God Wore Shiny Red Tights
The first time I saw God, she had just gone for a run in Central Park.
It was autumn 1986, and I was working at Petak’s, a fancy food boutique on Madison Avenue just around the corner from Engineer’s Gate in Central Park. The store was a pit stop for dozens of weekend athletes en route to or from jogging or biking in that urban oasis. At the time, I was 26 and still getting my footing as an adult. I had begun to write for various newspapers and magazines and between that income and running the cheese department at the store I was able to eke out an income that enabled me to share a duplex apartment downtown in what is now known as NoLIta.
The desired career was coming along, the residential location was very hip, but what was lacking in my life was a way of broadcasting my identity. I was an African American nerd, which was pretty anomalous back then. I wanted to be more athletic, but I grew up in an era long before our current time when kids need smart phone calendars to manage their burgeoning panoply of activities, and it was long before the time where every kid got a ribbon. Instead, “playing” in my youth often meant standing around watching basketball games hoping that some team would need one more for a fivesome. Even owning the coolest ball didn’t always help. However, at 26, I had begun to find my athletic identity; I was taking aerobics classes, which I loved, and I’d purchased a bicycle to get around Manhattan. I wanted to broadcast my emerging athleticism as a big part of who I was. I figured my lack of a fashionable hair style, a short afro, and my bookish eyeglasses conveyed the rest of me. But bulky gray sweats didn’t appeal to me; it was the conformist garb of a narcissistic crowd I didn’t fit into.
That morning God was wearing red Hind Wells lycra/spandex running tights, a powder blue nylon jacket and a big red thermal headband; from the neck up she looked like a humanities professor. I never learned her name, but she was a template upon which I wanted to model my new self; it was the style equivalent of being born again. I realized in an instant that you could have an Olympian look without waking up at four in the morning for fifteen years to train. I rushed up to her and doing everything I could to present myself as an ardent fan and not a predator engaged in the typical male entitlements of lust; I asked her about her athletic wear. I think she was charmed by my lead in “I hope you don’t mind commenting on your dynamic presence; I love those extraordinary tights, make I ask who makes them?” Yes, more than 30 years later I recall my words and her expression going from vaguely annoyed to cautiously pleased.
Her answers and those from other recreational athletes — many others just as nerdy as I was — served as inspiration and a guidebook, and as the Reagan era became the Bush I years, I built a wardrobe focused upon brightly colored running tights, lycra shorts and even a few unitards. These outfits enabled me to showcase my increasingly strong physique and be what I thought a stylish downtown Manhattan resident should be, fashion forward, very distinctive and slightly transgressive. For the first time since I embraced platform shoes and bell bottoms as a teen in the early ’70s, I was building a style that reflected who I thought I was, not who I was content to let other people define me as.
I come from a family of white collar workaholics (the only difference between my Dad’s weekday and weekend attire was a necktie), so being able broadcast an identity that wasn’t based on work felt liberating. Step classes, funk aerobics, various forms of yoga and urban biking became part of my daily agenda. At a time when many men were buffeting their physical insecurities by wearing baggy jeans or cargo shorts, I was triumphing over mine and celebrating that victory with lycra bodywear augmented with denim vests, leather jackets, motorcycle boots or stompers and other accessories that accented the rock and roll element of my look. And yes, I grasped that I was telling the world that I was no porn star, but I had long ago made my peace with that fact as well as the similar realizations that I would never quarterback my favorite football team or ever battle the Terminator to a draw. The triumph over my physical insecurities felt super-heroic and the dancerly element of my garb enabled me to feel as if I was pirouetting through the streets of Manhattan, almost as if in a pre-hat toss opener of the Mary Tyler Moore show.
The feel of the clothing was so different, so much lighter than the blue jeans that had served as my daily uniform since some time in high school. I felt like my clothing was expressing my body rather than just protecting or even sequestering it. I would say I felt more at one with nature, but who are we kidding, I lived in Manhattan where nature is confined to Central Park and a few areas along the edges of the borough, but I did feel more at one with the world around me, and it was as if I’d opened myself to the energy in the air. Also, the openness on the outside was mirrored by an inner awareness. I came to realize that water and seltzer were far more satisfying than commercially produced iced tea. I understood when the “full” light came on and realized that Tupperware existed for a reason. Finally, living so vividly during my waking hours made sleeping a priority and I became much more rigorous about assuring myself sufficient shut eye.
Professional success occurred almost simultaneous to my style flowering. Looking back now, I have begun to realize that defeating physical limitations and social restrictions gave me the energy to challenge and overcome professional obstacles. When I first saw God in her red tights, I was writing for community weeklies and niche magazines. By the time I had turned bodywear into my everyday clothing I was writing for Vogue and Rolling Stone and had a column at Newsday.
I was pleased that the reaction from both sides of the gender divide was positive. I found myself in wonderful relationships with female fans, and guys expressed admiration for my look and willingness to stand apart from the pack. Even today, when economic pressures and the vagaries of middle age have made fitness — now just a combination of biking and yoga — into an occasional luxury rather than a foundational part of each day, every time I take to the streets in leggings and Moon Boots, the response is overwhelmingly enthusiastic.
As my culinary career pinballed from one Upper East Side shop to another I encountered and sometimes befriended other deities. One of them a real estate professional named Lissa Spiller, who often wore workout garb to work balanced that look with a designer dresses and razor sharp power suits (she told me that her dream designer was Azzedine Alaia). Her example taught me to be proud and enthusiastic about demanding the spotlight in all situations. I soon augmented my wardrobe with tight turtlenecks and snazzy blazers and even a pin stripe suit. Another God, Kathleen Carver, better known as KC, a personal trainer and fitness competitor, wore catsuits every day and showed me that extremity was far better than conformity.
By the late 90s, I’d followed KC’s example and made catsuits or unitards my cornerstone outfit and it was primarily functionality rather than fashion that drove the decision. My days involved yoga, both at home and either at my gym or in a studio, biking, time working at a computer and time spent on a retail sales floor. For one, they spared me dozens of costume changes a week, and for another, they were downright convenient. Toss a sweater over one and go to a jazz club, an apron over one and work in retail (my boss was a workout fanatic and liked my look), unlayer completely and roll out my yoga mat or unlock the bicycle.
The economic pressures from the cataclysms of the ’00s, both the dotcom crash and the Great Recession, forced fitness off of my daily regimen as it became tougher to make money and rents in New York City skyrocketed, forcing my dancerly self to take a backseat to being a worry wart in front of a computer all the time. Aerobics and yoga classes were replaced by solitaire, hearts and other computer games. One afternoon, I happened to have a print out of the photograph below in my bag, when I encountered a woman named Jinji Nicole, a stylist and life coach, who was walking down the street in a leopard print catsuit and vintage high top sneakers. I caught up to her and we chatted amiably about vintage unitards with a big shout out to Gilda Marx. I felt that she was a kindred spirit of an iteration of me from only a few years back. She caught that drift and reacted skeptically, so I pulled the print out from my bag. She gazed at it admiringly as I explained that I didn’t buy Jean Paul Gaultier clothing off the rack but rather lucked into it at Century 21, the discount department store. She handed the print out back to me, and wondered how I would ever let myself fall out of shape if that’s what I could wear. That was coaching enough for me; within this construct, it was a Come to Jesus moment. I made getting back to that shape a priority, though it’s taken longer than I thought.
As I hone in on returning to those wardrobe prerogatives, I think back on my first catsuit phase and recall how some of my coworkers wondered aloud if my lycra based outfits weren’t my take on drag. At some level they may have been right, but I preferred to think that I learned to become my own man by taking notes from the bold women in my life. At times I emulated the gods but more often I simply saw in them strengths that resonated deep inside of me, and I chose to express those strengths without regard to gender-based propriety. It put me on the path to professional and personal success and as I navigate the tricky waters of these times, their inspiration — and that younger iteration of myself — serve as an important guide.
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Martin Johnson is a freelance writer whose work on music, sports and culture has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsday, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, The Root, Slate, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications and websites. He also blogs at Rotations, and he can be contacted at thejoyofcheese@gmail.com.
Photo by Mihoko Hakata
