So I keep this box of clothes that I hope to wear again someday.
Not that this shit is particularly stylish anymore, mind you. But it contains sizes the likes of which my fat ass hopes to squeeze itself into again. I own practically every size of clothing ever made, and I like to also buy things “that I’ll fit into someday … just not today.” Hence the array of clothes with the fucking TAGS on them cluttering my poor walk-in closet.
Now, I know life’s not about sizes — hell, most designer stuff runs big, and other cheapie brands cut small. And your dryer will take your perfect-fitting jeans/shirt/guchies/whatever and make them appropriately sized enough to fit onto your 20-pound puss.
We won’t mention how I wish skinny girls would just fucking eat more cake already. Because cake is goooodddd. And watching someone rather emaciated eat some is the obvious solution to wanting to feel thinner in a hurry. 
In any event, my box. (The one with clothes. Ahem.) What took me into that hellish journey last night was the need to find something to wear to Angie’s hella-cool ’80s birthday party happening tomorrow night. I figured, shit, I actually HAVE clothes from the ’80s that I can wear.
Not, of course, like I can squeeze my ASS into those jeans, but I digress. 
But alas, I did pull a few good items out of the mothballs. I have this fantastic John Cusack T-shirt (you know the scene: it’s a still in which he’s holding the boombox above his head in the “Say Anything” movie — *swoon*). I figure I can cut the neck out of it and throw a tank top under it and voila! she’s done. I also found a black mesh short-sleeved shirt — I can wear a lovely hot-pink Wonderbra under it and can look like a groupie in 10 seconds or less.
What I was looking for, though, would be any one of my bona fide Bon Jovi concert T-shirts from the mid-’80s. But they don’t seem to exist in my apartment anymore and for that, I am heartbroken. Not like I’ve WORN them in the last 15 years, but still. Memories. I do, however, have their concert program from the “Slippery When Wet” and “New Jersey” tours, and therefore I regain my specialness.
I bought some long-ass chain earrings with skulls at the end (reminiscent of my youth, of course). I also have jelly bracelets with skulls and lightning rods on them (in hot pink — it’s as girly as skulls can get).
In my day (jesus H am I OLD!!!), I wore lots of gothic shit — lots of silver crosses with snakes and roses wrapped around them, lots of handcuff-style earrings and belts, lots of daggers and lightning bolts and spiderwebs and condoms.
Yes, condoms.
I had found this company that made condom earrings. Like, they used real condom wrappers and totally jazzed them up with paint and jewels and feathers and shit. Now, I was kind of a goody-goody in school (minus that incident in which I tried to set my ninth-grade building on fire with matches and hairspray. We had an odd sense of humor, my friends and I. That and we REALLY HATED ninth grade.
But I got away with murder — my guidance counselors knew my IQ and my GPA. I was once caught sitting on the sink in the girls’ room, drinking peach schnapps (ugh) out of a hairspray bottle (I promise, I sterilized that thing first!). And I had a cigarette in my other hand. Yes, I was loved — whichever authority figure spotted me being bad, well, kept on walking.
I’ll never forget the purple T-shirt and purple frosted capri jeans I was wearing at the time, too. With my white purse and the neon pink strap, I was The Shit. And don’t even ask how many Bon Jovi pins I had tacked onto that hideous handbag. The answer is TOO MANY.
In any event, the earrings. My teachers thought I was awesome — they were youngish themselves and probably hating the business attire, so they totally dug whatever weird look I was going for. I particularly loved the leopard-skin condoms — I used to joke that it was an “in emergency, break glass” handy kind of accessory. Heh — I threw out that pair just a year ago — I figured they had LONG outlived their usefulness.
But what these clothes/accessories remind me to do is to love me for all the crazy shit I’ve done and to maybe once in awhile indulge the Inner Wildwoman again.
And tomorrow night, she’s gonna break out the surf wax/pomade hair shit, the Aussie Sprunch Spray, the curling iron and maybe even some blue eyeliner. She’s gonna pick a great shirt to wear, a cute miniskirt and maybe even some bike shorts (think Debbie Gibson). I swear I have a pair of clear hooker-heel jellies somewhere in the hacienda, too, ’cause a girl’s gotta wear the right shoes to this shindig. (I think I just heard Chris Rock have a heart attack — only trashy strippers can wear clear heels!)
Oh, and I found legwarmers at Hot Topic. Legwarmers! I am so freaking excited about those things — reminds me of when I used to take dance classes. Not that I have an iota of rhythm or anything, but I totally dug my jazz lessons circa 1984, where we grooved to Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” every week.
Ah, I’ve come a long way since then. The evolution has spanned decades and miles upon miles. I’ve wanted things and not wanted other things, only to do an about-face and find opportunities and beauty and sunshine where I’d never expected to see it; on the flipside, the things that were so tempting on the surface? Just that — surface. Nothing beneath it. Wants and needs and dreams can change. We all “grow into” the people we were always meant to be. Life gets harder, but it gets better, too.
While I’d never permanently want to be the girl I used to be, I’m happy to slip on her trashy shoes for just another night and pretend to dance in her old Strawberry Shortcake nightgown on her Smurf-themed sheets to “Boom Boom Boom, Let’s Go Back to My Room.”
But we’ll never, ever go back to her natural hair color. … mostly because we FORGET what it was!!!
On iTunes: Nick Drake, “Wasted”
