absence and books and shoes
it has recently come to my attention that you read this blog—with some regularity and anticipation.
In light of this news, I apologize for my temporary absence. To earn pay for rent and loans and such, I have been working to plan this event that was, throughout its span, a 7-day a week endeavor. In the last month, even my sparse late night bloggings had to go. They were not the only bit of my life to be neglected into oblivion, including my sacred kitchen goddess bit.
I was eating a lot of pizza. Pizza! Also, drinking seltzer water directly from liter bottles. I can get myself talked into a passable if delusional Slow Food-y, local business supportive justification for the pizza, which I buy not from that anti-choice pizza chain or any chain but from whichever older-than-me, tiny Brooklyn place I happen to be near. This weak front fails to address the grossness of all that cheese to my body and takes a fingers-in-my-ears approach to where that cheese comes from. This also happens to be the distinct eating pattern of my ex-lover who rounded out her diet with pepperoni, cereal, and cheese’n’crackers.
She worked mad hours when we were together. Back then I gave her a hard time while loving to cook for her. Now, oh—I have pulled-up to her drive through and sat at the window in complete understanding. This working working working craziness: it becomes next to impossible to eat well. One needs either time or money to eat well or…exuberant and precise planning, which is not my forte. Coffee/cigarette breaks became my forte.
A sad state had come to pass- I was not horribly put off by the airplane food on the flight to London on the eve of the big to-do.
The day after this big who-ha ended, I pulled up in a cab at the Islington home of a couple, friends of a friend who was also visiting them. (At some live reading, I will tell about the lesbian cab driver giving us her lover-by-lover tour of London.)
Crossing their threshold, I struggled, wobbling over, taking off my shoes and turned into the living room, with the cat scuttering across the wood floor, looking back over his tail, my adorable coworkers seducing him with purrs and pets and cooing; my friend and her friend rollicking in their cute loud American girl reunion. The fogged autumn sun coming in through the huge front windows despite itself.
Hot coffee, platters of warm croissants, nutella, jam.
And I wept. Inside, I wept with the unraveling of releasing of relief. Which suddenly feels like joy.
I stayed with them for several days of Turkish and Indian restaurants, lingering afternoons at pubs, home cooked pasta dinners from the organic market and leftovers of everything picked-at over days.
Wandering the gayborhood of London, I found an all-you-can-eat vegan Buddhist buffet, clattering with plates and piled with flowers, for EIGHT DOLLARS. I ate so many bean paste sesame balls the kimono ladies were tittering.
And the novelist/investment banker half of the couple gave me the perfect short story for the time: Cathedral. Go on, find it. It is in a collection by the same title.
This short story kicked off a post-life-sucking-job reading frenzy, and I have gone through some delicious pages in the past few weeks. Among them, the 100 pages I read of That’s so you! before gifting it to one of the young women I worked with on this project.
It is a collection edited by Michele Tea; the tagline is Women write on self-expression through fashion and style. I am a Michelle Tea devotee—more power to you sister for earning your way in the world by your writing. Her write-up on that new turn in her life is as sweet as her nerdy queer femme intro. Her childhood lavender-on-lavender glam ensemble far out-shines my own ballerina inspired obsession at 7. I wore the grimy pink leotard endlessly, sleeping in it or hiding it at night so my mother couldn’t wash it lest—god forbid— it be in the washer or dryer and not ON ME.
Another So you! highlight: Kate Bornstein’s journey from being sent home from school for copying the wrong side of the tracks cool to her current soul satisfying outfits by Betsey.
Oh, Betsey Johnson! of the cartwheels on runways and pink pinkity pink on black designs on netting and tattoo inspired prints on velvet mini-dresses, and now – shoes. Sweetart candy for princess trash tootsies…coveted by moi. My only clothes purchased with large sums of money I never really have are a few pieces by Betsey. The first dress of hers that became mine, I swore wouldn’t fit, but the red maned shop girl stood with her heat against my back, zipped me into it sharply, yanked me back a hair’s width closer to her, and whispered, “You just needed a little help, Scarlett.”
The netting and sequins slung in the bottom of that big pink bag, I walked swinging and whooping hand-in-hand with my best friend through DC’s Georgetown. She and my mom co-gifted me the dress for my birthday. She was wearing her dimples and mighty ass, and I was wearing short, pale hot pink hair that I cut myself. We were yelling indirectly at the sorority girls, whose cab we later stole (instigating a full year of bad cab karma, but it was exhilarating at the time). Yelling about how she thinks she can wear Betsey Johnson but she cannot wear Betsey Johnson; I am the girl who wears Betsey Johnson! And we made out on the corner in our tattoos and piercings.
So go check out this book – I am going to get myself a copy and finish it.
I am so glad to know you read this blog, and for that, I want to share a little thanksgiving:
