August 20
 

I'm going away a couple times between next week and September (and by a couple, I mean two, not like 15 or something).  Next week, I'm going to Chicago for what is shaping up to be the Wedding of The Century (if only going by the planning that's gone into it which is about the opposite of my wedding to Nick, wherein he was like "I Love You!! Let's get MARRIED!"  and I was like "I LOVE YOU TOO!! OK!!!" and everything got picked really quickly because we are not fussy or particular and really just wanted to be married and didn't so much have very strong opinions about things.  Except that we were Anti-Chicken Dance. We made up for the no chicken dance by playing both Cotton Eye Joe [truly an awesome song, so just you hush up] and The Time Warp [Nick was a big RHPS goer in HS, I don't believe I gave a shit one way or another, and sat out the Time Warp].  Jesus, this was a lot of parenthetical stuff.  Perhaps I should have given it a whole new paragraph, but fie on that.) Right, so the much anticipated wedding of Hot Erin and perhaps one of the nicest guys I've ever met in my life, Erik.  (Note: I am not just saying that to suck up, because he can get me into control towers at airports to get a better view of potential plane crashes, either.  He is truly a kind and cool person.  He was an angel of drunken mercy the last time I was in Chicago bringing me vitamins and juice as I lay on their guest bed, moaning sadly.)

Um.  I am really losing track of myself here.  I'm going to Chicago last week, and I decided yesterday somewhere between 1 and 3:00 that I needed some new clothes.  That I could not POSSIBLY GET ON A PLANE TO CHICAGO WITH THE SAME OLD CRAP THAT I'D BEEN WEARING ALL SUMMER.

(Hang on, I didn't mention the other trip--which is in September--to Atlantic City for two nights.  A bunch of us are going [if not you, well, I'm sorry.  Ask and maybe we'll invite you].  And once again, I am going to be there on Miss America weekend.  How does that ALWAYS HAPPEN?  In case you all doubted my coolness, I made the reservations sometime last month for the room, and was perfectly ok with splitting the cost with whoever was staying in my room with me for the two nights.  Last week, I get a thing in the mail from the casino COMPING ME FOR ONE OF THE NIGHTS.  Am I a badass or WHAT?)

After work I tore ass to the mall to start looking for Clothes That Wouldn't Make Me Look Stupid (no easy task, as you might imagine).  I began in Lord and Taylor.  They had clothes that, were I willing to spend an assload of money, might make me look as though I was going to go watch a rousing game of tennis or drive my Volvo through middle class neighborhoods, pointing and giggling at people doing lawn work.  They had clothes that I, at 33 years old with aging hipster-clinging-to-youth-bright red hair, could not wrap my brain around wearing, so off I went to every Fat Girl's most burningly shameful necessary store, Lane Bryant.

As always, I wandered around LB in a daze, kind of repelled and also enchanted by their selection.  What does the chunky sister working a job that's NOT say, fetching someone a drink in a fat fetish titty club wear?!  Where else could I appear at work in an imposssibly low cut wrap around neon green lycra shirt OTHER than a place where guys (or girls, I'm an equal opportunity fatty) try and tempt me with promises of sausage all night long?

God bless Lane Bryant, though.  They're really trying.  Only 3/4 of what they sell is now completely work inappropriate. If you go looking through their stuff, every once in a while you'll find an all cotton shirt! Or something made from silk! OR, really most importantly, something without that...business they do with the shirring up the sides and between the tits.  Do you know what I mean?  Where the fabric is all kind of bunched together, causing the article of clothing (let's say it's a shirt, because I can't even wrap my brain around a pair of shirred pants, to highlight the ASS or something) to--instead of being FLAT when you hang it--look as though it already has a tit filling it out.  That was a TERRIBLE description, but some of you will know what of which I speak.  The others, well--skip it.  All you need to know is that Lane Bryant are under the impression that since I am a Fat Girl, OBVIOUSLY the only thing I ever want anyone to look at are my tits, doy, so why NOT create an article of clothing which DRAMATICALLY SHOWS THEM TO THE ENTIRE WORLD?!  And while creating that article of clothing, why NOT make it in a mishmosh of colors!?!?  ANYTHING TO DIVERT THE EYES UP AND AWAY FROM THE ASS!!!

Let me get something out of the way right away.  Well, two things.  First, I'm almost 100 percent sure I don't look the way I think I look.  If you know me, and have seen how I dress, you would know that.  I'm not talking that I wear things that are too tight, which is a classic thing for Big Girls In Denial ("I'm no EXTRA LARGE!! Why, this MEDIUM has plenty of give!!!") but that because I don't look how I think I look, I might, JUST MIGHT, make some bad fashion choices.  Like, say, WHITE PANTS (this is an example, I have no white pants).  SECOND, I am not at all afraid to wear colors.  I have long since grown out of my "I wear black on the outside cause black is how I feel on the inside" stage, and I am perfectly happy to saunter around in light blue pants and a white shirt.  See? That's sort of BIG GIRL wrong.

I wandered around LB, trying to put together outfits in my mind.  "If I buy the cotton flowery shirt with the snaps, I'll need black pants, because clearly, jeans won't work! Too much blue!!"  and "Jesus christ, what the fuck is THAT?  What would I wear it with!?!"  when a saleswoman descended on me.  She sized me up and said "Honey, what is the MATTER? You look MISERABLE!".  I wailed "CLOTHES ARE OVERWHELMING!!!!".  She grabbed the stuff I was lugging around out of my trembling arms and said "Girl.  What you need is a PONCHO!!!"

I looked around the store, sort of frantically.  "A poncho?  I NEED one?!"  She nodded emphatically.  "Honey, a PONCHO is SEXY.  You married??"  I squeak out "Yes?"  eyes all wide.  "Then, girl"  she turns to a rack, removes a poncho and waves it like a matador "you NEED a poncho.  They show skin but NOT TOO MUCH and they make people wonder what's underneath!!"  "Fat?"  I reply.  She snorts.  "How long you been married??"    "8 years"  I whisper.  "Oh, HONEY.  You NEED a poncho!! It's gonna put all the ZING back in your relationship!!"

I am so mezmerized by the colors of the poncho, I barely notice when she jams it down over my head and whirls me around to face the mirror.  "Look, girl!! LOOK HOW HOT YOU LOOK!!!"

I look at myself skeptically.  I am wearing a light green striped shirt, a pair of way too big jeans and loafers, now topped with a gayly striped, fringed poncho.  I stare, wondering how me wearing a poncho will have any sort of effect--negative OR positive on my marriage.  I wonder, too, if the point of the poncho is to greet Nick at the door wearing ONLY the poncho and nothing underneath. "Guess what I've got on under this blanket with the hole cut out for my head, big boy!?!?  That's right, NOTHING.  It's ALLLLL poncho.  Now RAVAGE ME"  Except he will be so overcome with HORNY that I won't even have to SAY "Ravage ME!" because he will already have lifted the poncho and thrown me down on the kitchen floor.

I start grabbing at ponchos like they're going to run out, not because I'm thinking they're going to get me laid (because the truth of the matter is, I am pretty sure Nick will think the ponchos are extremely retarded and will make fun of me, whether I am butt ass naked in heels under there or not) but because I am so overcome with low level hysteria that I am in sort of a PONCHO TRANCE, and if ONE is good, TWO would be GREAT!   The saleswoman, Hope, nods at me like she's let me in on a tremendous sex secret.  I am so overwhelmed by the whole poncho thing that I don't even bother to try ON anything else I have in my arms, I just allow Hope to lead me to the counter and tally up my purchases.

On the way home, I snap out of it, somewhat, and begin to think of all the kicky ways I can WEAR the poncho!! With JEANS!!! With black PANTS!! With a SKIRT!!! (note to self: purchase poncho skirt).  I envision myself in Atlantic City, descending onto the gambling floor and sliding up to a blackjack table.  "You can not fuck around with me", my poncho says to everyone "I am a woman IN A PONCHO!!".  Aloud, I will say "Give me chips for 300 dollars, please.  My poncho tells me this table is lucky!"  Of course, I'll win a bitchload of money and a photo of me, smiling sagely in a poncho, will be mounted on the wall.  "BORGATA'S BIGGEST BLACKJACK WINNER EVER!!!"  the plaque will say.  People will want to pose with the poncho.  I sense a whole new changing of the guards going on in my life, and it's ALL BECAUSE OF THE PONCHO.
 

Except that I have NO idea what to wear underneath it.  I'm still working the kinks out.
 
 
 
 

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