Style Gone Wild

Tonight I had dinner in a small Thai restaurant in Chicago, and across from me sat a plump, twentysomething Asian woman with small animals hanging from her ears. I couldn't tell what type of animals they were—possibly pandas or cats or dogs, as they were bright black-and-white. She also wore a golfer's cap, a fluffy vest knitted in rainbow yarns, a short checkered skirt, and brightly colored tights. She carried a large bag with multicolored pictures of little animals all over it—again, I couldn't tell what kind of animals, but that's beside the point.

I like my style; I've learned over time how to choose clothes that flatter my form and suit my taste. But where did that taste originate? In part from my upbringing: my mother has always been so neurotic about her clothing's matchiness that she rarely buys anything that's not black, white, or gray. (The occasional red or burgundy sweater sneaks in.) Far from rebelling against my mom's fashion sense, I nurtured the same neurosis, my penchant for wearing all black and my membership in the theater geek club perhaps having been a chicken and egg situation. Only in recent years have I opened up to playing with color in my wardrobe and mixing tones that don't traditionally "match."

But my newly independent style still isn't an all-inclusive, anything-goes style. I have veered in directions that just plain didn't work: ruffles, pinks, poufy sleeves, and other girly embellishments made their way to the Salvation Army within months. So what is it about tailored menswear-like attire that "fits" me so well? Does it relate to my personality? Is it hormonal, a sign of my place on the male-to-female gender spectrum, like my love of baseball and old Westerns?

Our clothes, of course, affect not only our self-perception but other people's perceptions of us. I knew nothing about the woman in the Thai restaurant aside from her dress, yet I formed a strong sense of her personality and even her lifestyle based on it. The garments we use to cover our nakedness express that personality and lifestyle information in a flawed shorthand.

If I went to Thanksgiving dinner this year in an Outfit of Many Colors, with big, bright earrings and neon tights, my extended family would think something had gone horribly wrong—not only in my closet but also in my head. My coworkers and friends would react similarly. It would be fun to go crazy with clothes on occasion; spending a day in a different fashion persona would be like spending a day with a different personality—freeing and false, enlightening and disconcerting. Would the woman with the animals hanging from her ears like to spend a day in basic black pants and a gray sweater? And if she did, would those who know her think something was wrong—or would basic black be just another notch on her neon-pink, patent leather belt?

Dear Mrs. Peacock

Dear Mrs. Peacock,

I recognize that, at this point in time, you might be dead. I knew you thirtysomething years ago, and my impression of your age at that time is impressionistic at best. But my guess is that you were in your forties or beyond. So if you're not dead yet, you will be soon. Which makes it urgent that I at least try to communicate to you what I failed to say in that dark room all those years ago.

Have you thought of me? Have you wondered what kind of woman that skinny wavy-haired girl grew into after she left the hallowed halls of Tiny Tots? Did you imagine her, perhaps, as a criminal, a supervillain, a woman who would see a man hanging off a building ledge by his fingertips, cackle, and pry those fingertips off? Or grind her shoe into them, like Martin Landau in North by Northwest? That is more or less what that skinny wavy-haired girl did, isn't it?

I remember two things: the moment of accusation, and then the room. It began on the second floor of the playhouse, where, having exhausted the enjoyment potential of that level, I patiently waited my turn to climb out the two-by-two window and down the red plastic ladder to the floor below. The identity of the child in front of me—boy or girl, bully or innocent—is lost, squeezed out of my memory by you, but that child was the catalyst, crying out, pointing, whining: "She pushed me!"

I denied it at that moment, I'm sure I did, though shyness had already manipulated its way into my personality. When a woman of Mrs. Peacock's standing points her finger, even timidity falls away in the presence of the need to defend oneself against false accusation. "No!" I said. "I didn't!" I said that. I'm sure of it.

But to no avail. My memory jump cuts to that room, upstairs I think it was, which I shall describe as it exists in my memory, inaccurate though it may be. The room may have had pink and periwinkle walls, plush mini chairs in primary colors, paintings of dolphins or Star Wars characters or Thanksgiving turkeys on the wall. But none of that exists in my memory, and my memory is likely the only place that room still exists at all. So I might as well consider my version of it the truth.

I sat in an austere wooden chair, the slats digging into my back. You dimmed the lights, except for one exposed bulb hanging from a rope—100 watts for sure—that shone in my face with the intensity of a flashlight, swinging slowly as if the devil himself was blowing on it. You stood over me, sweat stains in your armpits, baton and cuffs hanging threateningly from your belt, and told me to confess. Or maybe it was to apologize. Either way, your MO was the assumption of guilt; never mind that I had already protested my innocence, sworn that the child had fallen without being pushed (or perhaps, I will admit, another child behind me had pushed me, causing me to inadvertently bump into the child at the top of the red ladder, which could be seen as causation but in no way described as "pushing").

So I was silent. I had argued my case in the urgent chaos of the playhouse and was too afraid to argue it again in the face of your angry certainty. We stayed in that room for hours, staring each other down, proving our mettle by not wiping off the perspiration, by not leaving to use the potty or get a glass of juice, by not giving in. You told me you were ashamed. That if I owned up to my crime, all would be forgiven. Whether out of timidity or out of pride in my innocence—or both—I gave you only silence. The heaviest silence a four-year-old could manage. I wonder how it weighed on you.

Did you change my life that day? Did you give me, at an early age, a taste of the arbitrariness of justice, the uselessness of truth, that would inform my weltanschauung through to adulthood? There must be a reason I remember that day as clearly as I remember the time my four-year-old self opened the car door at 40 miles per hour and almost fell out. Equally traumatic—but we all know, Mrs. Peacock, that emotional trauma has greater life-changing potential than mere physical trauma. So, in an effort to lift some of the weight that has sat on my own shoulders lo these thirty-one years, I give you this: I forgive you. I was innocent, and I forgive you.

What can you do to make it up to me, you ask? If that room still exists, Mrs. Peacock, take no child there without proof. Sit no child in that chair; tell no child she is guilty until proven innocent. Even tiny tots deserve due process.

I Saw Something Physically Impossible Today

At the corner of Sherman Street and 11th Avenue in Windsor Terrace. Note: there's stuff at the top of this pole that would make it impossible for the hoop to have been dropped from above. I suppose it has to come apart somewhere, but I didn't see any seam, so I prefer to think it was magic.

Please Don't Pack the Penguins

Seen on a recently received package: a delightful surprise of whimsical shipping iconography. Note the bow tie.

Consequences, Part IV

I am fourth in line in a pass-the-baton online writing game called Consequences, in which 11 fantastic writers each post a 250-word piece, beginning their leg with the final line of the previous post. The posts can be in any form and about anything we want, as long as they relate to a common theme: Abandoned Landscapes. Thanks to Wah-Ming Chang for administering this exercise with her ever-gentle iron fist.

Preceding me were Sam J. Miller, Jade Park, and Jane Voodikon. Next up: Anna Shapiro, who will post on wmcisnowhere.wordpress.com.

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I distinctly recalled hearing birds fighting, in normal bird squawk. How did I know they were fighting? No idea. Just one of those things you know even as you know you couldn't possibly, because birds sound the same whether they're fighting or telling knock-knock jokes or discussing politics.

The birds could have been in a dream—did they come before or after the talking deer?—but if I'd heard them for real, that meant the window was open. Which hadn't been the case last night. A telltale breeze blew over me, but I refused to open my eyes and see the other side of the bed. Even with my eyes closed I could tell it was empty. Which also hadn't been the case last night.

We'd known each other for three days—okay, not quite a relationship, but more than a one-night stand, which is something I would never engage in. I'd never even engaged in a third-night stand before, and now I'd woken to find my third-night stand having vacated the bed and escaped out the window, diminishing my hopes for a fourth night.

My apartment was on the second floor, and sneaking out would have been much easier via the front door than via the bedroom window. So how did I know he'd used the window? Same way I knew those birds were fighting, I guess. Besides, I hated to imagine the front door opening and closing—so banal. A leap out the window made the situation much more interesting.

On the Unreliable Narrator

"I'm making myself out to be a loony, unreliable narrator, which is the best kind of narrator to have, Jeeves. Allows you to get away with things, like not fact-checking. But he's not entirely unreliable. He's punctual and writes thank-you notes."

—Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir!

Hadley Had a Boyfriend

When Hadley was five, her father got a new job and moved the family from Los Angeles to Connecticut. Hadley cried for hours after saying goodbye to her boyfriend, Jeremy. They had met in nursery school, where Hadley's favorite game was messing up Jeremy's floppy sand-colored hair until he reciprocated by yanking on her long braid. They had looked forward to stepping over the threshold of kindergarten together, not knowing what to expect but knowing they would face it together, holding hands—always with Hadley's other hand clutching her stuffed pony, Jeremy's other hand lost in his Dodgers glove.

Instead Hadley faced kindergarten alone, in the unfamiliar orange of a New England fall, in a town where the other kids all knew one another from nursery school or music class or swimming lessons. But she was bubbly and liked to share her chewing gum, and her isolation lasted only a few weeks. Soon she found herself in an unexpected flirtation with Brandon, who had accidentally slammed her foot in a car door at a particularly rushed carpool pickup one morning. Her foot was fine, but the flame of his apologetic gaze seared her heart.

Brandon held her hand until halfway through first grade, and he brought her laughter and joy and sometimes jellybeans, but he never succeeded in making her forget about her first love, and finally broke things off when she refused to stop referring to Jeremy as "my other boyfriend."

Hadley's dating life was uneventful for a while as she focused on grades and jazz dance and rebuffing mildly violent attacks from her older brother. Jeremy's parents and her parents had been friendly in California, and she would see Jeremy every couple of years when his family would visit New York and come up to Connecticut for Sunday brunch at Hadley's house. She would show him her swing set and her jazz dance moves, and they would play catch, even though she wasn't very athletic, which didn't matter at first because of the excitement of once again being in each other's company. She continued to refer to him as her boyfriend to her friends and family, though never in Jeremy's presence—there was no need.

But as she edged closer to puberty, Hadley found herself dreading rather than eagerly anticipating these occasional visits, for relationships based on occasional visits rarely work even for adults, much less for the young, with their ever-evolving personhood. Jeremy's obsession with his Little League stats proved tiresome (though she took heart in their agreement about the plain common sense of the designated hitter rule). Likewise, he found her love of horses too predictable for a girl, and struggled to pay attention when she showed off the wooden figurines she had painted and the photographs of her riding lessons. Her attempts at eliciting kisses brought nothing but a wrinkling of his nose in disgust.

Still, Hadley saw this awkwardness as only a phase in their relationship; they had always been fated to marry, after all, and all couples must endure hardships that will ultimately make their bond stronger. The slow fading of their parents' friendship and the cessation of Jeremy's visits brought relief—she loved him more easily from afar, at least for now. She would focus her energy on thinking of the perfect names for their children (she planned to surprise him by naming their first son Tommy, for Tommy Lasorda, a gesture he would never see coming!).

In middle school Hadley had no boyfriends, unless she counted Nick, who sat next to her in eighth-grade math and had a way of solving problems involving the speed of trains that made her feel a little faint. But that relationship progressed no further than sharing a table at lunchtime, and as much weight as lunchtime table-sharing carried in the eighth grade, Hadley still saw Nick as only a temporary distraction from her one true love.

The teen years, however, found Hadley's memories of Brandon fading, replaced by the immediacy of boys who touched her long strawberry blonde hair, or beamed with pride when she cheered them on at basketball games, or developed a sudden interest in acting when she won the lead in the senior class production of Spoon River Anthology. One boy did all three and earned the privilege of being the first to touch more than Hadley's hair, much more, a privilege she once had assumed would be Jeremy's, though she had imagined it only abstractly. At the moment it happened she suddenly thought of this old assumption and smiled at her youthful naivete, even as she felt a twinge of sadness at this new boy's not being Jeremy, and even as she began to plan her life with this new boy, from college through marriage and children and into old age, during which they would exchange grumpy-yet-loving banter in their own version of On Golden Pond.

She did go to college and have marriage and children, not with that boy or any of the next three but with an older boy, a man in fact, who could not have looked or behaved more differently than Jeremy looked or behaved—or at least the way she imagined Jeremy did, during the rare moments when she still wondered where he was or what he looked like as a thirty-two-year-old or whether he had a family of his own.

In middle age, Hadley's divorce brought the usual regrets and self-doubts and wishes that she could click her heels and start over. Sometimes those wishes involved Jeremy, and "what if," but they couldn't progress much beyond that, as she knew nothing about him past the age of twelve. It was easier to imagine "what if" with the boyfriends who had come later, closer to adulthood, though it was also easier to see the folly of imagining such things; there were, after all, good reasons they had left her, or she had left them. It was nicer to think of Jeremy, as their romance remained unblemished by yucky adult goings-on. But it was also sadder, as the only reason she could think of that they had left each other was geographical. And geography was just another word for bad luck.

Also, she had her children, a boy and a girl—a man and a woman, now, with a few boys and girls of their own, who had little boyfriends and little girlfriends just as Hadley had Jeremy. So she couldn't wish that she had married Jeremy and named their son Tommy, not in any real way. Only in those occasional shameful moments when she looked at her son's face and imagined what he would look like with the nose of the father he might have had, the nose that used to wrinkle when she tried to kiss it, the nose that she liked to think hadn't changed a bit since Jeremy was her boyfriend.

Italian Men

Unafraid to wear yellow pants.

The Only Limerick I'll Ever Write

These poems are said to be fun

So why don't I try to write one?

No rhyme scheme can scare me

But what rhymes with "scare me"?

Oh, someone please hand me a gun

Being Petite

Being petite means more than being short, though short I am, at a respectable but below-average five feet two and a half. (One never says "six feet two and a half," does one? Unless one feels awkward at six feet three.) My wrists are too small to wear bracelets, and I add an extra hole to my leather watch bands and have links removed from my metal ones. Most rings slip off my skinny fingers, making street fairs less than fruitful. Unless I am lucky enough to find a "petite" style that eschews frumpiness, every pair of pants I buy needs to be shortened. I cannot wear shirts or dresses that are loose-fitting unless I want to resemble a little girl playing dress-up with Mommy's clothes. A hat pulled down properly on my head will likely cover my eyes. Shopping for sunglasses has become, in this era of gigantic sunglasses, a humiliating process for me and my petite face.

And that's just fashion. Only recently have I begun to wonder how my petiteness has shaped my personality, my relationships, my choices in life. A favorite pastime in my youth was the piano; I didn't have the singing voice to be a pop star, so romantic notions of concert pianism tickled the ivories of my imagination. When did those notions go quiet? When I found myself unable to play the most difficult jazz and classical pieces because my hands couldn't span the distance between notes? I tend to walk behind people rather than lead the way; could the shortness of my stride have conditioned me to do so? Would my relationship with my boyfriend be different if I weren't looking up at him all the time?

Sun-kissed cheeks make me feel healthier and more attractive. A fresh-out-of-the-salon haircut adds some extra sashay to my step. Sporadic periods of muscle tone bring with them sporadic spikes in self-confidence. Has the mind-body connection also caused the size of my frame to frame my view of the world? If so, I resolve to focus on the positive:

• I can fit into narrow seats between large people on the subway.


• Sometimes I can buy capri pants and wear them as full-length pants.


• Animals and children like me, perhaps because I'm close to their level.


• It would be relatively easy for me to hide unnoticed in a closet if a psycho killer broke into my home.


• If I were tall I would always see the world from above, the big picture--but I might miss the details that cluster low to the ground. And climbing high into the Umbrian mountains to look down on vast, magnificent views might have felt a little less magnificent. A little. If I weren't petite.

Yoga for Neurotics

Me, over here, I'm new. No, not new to yoga, just to this class-- Up front? If I'd wanted to sit up front, I would have placed my mat up front. Bitch. Fine, now I'm up front. But I'm not new to yoga. So don't put your hands on me.

Why do they let so many people into this room? Those women came in eight minutes late; the rest of us should not have to shift our mats all over the place to fit them in. That's not fair. And it takes five minutes from our workout. And they look so happy and unapologetic. Why isn't this class in a bigger room? I always end up next to some hairy guy who's too wide for his mat and needs half of mine, too. His girlfriend probably makes him do yoga. He does not want to be here.

Oooooohhhmmm. Shoulders down. Shoulders down.

Are yoga teachers always this serene, or only in class? Does she always speak that way? I've never heard such a serene voice outside a yoga class. What bullshit. There's a reason that yoga teachers are always depicted in the movies as being full of shit. Shoulders down.

I used to be that flexible. Well, not that flexible, but I could flatten my hands on the floor without bending my knees. How much are my knees bent? I can never see that in the mirror. What if they're bent a lot? I'll look so out of shape. I can also never tell whether my back is perfectly straight and parallel to the floor. How is a person ever supposed to know that her back is perfectly horizontal without a three-way mirror? Stop, Christ, it doesn't matter; it's yoga class and I'm supposed to just "move in that direction" and no one's paying attention to me because they're all trying to straighten their own backs. Just close your eyes and inhale up, reach to the sky. Whoa, head rush.

Okay, when in downward-facing dog, I'm supposed to point my middle fingers forward, distribute my weight evenly among my ten fingers and my palms, straighten my arms, turn my upper arms out, straighten my legs and lower my heels toward the floor--shit, they're not touching, but probably they'll be touching after I loosen up, that always happens, relax--push my tailbone toward the sky and chest toward my legs, let my head hang... but I never know whether my eyes should be open or closed. A yoga teacher I had years ago told the class not to close our eyes during practice. I think some of the perfect women in my yoga videos close their eyes, but I can never frickin' see the TV when I'm in downward dog. I see only my legs, and the space between them, which always distracts me from the whole relaxation thing because it's such a weird thing to be looking at, so maybe I should close my eyes. But what if that teacher had it right and closing my eyes prevents me from being fully yogic? Oh shit, they're already in plank.

Focus on a point. Focus on a point. Focus on a point. Does everyone have this much trouble balancing in triangle pose? Just breathe. String extending from my left hand to the sky. Another string extending out from the top of my head. Strings pulling me in all directions--no, not in all directions, wrong image, just up, up. Stop wobbling. Oh please don't come over here now. Please don't touch me. If you make me fall over I'll kill you, bitch. What do you mean? My shoulders are rela--whoa. That is amazing. I am a wide-open, floating-on-air triangle.

Why are no one else's legs shaking? Please don't let anyone be looking at my legs. Maybe the shaking is one of those things other people can't see. But that makes no sense. Is my eyesight better than everyone else's? Do my optic nerves recognize my legs as my legs and not someone else's and concentrate just a little bit harder so the shaking comes into focus? Maybe everyone else can see only their own legs shaking, too. Please make it stop. I've got Parkinson's. I can't believe I just thought that. I am a horrible person. And... relax.

I love shoulder stand. She's right; it really is a healing pose. Something about being upside down makes me see the world from a whole new perspective. If only my ponytail holder wasn't digging into my neck. Shit, I can't move my hand to fix it without falling over. Why do I always wear a ponytail to yoga when it's impossible to lie comfortably on one's back with a ponytail? It's okay, just observe the band digging into my neck, let the thought of it pass in and out of my mind, and... breathe.

Oh god... Oh god... rest. This is the most important part of the whole workout. Which means if I don't lie flat on my back correctly, the past hour has been a complete waste of time. That music is nice. Where's she padding around to now? She's walking around the room. Doing something to people. Please just leave me alone to rest. What's that smell? Incense. Incense makes me want to gag. Great. I feel like gagging during the most important part of the workout. OH she's touching my neck. Okay, that feels nice, but it's not nice to sneak up on people whose eyes are closed. Bitch. Move on so I can relax. There. I feel that space between breaths! I feel it! No, it's gone. It's gone because I thought about it. Damn.

Okay, I'm going. Can I take a minute to roll up my mat properly? Is that a problem for you and your rebounding friends? Jumping up and down on a trampoline, how sophisticated.

Wow, I love that post-yoga feeling. I am at peace with my life. All these other people on the street envy me and my yoga mat. I am a warrior goddess. A warrior goddess in noisy flip-flops. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Out-of-Context Headline of the Day

"Most in Survey Can't Find Heart"