I took the boys to a roller skating party. The 'entertainment' was a group of rappers who receive a grant for promoting non-smoking to the youngsters. Now to tell you the truth, I really didn't even want a cigarette until after two or three songs about how evil they are. I can turn it off like that, for movies or funerals. I thought about sneaking out for one but would pretty much have had to walk through the rappers to get to the exit. I didn't resolve to stay as much as I just couldn't suffer the irony of leaving. I should have. "Any of you boys and girls know anyone who smokes?" My two shot up their hands like they were going to get a prize. After being pointed out for a crane-necked shame-on-you look from everyone in the rink, I didn't resolve not to follow these rappers out to the parking lot to kick their rhyming little asses (and catch a smoke) as much as I didn't need to add 'leaves his children unsupervised' to my list of crimes. I should have. (I'm only mildly effective as a supervisor anyway) While listening to one person talk about how they quit years ago but can still smoke as the occasion warrants (while gaming), another interrupted, scrolling through her camera phone to 'show me something'. I'm thinking to myself , "No one keeps lung autopsies in their phone gallery, it's gotta be some relative with an oxygen hose". Nope, lungs- one pink, one black. I won't belittle her genuine concern, if not for me, for my kids. Message received. It's been delivered time and again. But if sound reasoning were to solve everything, we wouldn't have medications that produce more symptoms than they cure, banking hours while we're all at work, and two different kinds of screwdriver. I'm sorry but here's where I have to 'go glib'. Making cigarettes more expensive has only increased my sense of entitlement- I pay more taxes than non-smokers. Banning them in the work place has made me a bad choice as an hourly employee. I can't afford cigarettes and health insurance, so I'm driving up the cost of nothing. The nationwide campaign against them has created a sub-class of people who once thought it was a matter of choice to smoke, like wearing eye-watering doses of Rive Gauche or eating three times as much as you need to. I'll take the elevator ride with smokers, thank you. I'm not saying it's everybody's right to smoke anywhere, anytime. Second-hand smoke is a matter of ventilation, proximity, and manners. Those were the tools that it seems were just too costly to use to integrate a segment of society who, in my jaded opinion, are much more fun to be around. Establishments that hoped to sell me a three-dollar cup of coffee would have done well to spend a bit of that profit on air-circulation. I frequently atomize gallons of paint and solvent into the air without even seeing or smelling it. The technology is there. Instead, bars and restaurants have chosen to heat the outdoors. If that is supposed to resemble a fair accommodation then why isn't it offered to the people who were choking on other peoples smoke inside first? I'll tell you why. Smokers have less they can bitch about. We generally don't tell other people what they shouldn't be doing. We accommodate our addiction like some do their fear of escalators or their mistrust of foreigners. We take the long way around. We stay home. We adapt.