Fashion, Far Too Forward

IM with my Boss Friday morning:

yk: Dude, your jeans have contrast-colored, detail stitching on your crotch, in vaguely obscene shapes! Where did you get those jeans?! I'm not offended, or touchy, or sexual harassment or anything - but I wondered if you knew you were wearing club-wear to work

boss: did you see the black light under my desk???
boss: did = didn't

yk: Riiiight. So GLOWING, vaguely obscene contrast-colored detail stitching. WAaay better. Just keep you knees together / legs crossed in any meetings with women today.

boss: thanks for making me extremely self conscious

yk: All in a days work.
yk: Jeans USED to be so uncomplicated....

boss: and they used to cost $19.95

yk: I just wanted you to know that if you caught me snickering, it wasn't anything personal.

boss: ok, no worries, snickering away

Charisma

I woke up deeply startled a few days ago to this thought, "I will never again get to rescue the Boy."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was in fourth or fifth grade I met a New Boy. You know...or, well, you might not...But it is important that it NOT be the boys you've been going to private, Catholic school with since kindergarten. The ones who try to get you to swing across the monkeybars so they can look up your plaid skirt. The ones you played Lego Pirate Ship with.

No this has to be a New Boy...one who doesn't know you're an uncool Tomboy. One who doesn't go to your school. One that is blonde and handsome. One who likes to use his imagination to read and play D&D. And hopefully one who thinks you're cool...or at least not TOO annoying... because you like those things too.

This Boy was my Ideal of Manhood from the day I met him until I fell in love with my husband. Quite a few boyfriends got short shrift because of this boy. I wrote dozens of letters and bad poetry for this Boy (I still have them all). Mostly because he had "charisma."

I would watch him, when allowed to tagalong with that slightly older crowd. Everyone laughed around him. Everyone looked at him. Everyone seemed - like me - to want to touch him, all the time.

And he was so different. Unlike the other boys, who would slap your hand away, or sling an insult, this boy was comfortable in a puddle of friends. Yes...Puddle. After hours on a D&D adventure, a mystery adventure...I honestly don't remember what we played at all the time...this Boy, and a few others would allow me into their "puddle" of all curling up, singing or laughing or just watching the stars young people. Such a warm, kind Boy.

He is still an amazing Boy. Well, okay Man (but in my head, he's that Boy).

In fact, realizing that this Boy would never be My Boy was instrumental in the realization that my husband was, in fact, perfectly suited to be My Boy. But that's another story...

This story has a happy ending, because the New Boy, who never was My Boy, found and wooed His Girl...and this June they got married.



I know. You're thinking "He's not Blonde...?" The east coast ate his blonde hair. He laughs and says one reason he is my friend after all these years is because I'm the only person who still always remembers him as blonde. I don't think of him as just blonde. In my heart he is in every way golden.

Actually he's my friend because I like to keep things. I try to treat the cherished trinkets of my life as I want to be treated - I want them to know they are loved, and I won't loose interest. Won't be blinded by new shinier baubles. I keep memories, and that helps me keep people. Memories like these:

The old greenhouse on D's property down the street. High shelves originally for plants, now a fort for us kids: D, the Boy, me...there may have been others, but I wouldn't remember them. Couldn't remember anyone when the Boy was there. Singing. The Boy would just sing, sweet and beautiful songs at any old time, but especially at night, even with no campfire. Just because singing is beautiful...and his voice...so beautiful it makes me cry...

OR

There is hair growing under my right armpit, but not my left. At thirteen I know I'm probably one of the last girls in my Jr. High class to get my period, but I don't care, and I don't want to think about it. I'm too embarassed to even think about it, especially after a conversation my mother has tried to have with me in the car about something her OBGYN has said when they were talking about me and being tall for my age: My mother talks about me to her Doctor! Mortifying.

P.E. is over and I hate, hate, hate Mr. Messineo for making us run all up and down the hilly campus. I'm so sweaty in my crotch I feel like I've peed my pants...and when I finally get one of the two coveted dark, close stalls go to pee...there is blood on my white underpants. And I start to shake. And they are cold when I pull them up against my skin again, which feels disgusting. It never occurs to me to tell any of the other girls. To ask any girls in my class for help.

I have an audition downtown for a play, and I'm supposed to change into "free clothes," not my private school uniform. I know my mint green "Thriller" buckled pants are going to show the blood...what can I do? What can I do? I know what I have to do, but I don't even know how I know.

I go to the office. I'm hoping Tina is there - I've known her since I was in Kindergarten, I'm comfortable with her, but no, it is Mrs. Dalmark - Jill's mom, and now everyone in the whole school will know I've gotten my period. I say I've gotten my period - how I blurted it out I have no idea - and I ask for a pad. She tries to be kindly and asks if I know how to use it. I say I do...but when I go into the clean, bright little bathroom off the office, both sides seem sticky. I have no idea what to do. Oh well. At least it will keep more blood from getting onto my pants, and I can go to my audition. I don't even remember how I got there - my mom must have taken me, but I didn't tell her anything. Too terribly, horribly embarrassed by my secret.

And there is the Boy, and for one moment that day I am so excited. Thrilled with adrenaline surprise and relief. Someone safe who I can tell my horrible secret to. Someone kind and warm who I trust after all these years and...There he is, surrounded by a group of pretty girls and boys, all older than me. In the hall of the Unitarian Church, where we are all gathering for Peace Child Auditions. I hear him sing and I see him surrounded by friends and I am now again shaking with fear that he will see the bloodstains, and I will be disgusting and embarassing to him. I do not even say hi. I watch him the whole time, wanting be near him, and hear him sing...sing to me, but going nowhere near him on the first day of my first period.

OR

Left turn onto Carillo in J's beatup, silver Datsun. Just J and me having lunch together before going back to the another class of work on the high school newspaper. Going for Pizza, with his blonde hair and my brown hair being sucked out the open windows. After the turn, I see a figure in black, bright gold hair, sitting on a low sandstone wall, reading.

Suddenly I am screaming, "Pull over! Pull over!" and hanging half out of my window crying the Boy's name. The unexpected sight of him supercharges me with a brand of excitement reserved for him alone. After a bewildered J pulls the car to a stop, I burst from it, running madly down the street and SURPRISE! He didn't hear me call as we drove - too engrossed in his book. I got to surprise him, and make him smile at me...that smile...and a promise to see him later...before running back to my lunch date, and trying to explain the Boy to J. Unpleased J, though it never ocurred to me at the time why...

OR

After I could drive, I got to "rescue" the boy. That's how I always thought of it. His parents lived up in the hills, and he was forever without transportation, sometimes without companionship. He would call my house to see if I wanted to hang out with him and give him a ride home. Did I ever! I'd pick him up from the bookstore he haunted and drive with him up into winding Santa Ynez mountains.

Mountainsides of chaparral and sandstone boulders passed, glowing in moonlight, until we plunged into a close, dark hairpin turn edged on all sides by a stand of live oak trees. So high above the town, it was often hot and windy with Santa Ana's at his house, and I loved to be there, caressed by the hot wind.

He slept in a small wedge of loft off his step dad's office. My mom was so cool: She trusted me completely, and I got to sleep there with him a few times, all curled up in that space that smelled so good to me, and was so full of Him.

If all of that sounds innocent and pathetic, I have to say it was. And when I was a bit older, I regretted that. Regretted for years not trying harder to have more of the Boy or make him mine.

Of course I know now, with a greater experience of love and sex that the Boy and I were never traveling in the same direction, at the same time. Even if I was his type (and yes, after seeing a few girlfriends, I have to say that he does have a type, and I am not it), we would never have been in love. Even if I had somehow managed to convince him to have sex with me in between the more accessible people I was "in love" with, he was unattainable, because of him, because of geography, and because of me. Who wants to destroy their golden idol by actually touching it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"He has a wife. Soon he will have children, a new career, a new family. He will never again need to be rescued, by me or anyone else. He won't find himself alone, or lonely, and needing a friend. He is beloved, and supported, and cared for...just like I am by my husband, my best friend.

I am so happy for him.

And it huuuuurts!!! Letting go of that imaginary responsibility - the thrilling possibility of being called upon to save someone - even from loneliness, even from boredom...free of the calling...oh, deep inside it huuurtsss......"

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Not Ready To Leave...

...my hotel room. After a few days here, I'm nice and safe; I found a radio station I can deal with, I have lots of clean towels, and the bed finally holds the impression of my frame enough that I slept the whole night through.

But it is almost time to go, and really I'm just stalling because if I'm not sitting here, then I'm sitting in the airport. Much less interesting. Although there are people there, and I'd be doing the same things (well, not blogging, as there's no guarantee of internet access).

But I *would* in fact be reading (most of what I've been doing this morning). Enjoying another great new book, Wit's End, by Karen Joy Fowler, whose Jane Austen Book Club I enjoyed so much. Wit's is also great...so compelling, that I had to tear myself away to get my teeth brushed and the last few little things packed. I'm quite grateful I didn't start it until the end of my trip - I would certainly not have been as on-my-game for work if I was constantly sneaking out for a 5 minute read-break...

Should I admit I do that sometimes? When the book is truly as well-written and engrossing as this one is? Well, this book is also conducive to that: Lots of short segments, so it is easy to set down and pick up. But I don't want to.

Really the reason I wanted to blog today was that I had other confessions to make. I did a truly, consciously anti-social thing: I put a half hamburger bun in the toaster at my hotel kitchenette...and it already had ketchup and mustard on it. There's no chance the condiment-side wouldn't touch the coils. Anyone staying in this room in the future is going to get just a little spice to their toast.

I thought about this before I did it, and I TOLD myself it was anti-social, unfair to the next person...but for all I know, someone has done the same thing before me, and I was getting a little bit of who-knows-what on the top side of my bun. In my head it is the same conversation I have when deciding whether or not to report the fairly serious trickle from the bathtub to the hotel owners. Well, I haven't done that yet, but I WILL let them know as I leave - a decidedly unnecessary waste of water. I didn't shower each day I was here, so maybe that makes up for it.

Nearly everything is packed, the suitcases are MUCH lighter, because I was good, and I ate most of the food I brought with me, and stuck primarily to my diet. I have been awake for hours because unfortunately, I awoke to one of those you-want-to-be-completely-organized-but-you-know-that-you're-not
mini-panic moments, and I thought that maybe I had my flight time wrong - YIKES!

But no, I got up and double checked; And double-checked...and couldn't really go back to sleep. It is going to make being on CA time especially hard, I know, but oh well. Time to post, close up the computer and go. And who knows - maybe there WILL be wireless at the airport...?