Aspirational Fanfiction About Clothing I Cannot Afford: The Third
It Came From Under My Shallow Tendencies
So let’s say the copy written for fashion were prophecies, were dark spells, were deep truths. Let’s say that new clothes changed who you were intrinsically, both inside and out. Let’s say it all again, that if I were the grown woman with the chance to buy these beautiful fabric things I would not be the broke girl I am today. Oh no. I would be a heretic. A nightmare. A vengeful celestial body. A nightmare in a US size ten (twelve or fourteen if we’re talking, like, jeans).
Look, there’s this sweater on UrbanOutfitters.com. It’s grey, that sort of school-looking P.E grey, round neck, long sleeves, the words SAN FRANCISCO emblazoned in football team letters across the breast in this red, the color of the bridge, two rings ‘round each sleeve in this Golden Gate red. When the tender cotton heather of it is around me, the proud exclamation of its SAN FRANCISCO, my skin becomes concrete. Fourteen hills are pulled from the skin of me, they Liberty, they Diamond, they Bernal — they peak and they roll and twenty-somethings sit on Kite and look out over the city and say, ‘Ohmygod we are so lucky to live here’ and are warmed by their Blue Bottle Coffee. They snap an Instagram #blessed and I feel their authentic, uninhibited joy at being present with me, with me, San Francisco, God I am beautiful, God they are lucky to live here, in me, inside of me. Each faint hair that rises from my skin is a paper-looking house, a pink house, a blue house, all tall, all town, all antique and untouchable. I curve an Embarcadaro, the beauty mark beneath my eye, the real faint one that only showed up last summer is Alcatraz now and the currents of the Bay are the veins in my face, yes finally my body is the city, my mouth is Dolores Park, my over-bitten mouth is a crooked, loud, natural amphitheater, my heart is the Mission, my belly is the Tenderloin, my feet are the Dogpatch and Protero, my left hand as it reaches out into the world is that bridge, that red bridge, that scarlet pass and somewhere inside of my chest there is an earthquake but I cannot tell you because I am no longer girl; I cannot tell you to sit beneath your doorframe, to put the cat in his carrycase, to pack a forty-eight hour bag; no I cannot tell you when it is coming because my heart is a thrumming district and my tongue is the grassy knolls of lazy Saturday afternoons. I am city now, I have always been this concrete, this solid, these hills and when I rupture with the shake there will be fire and dust but I cannot tell you when. There is no girl left in me. I know nothing but this city. I am this city. I have always been this city.
Look, there’s this dress on Forever21.com. It’s a long black vest dress with a slit up each side and on it is printed twenty-three phases of the moon, from the sliver of crescent to the pregnant full and back, waning, gibbous, quarter, then just a tiny silver hook again on the darkness of the frock, the cotton night sky of it. This is all the shapes the moon can be, right here on my dress and when the same old thoughtless boys cast their eyes on my soft tall body as I move through the Safeway and whisper, “Hey Mama,” “Hey Girl,” but I am lunar terror now and they are fixated and howling there beside the oranges and organic apples. But they will sink their teeth into me no more; the whites of their eyes and the white of my moons, my twenty-three moons, holds them still as they transform, as they kneel, as they remember my pull, my power, my all-knowing gaze. They cry to the twenty-three depths of me and I sing tender opal songs of sleep to them. I say now, little wolves, hush now, if you do not learn to hold your stupid, starving tongue, I may come crashing down upon you with all my gravity and chalk, all my stone and powder. I am never so full as when I am raining my ferocity upon you, boys, you shall never know my gravity, my sheer weight, until it is your spine I am bearing down upon.
Look, there’s this dress on Nastygal.com. It’s made of real dark red velvet, like cabernet red velvet. It’s 90s cocktail length, like Cher from Clueless length, with two straps that go into a V-shape at the front, sort of like a harness almost. This fabric on my body is this terrible red, this terrible booze red, this deceptive heat color like remember when you’d play ‘The Floor Is Lava’ when you were a kid just because the carpet was the kind of color that could be secretly molten earth, that could be crawling solid flame? You’d stand on the sofa or the armchair or on the bit of the coffee table that wasn’t glass and scream to your sister “THE FLOOR IS LAVA,” with all the fervor of a kid who doesn’t want her sibling to melt, to die in front of her eyes there beside the television? Well here I am at the bar and we’re playing The Dress Is Lava but I don’t tell you the dress is lava because I want to see what happens and as you put your hand on my waist your request to dance gets caught in your throat because you are burning, your hand is scalded, oh the sound of it is so good but it smells like a house on fire caught too late. I laugh and you grab your wrist screaming this broken-man-scream and I think gosh he won’t have any fingerprints now on his right hand, or will he, I should ask the paramedics, poor dear you got quite a shock, would you like some ice, bartender, bartender, sweetie, can we have some ice?
Image by Chelsea Lowe
