Clothing (or lack thereof)

I have a post-Oscars confession to make: I like clothes. It's actually a rather recent phenomenon, as my sense of style in high school and the first year of college was disastrous. My idea of a nice top was a V-neck with 5% spandex of some pastel-ish color; jeans were old or hand-me-downs; shoes were flip-flops, Reeboks, or black chunky heels with a square covered toe. Most of the time though, I just banged around in my riding clothes. Of course, I know that equestrian stuff is fashionable nowadays, but not dirty paddock boots with old tan breeches and a red Huskers sweatshirt. Needless to say, Vogue did not call me for a photo shoot.

As to hair and make-up in those Neanderthal days, I wore chapstick, mascara, and brushed my hair 2-3 times a week. I washed my hair, put it in a ponytail, wore it that way all day, slept, and started the whole cycle over again. Only for the sake of my scalp would I actually take a brush to it. (Upon going to get a semi-annual/annual haircut, the stylist always looked at my ends and said, "Do you swim in chlorine, like, everyday?" When I explained that I swim but rarely, the stylist says, "Oh honey, your ends are so bad." Quite honestly, I enjoyed making the stylist feel that he or she had made a difference in the world by giving me fresh-clipped ends.)

Any of the hard-earned cash that I could have spent on trendwares at the mall was spent on horses, so I made myself quite content with my wardrobe. Most of the great unwashed (aka as "males" in my dictionary) in my small town liked girls that didn't wear make-up and looked like they just stepped off of a soccer field; I doubt that my dating life would have been any more promising in high school if I had gotten with the popular program.

This was not the case, however, in college. Arriving at a private Christian school as a 17 year old (nearly 18) was somewhat of a culture shock. I hardly knew what affluence was until I looked around and saw the Coach bags, Uggs, Gap sweaters, and North Face jackets. The pitiful gathering of clothes in my closet could not make an honest showing amongst such splendor. But alas, unless one is, inactuality, affluent, one cannot turn one's wardrobe on a dime (excuse this ridiculous pun). I wore my tired old t-shirts and four year old sneakers around with some measure of reluctance. Once, when I bought a new brown t-shirt--quite cottony and non-descript--one of the more stylish girls of my acquiantance said that the shirt looked "fresh," as if my other shirts were "moldy" or "moth-eaten" or just plain old.

With my instinctive sense of Darwin's principles of survival of the fittest and natural selection, I began to gradually accumulate a wardrobe that some might describe, considering my budget of Christmas and birthday money, as quite accomplished. I like both classical and eccentric combinations, and I also make an effort to brush my hair at least once a day. I've started to enjoy looking nice; sue me if I like to look groomed and feminine. I may have ended up, inadvertently, appearing disturbingly similar to some of those blase, cookie-cutter Christian private school girls, but at least I no longer exist on the fashion outskirts.

If I wanted to, I could end the post right here. However, as you may have noticed, the eye-catching title of this entry has to do with both clothing and non-clothing. This is the non-clothing section, mostly prompted by an unpleasant experience that I had today at that great bastion of American fitness, the YMCA. Perhaps because I enjoy clothes, I simply can't understand why people don't rush to get into them. Allow me to explain: after swimming a few laps at the Y, I went back to the adult women's locker room to get a shower and head back into the world of rational, sugar-eating people. However, upon opening the door from the pool to the locker, I was immediately assaulted by more naked mothers and post-mothers than I should ever care to share space with again. I really just thought that it was men that liked having conversations and acting like things were normal when they were naked. Apparently I have been misinformed. Women were walking around in all states of undress and couldn't have cared less, no matter how wrinkly or pudgy they were. One completely naked skinny woman in her 40s stood about a foot from a large woman wrapped in an enormous towel and proceeded to have a conversation with her for about 10 minutes. What is the purpose of this? Does not this exercise in socialization make you the least bit uncomfortable? Why not use a towel? I made it a point to shower in my one-piece, skuttle over to my locker, and throw on gym pants and a t-shirt over my wet suit. I don't know any of you people, so I am sure as heck not gonna hang around naked. Sorry.

I am sorely tempted to offer more details on this subject, but I find myself crossing the limits of family-friendly blogdom. Too much Comedy Central maybe.

Cobra Lounge

Last night I went to the Cobra Lounge.* I know it sounds strange, mostly because it was. I actually planned to have some people over that evening, but it seems that most were busy, so only a few people stopped over. However, they ended up being the right people, because they offered to take me along to an indie rock concert at the Cobra Lounge. The band calls themselves the Sad Tropics, and while their name is cool, I wasn't particularly impressed with them.
I seem to be getting ahead of myself though. Before arriving at said Lounge, we had to take an hour and a half trip on the L into downtown Chicago. I've ridden the L plenty of times, and I enjoy it quite a bit, especially when I'm by myself. Everyone has an aura of mystery about them, because the only connection that you have to them, the only thing you know about them, is that you're heading in the same direction. This reality makes me intensely curious, and I find myself imitating the truly creepy by listening to cell phone conversations, scrutinizing clothing to determine class, and observing how each person passes the time. I didn't have the luxury of this kind of repose on this trip, however, because I was with two other people, and our space was most rudely invaded by another.
A homeless black man boarded our car at one of its early stops, and sat down directly across from us. He offered to sell us dish soap or laundry detergent for 5 bucks...or 3 bucks, or 2 bucks. According to his words, he needed the funds for bus fare. According to his breath, he needed the funds for drink. When all three of us subsequently refused to buy his wares, he looked at us and said, "All three of you ain't got anything? One of you is lyin'!" When he began to rant about something, I broke eye contact with him, hoping that he would move down the car. Instead, he looked at me and said, "Look at me when I'm talking to you, babycakes." I looked at him, feeling like I had no other option. "Now, listen to me. I'm white, and you black. I'm white, you black." This got the attention of the whole car, black and white alike. Uhhh... "I was born in New York City, you was born in Mississippi. No matter what color you is, your blood run red. If you was in a hospital, and I gave you blood, you would need it. It would look the same. The exact same."
Seeing that he had an audience, the man changed the subject and looked at my friend Roselyn. "OK, I got a question for you. You and I is married. We married, and we are handcuffed together. Now, I walk 950 yards with you up a mountain. How do I get down?"
People in the train started guessing, everything from sledding down to taking a zip-line (that was my guess). Each time he would say, "No, no...go back to school! Go back to school!" Once we had exhausted all options, he said, "Ok, I'm gonna teach you somethin'. I'm gonna teach you somethin'--I jumped down that mother-f---in' mountain!" Everyone started laughing, and he seemed mostly pleased. He turned to Roselyn again and said, "But you and I, we're still handcuffed together. And at the bottom of the mountain is a lake. We gotta swim across it. But there is a cobra there. A cobra with a big head. And he gonna eat yo' soul out!" Roselyn started laughing into her scarf. "Oooh, you laughin' now, but you ain't gon' be laughin' when he eat yo' soul out!"
He proceeded to ramble about several other things, and the three of us seemed to silently agree that we should simply listen to him. He was probably lonely and didn't have people to listen to him that often. Once, he talked about how he should have become the principal of a school. "If I was a principal, the first thing I would do is fire all the teachers. Then I would fire all of the students." Later on, he talked about how he went to jail for three years. "But whatever I did to get into prison for three years, I won't ever do it again. Nope. Never again."
Eventually he seemed to run out of material, so he offered to sell us the soap and detergent again. We said no, and as he moved down the car, he promised to come back.
Soon afterwards, we changed to the pink line and left our friend behind. We were that much closer to the Cobra Lounge.
After we arrived and showed our IDs to the bouncer at the door, we had to muscle our way through hundreds of slightly schnockered concert/bar-goers. We were able to get to the front of the crowd and enjoy (*cough* *cough*) Sad Tropics for their remaining five songs or so.
I took a look at the people in the crowd. Roselyn and I tenatively agreed that they were most hipster punk. There were lots of pretty girls with funny face piercings, and even a guy with curly brown locks in a Ramones t-shirt and bowler hat. No one was particularly rowdy, except a Puerto Rican at the bar. He kept yelling things at the band, and when I approached the bartender for a water, he half-pushed some guy towards me and said, "I love this guy." Cool. Real cool.
The next band came on, and they proved to be excessively foul-mouthed. We left soon afterwards.
Our train ride back wasn't quite as fun as the first, although it was still interesting. There were plenty of drunk future yuppies in our car that got off at the Loyola stop. But that story is for another time.




*That sounds conspicuously like the opening line of Rebecca: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

a little perspective

Since I’ve moved to the Chicago area, I’ve had astonishing luck with finding my way around, especially for someone who has a less-than-average sense of direction. Each outing, up until today, has been accomplished without making too many U-turns or frustrated lane changes. But I should have known that I would break my streak today, especially when I woke up late for my appointment. One of the only clichés that I feel quite comfortable using is, “When it rains it pours.”
I had a Doctor’s appointment today to get a TB screening. My alarm clock decided not to go off, so I woke up 15 minutes before I was supposed to be there. I threw on clothes, put a red ribbon around my unwashed hair, got directions, and jumped in my car for what was to be a five-minute trip. When the five-minute trip turned into a twenty-minute one, I started to get angry. I cursed mapquest, the health center, and my alarm clock—I would miss my appointment. After a few minutes of seething, I began to calm down. I pulled off to a Walgreen’s to ask for directions and decided to relax. I couldn’t do anything to control the situation, so I might as well look at it as a mini-suburban adventure.
Outside the sliding doors there was a black woman dressed in a black coat, holding a ratty looking stuffed orange tiger. She looked at me and asked me if I could spare some change, “Please, I’m hungry and my feet hurt.”
On principle, I don’t give money to people on the street. I don’t know who they are, I don’t know their situation, and I don’t know what they will use it for. Even when I was in Ethiopia, when mothers with breastfeeding babies would hold out their hands when our bus stopped, “Money, please, money, please…mother, money, please,” I would turn away. And this was essentially what I did today. I look at the woman, gave a tight-lipped, apologetic smile, tucked my head down, and walked into the store.
The old woman with watery eyes who stood at the counter wasn’t sure where to find the health center, but she listened intently as I asked. “What is the address again?” I repeated it, and as she rubbed her watery eyes, trying to think of what to tell me, I noticed two white men enter the store, the one saying to the other, “Yeah right, like I’m gonna give money to her. Her feet hurt…whatever.”
When the old woman provided more confusion than direction, an asian woman who had just finished checking out asked me if I had called information. “How do you do that?” I asked, immediately wanting to follow up the question with an explanation: I’m sorry, I’m from a small town, I don’t know how to do these things. She dialed a number, extended her thin black Razor to me, and waited patiently. Of course, at that point, my luck would continue, and I thoroughly screwed up the automated information call. I apologized as I handed the phone back to her. “Oh, it’s ok. I’ll just call them again.” As she took over the phone, I watched a black couple negotiate their several grocery bags and two small, tired children on their way out of the store. The man said to the woman, “Please, baby, I just need you to take this. I can’t carry any more,” and I was touched by the lack of irritation in his voice, despite the crankiness of his children. After reaching an operator on the information line, the asian woman with the nice purse proceeded to write down the address of the health center on the back of her Walgreen’s receipt and hand it to me. I thanked her profusely and walked out the door.
On my way out, I saw the black woman with the cranky children hand a bill to the woman with the tiger. The tiger woman said “Thank you,” and the mother said, “You’re welcome. Oh honey, don’t cry,” and I turned to see the woman’s shoulders heaving and tears forming at the corners of her eyes.
I wondered what would have happened if I walked into Walgreen’s to ask for directions, and I was black. Would the old woman have regarded me so kindly? Would the asian woman have offered her cell phone? Would she have tried so hard to help me?
I wondered if maybe God allowed me to wake up late, to get lost, and to take a little detour. I was forty minutes late for my appointment, but I got in anyway. The frustration of a few inconveniences was worth a little bit of perspective at Walgreen’s.

Wisdom and how I got rid of it

There happen to be several Johnny Depp fans in my family. Though we are all women, we claim that our devotion to him is not just based on his looks, but also his undeniable talent as an actor. From Edward Scissorhands, to Secret Window, even to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Johnny Depp has got it goin' on. And yet, for some reason, none of us felt particularly moved to see Sweeney Todd. The association between music and carnage for-the-heck-of-it, or carnage in-lieu-of-a-cosmetic-service, was too weird even for those of us who fell in love with previous freakish portrayals.

But I began to change my mind about this Sweeney Todd character a few weeks ago. It probably began in my sister's room, when she was rehearsing for her role as a bee-bop girl in the musical, Little Shop of Horrors. Listening to a house plant munch on human victims, against the backdrop of a Broadway score, struck me as wholly amusing, entertaining even. However, lest I be labeled as a mentally deranged sadist, I should point out that the musical has entertained lots of other people who paid boku bucks to sit in a theater seat and watch Seymore feed unsuspecting, and sometimes willing, victims to a mutated Venus flytrap who occasionally breaks into song.

My reconsideration of Depp's most recent endeavor continued when, a few days after laughing my way through a horrific musical, I had my wisdom teeth removed. Despite my high pain tolerance, I was very nervous about this rather common procedure. This is because good ol' Dr. P. only planned to employ laughing gas and Novacaine in the sedation process, instead of the general anesthetic that the majority of my friends experienced. Instead of gaining admission to complete La-La Land, I would only be allowed into the Twilight Zone. I promised my mother to walk into his office and begin a wholehearted rock rendition of "I wanna be sedated" to convice him that his dentristry methods were medieval, if not prehistoric. Unfortunately, I wimped out at the last minute and allowed an indignant, and arrogant, Dr. P. to convice me that I would be just fine with a few shots and silly gas. I resigned myself to this by forcing a laugh and saying, "I just don't want to feel any pain, that's all." With a straight face, Dr. P. responded, "Oh, I never feel any pain when I perform surgeries." I kept waiting for a punch line, or at least for a juvenile, "Just kidding," but it never came. He simply had his assistant slap the gas mask on me while he prepped the long needles. To him, the argument was won and the carnage could begin.

While my head spun at his complete lack of bedside manner, I simultaneously began to cue up my sister's mp3 player. Interestingly enough, this is the same sister who will be co-starring in the bloody plant musical. Earlier in the day, I had decided that if my efforts to obtain general anesthesia failed, I would at least enjoy some music while large teeth were being ripped out of my head. The mp3 player isn't quite as nice as a genuine iPod, so it's impossible to control which songs will be playing when. It's on permanent shuffle mode. I anticipated hearing everything from Justin Timberlake to gospel music to Annie Lennox.

At this point in the story, I would really like to tell you that I am now in the middle of a malpractice suit against Dr. P. I would like to tell you that I began screaming in the middle of an Nsync ballad when my mandible nerve was jarringly damaged. I would like to tell you that I saw a chisel and hammer pulverize my wisdom teeth as I sang "Waiting for my Rocket to Come" by Jason Mraz in my head. I would like to tell you that I will never again have control of my lower lip, and that my chin is eternally numb.

The truth is that, other than some annoying pressure, I didn't really feel a thing and have since healed nicely. And in actuality, for someone with an active and occasionally literary imagination, listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack while my gums were being sawed into was both an enlightening and surreal exercise. When Dr. P. asked how I was doing mid-surgery, I slurred, "I like the music," and then promptly lapsed back into an excessively relaxed state.

If it didn't cost so much money, and I also had several other wisdom teeth, I might compile dentist chair mixes on the mp3 player and schedule bi-monthly appointments just to experience the odd union between emotionally evocative music and potentially painful procedures. But in the absence of both money and extra wisdom teeth, I will probably settle for a viewing of Sweeney Todd and a trip to the local high school to see Little Shop of Horrors. Relegate me to the demented ranks of Tim Burton if you will, but I'm just being painfully honest.

Decant Recant

I would like to partially recant my previous post about the lack of literary inspiration within a rural context--namely, Indiana. A dear friend of mine recently pointed out that good ol' Thoreau, may he rest in eternal and Waldenesque peace, lived in seclusion next to some pond for a while. Apparently he liked it and had a lot to write about it: all the "I did not wish to live anything that was not life" stuff. I guess my problem with writing in Indiana was not environmental, but rather lack of substantive literary skill and creativity.
So there, Rachel--I hope that to be adequate penance for my slander against your homestate. Notice that I did not write that Indiana provides superior writing material, only sufficient. I still maintain that cities, because of their diversity, present more bounteous inspirations.

aside

Also, quite briefly, since I am now 21, I decided to treat myself to a little drink as I watched the super bowl last night. Alcohol triggers my gag reflex, so I am trying to find ways to make it slightly more palatable. Last night I discovered that a quarter cup of white wine, with three quarters cup of Diet Coke suits me just fine: heavy on the Diet Coke, extremely light on the white wine. Plus, I threw a little ice in the glass.
Just so that everyone knows, when I took a career and personality test, I scored extremely low on the adventurous category. I say, why ferment the fruit juice when Sam's Choice grape juice tastes so much better?

times they are a'changin'

OK, so I know I haven't written a post in a while. I apologize. I have been jotting down ideas for posts here and there, but simply haven't gotten around to it. This is likely because I just graduated from college, moved, and am now seeking a job. It may be a few more days before I write something. However, because I am now living in a pseudo-city (Chicago suburb), I may have even more interesting material to work with, other than the monotony of Indiana. Finding something to write about while attending a small liberal-arts college in the middle of nowhere is comparable to trying to squeeze blood out of stone. Maybe. Some might categorize that statement as a hyperbole. But I would ask those people if they had ever lived in Indiana. End of story.