October 22
This month has been kind of shitty. I've been glum, chum and I can't exactly give an exact reason, only a bunch of abstracts: Angelo, my shitty, thankless, dead end job, the changing season, hating my weird hair. Whatever. You name it. Everything is all a little off. But, October is drawing to a close. I have high hopes for November. Next month, I'm flying out to Chicago for a wedding. It's a much anticipated break in my daily life, but--and this is a big but (heh, heh, I said "big but"), other than my own and the sad 2nd wedding of a hateful teenaged boyfriend's father, I have never actually been to a wedding. Oh, wait. Not true, either. I went to a wedding a few years back, but the people weren't friends of mine. Let me restate: I have never been a guest at a wedding when I've been friends with the bride and groom. My wedding expertise is limited, so, I've been kind of freaking out about what to wear.
Kerry and I (a bit of meta: Kerry's been a good friend and a constant read for years. She's a great person and I love her. The journaling community--such that it is--is a little more shitty because she's not around anymore) have been trying for--no shit, like two months to pick a Saturday to meet to try and do some wedding shopping between my house and hers: The King of Prussia mall. Unfortunately, she's got more of a weekend life than I, and we were never able to find a date to hook up, so I decided that it was time for me to grab my own reigns and go shopping.
Let's say, for argument's sake, that I am a Size 50. Of course, I am not, but hey, whatever. That's a piece of information you'll need to know--the size--so bear it in mind. Also, bear in mind that there are a lot of things I simply won't wear: Patterns. Flowers. Dots. Dresses. Stripes. Glitter. Sparkle. Pants with slits in the legs. Skirts to the knee. Stuff with studs. Wraparound skirts or shirts. Satin. Shit with big, weird buttons. Feathers. Wooly clothes. Fur lined stuff. Bunchy shirts. Lace. In other words, I have a very clear idea of what I won't wear, but no kind of real idea of what I will. Also, I have no kind of concept of what I really look like, because I almost never spend any time staring at myself in a mirror. I almost never try on clothes or bras. I grab and go.
I start in Macy's, though I know that each time I've ever shopped there, it's ended in sadness. This time, I reasoned, I am looking for a suit! A suit is exactly what I need. It can be dressed up or dressed down. I can wear a sassy shirt underneath the jacket, and I'll be great. Ugh. I was not great. I was tubby and sad. Macy's: Fuck You.
I move to Filenes. I'm in a bit of a frenzy, because I'm surrounded by long, electric purple gowns, gaudy, sheer dresses with fluffy star-shaped appliques. It's a mess. I start grabbing suits. I grab and grab and grab. I grab the type of suit I love, and always try on knowing fully well that it ends badly. Let me describe it to you: the whole thing is irrelevant, whether it's pants or a skirt, unimportant. The important part is the jacket: it's long, long long, almost to the ankles. It's fitted in the waist, and it's lovely. IN A SIZE 8, not a size 50. In a size 50? No matter how I stare at myself, no matter how I whirl around in the dressing room, no matter how I suck it in or smash down my tits or stand on tip toe, no matter how fiesty the shirt I pair it up with, it looks AWFUL. I am heartbroken. As always. I yank the jacket off and stomp the pants down. I hang the whole thing back up on the 15 complicated hangers. I stare at my almost naked self. I vow---VOW--that I'm going to get through this without getting angry, so I remove the next suit off the hanger. It's not a style I'd ordinarily go for--a black jacket and skirt, but one that comes with a white, buunchy fabric camisole to wear under the jacket. By white, I am speaking of a pinky, sort of purile peachy thing, and, fortuitiously, both the jacket and the skirt are lined in such a way that the gross, vaginal pinky peach color is exposed.
I try the whole thing on, hoping for the best. As I pull the jacket on, I look in the mirror, and I am so, so, so very wrong: the outfit, my hair, my bare feet with Turdmonster tattoo showing, it's all so overwhelmingly bad, I bust up laughing. The more I look at myself, the harder I laugh. I stand in the fitting room, surrounded by almost identical black suits, shrieking with laughter. I laugh for so long and hard I make myself cry. I am so loud, the somnolent saleswoman comes in from the almost empty floor and asks me if I'm allright. "Fine!" I gasp, but can not stop laughing. I look like a short sloppy haired, chubby Joan Collins circa 1984 Dynasty. I lack only the tacky heels and gigantic rhinestone jewels. The shoulder pads are practically to my chin. For about 10 seconds, I consider buying it. I have almost never seen a piece of clothing that actually fit me look quite so horrible. Filenes: Fuck you.
I wander sadly around the mall looking into stores that offer me nothing I need. Conversely, if I was a streetwise 16 year old looking to break into the wide world of becoming a hooker, these would be exactly perfect. Stores wherein the blouses, such that they are are fashioned from springy, skin tight fabrics and the pants are designed to accent the thong. I am too old, too fat, and too bitter to make eye contact with these girls. I am also running out of department stores. It goes without saying that J.C. Penny is exempt from any and all shopping trips, right? It goes without saying that I can not imagine myself being in a clothing situation desperate enough to merit a stroll through J.C. Penny.
Think about the people at the mall who've turned to J.C. Penny. What does your mind conjure up? That's right. Just like Sears: Nerds. Dorks. Geeks. Squares. The 50's. People in short pants and illfitting flannel shirts, underwear pulled up over the tops of their pants. Middle aged women with too-tight perms in dog shirts and stained sweat pants, dragging their angry faced children who will, someday in the not so distant future drag their own angry faced children into J.C. Penny. They are all angry, of course, because they are shopping in J.C. Penny: there aren't any brands there. Oh, Wrangler, Sonoma, Lee, sure. You may claim that they're brands, but really. REALLY. They aren't. Commercials are run on televsion constantly, trying to convince us all that people who shop there aren't marrying their second cousins, living on disability and watching reruns of the Jeffersons day and night. The store gives off a whiff of desperation, palpable from 100 feet away and that, my friends, is why I won't ever go into J.C. Penny.
My last hope was Lord & Taylor, a slightly snotty (for those who don't know about it) department store from which I have never, ever purchased a single thing. Ever. Immediately, I find several not horrible things. I load up and stagger off to the dressing room. Not horrible on the hanger is often the exact opposite of what happens when the article of clothing is placed onto my body. I can not decide whether it's the clothes pretending to be nice, or whether it's me IN the clothes which makes them horrible. I suspect it's the latter.
I finally settle on a long black skirt. I pair it with a snazzy looking red silk shirt. The skirt still looks nice, but the shirt, sadly, is too small. I wonder, as I spin around, whether or not it's REALLY too small, or whether it's okay small, provided I don't walk around all slouchy the way I usually do, or if it's REALLY too small, and I'll be unable to wave my arms around and boogie.* As I'm standing there critically examining myself from all angles (you know what freaks me out? Seeing the back of my head. When I'm in a place with mirrors set up in such a way that I'm able to see both my front AND back, it's very very strange, and I don't like it one bit. I'm always like "Damn, my dye job is BAD. Bah! What's up with my PART?! Woah, look at my calves!!", but I digress.) SO, as I'm standing there, contemplating the tightness of the shirt, I notice a weird smell. The smell is not me, but it's coming from me. It's the faintest touch of wet dog. I sniff the possibly too tight shirt and find the culprit. The shirt smells like wet dog.
I have had strange experiences with silk clothing before. I once owned a really nice, fancy sweater that always smelled of rancid sheep, no matter how often it was washed, or what was sprayed in it, and because of this I am perhaps a little bit hypersensitive on the subject of stinky silk. Someday, if you have not already, you will experience this and you'll remember back to my warning, and you will say "A hah! Dana was NOT full of shit! Some silk really DOES stink!" Some silk stinks. I have no idea why. Anyhow.
I go to the rack, and take a smell. All of them. Wet dog. That makes the decision for me. I find a shirt I don't like quite as well, and I am done, three hours after I started.
You know what? Shopping can blow me.
*I have no way of knowing whether or not there will be any need for me to be waving my arms around at this particular get together. I can't imagine that I'll be doing a lot of boogying, either. One can never tell, though. I'm sure it'll be more likely that I boogie than that I wave my arms around. Unless there's a bee. Or I'm having a seizure.
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