Pretty Lady does not quite believe in Global Warming, normally, for the very good reason that Daddy the Brilliant Scientist has done an extensive study on the issue, in his spare time, and has told her that Global Warming is Not So. Mostly. But when we are getting San Francisco spring weather at the beginning of January in New York City, she begins to wonder.
Since she cannot do much about Global Warming at the moment, however, Pretty Lady took advantage of the balmy temperatures to rummage around in the closet and pull out some items that haven't seen much use since she moved to a city with Seasons. Foremost among the nifty stuff in there was this, a Labyrinth jacket made entirely out of hemp, and once owned by an Asian fire-eating stripper. 'Miss Jade' is her name. Perhaps you have heard of her?
At times, despite her worldly experience, Pretty Lady can be exceptionally naive. When she browses through designer clothing boutiques, largely for artistic reasons, she can't help noticing that the price tags on nearly all of the items are consummately prohibitive, given that the target demographic--nubile young females--does not tend, generally, to be in the High Income bracket. Moreover, the styles have a tendency to be flashy to the point of near-indecency. "These look likc clothes for high-end female escorts," Pretty Lady has been known to speculate.
Come to find out, that's exactly what they are. Which is why Pretty Lady considers it a badge, not only of canny, pragmatic thrift, but of actual straightforward Virtue of Character, that she buys all of her bizarre high-fashion novelty items either secondhand, barter, sample sale, or factory second. These clothes have the added virtue that they occasionally come accompanied by interesting stories, having been both produced and owned by personalities as colorful as Pretty Lady's own.
This particular jacket was quite a score--Pretty Lady had been wandering hopelessly into the Labyrinth store in the Lower Haight for a year or more, trying on fantastically medieval, sculptural creations and mentally staking them out, just in case she happened to get married or something. (There was one thing, a two-layer Asian-influence construction that incorporated bright orange swooshy pants, burgundy tunic, gold and orange floral overskirt, and bright red bodice, in a startling manner that both worked as an ensemble and set off Pretty Lady's short burgundy haircut at the time, that she earmarked as either a wedding dress, or what to wear for one's own opening at the Museum of Modern Art. Sadly, neither of these events has yet to come to pass, and the Labyrinth label appears to have passed on to more pragmatic enterprises.)
In any case, when she fetched up against this jacket in the local consignment shop, with a tag well within her means, she could scarcely believe her luck. It was mere icing on the cake when the salesgirl informed her, "Miss Jade brought that jacket in. She was cleaning out her closets, and hadn't worn it in over a year."
Pretty Lady wore it, and still does; something about the hemp, the heft, the solidity of its construction makes her feel both protected and powerful, in some esoteric way. It confirms the notion she has that if she had been born in some medieval era, she would probably have been burned as a witch. 
Sunday, January 07, 2007
The Back of the Closet
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24 comments:
I wish someone would pay me money to have sex with them. I wouldn't buy pretty clothes with it, though, which might be part of the problem. Just part.
I miss my linen shirts. I love linen. It was fashionable for a little bit, and then it went away, and I haven't seen it come back. Not for men's shirts, anyway, in American stores. I guess if I could find where Indians get their clothes -- and wanted to dress like the world's biggest, whitest, hairiest Indian -- I could find linen.
You have an interesting way of expressing your thoughts. Beyond that, it is interesting to see the world through your eyes at the ability I am able to interpret your view from your words.
As for the jacket, that looks to be a fine piece for your collection. The details seem to be available in a fullness that allows the item to be rich in sensuousness. It sounds to be made solidly, so that it is not a merely lost amongst your other garments. I am almost sure the grounding effect of the slightly larger mass would lend to feelings of security, perhaps with some merit. It's history has the mark of the cat's meow, as a final distinction.
I am surprised you don't believe in global warming, give or take. I don't believe in it, mostly because of what I have gathered through various means. Yet, I understand that not choosing to believe sets me outside acceptable norms. I think global warming is a lie to generate and perpetuate liers, to eliminate some or most manufacturing in America, and perhaps to spread the manufacturing wealth through the third world nations. Any or all of these could be the reason.
I hope you do not mind me intruding into your space on occasion?
That's an unfortunate commentary on the state of society to read about the college coed whores. America's enemies will have no compunction destroying her from without because the country is rotten from within. Is this the great prospect of post-Christian America, where the women -- once romanticized as the keepers of the flame of civilization and all that is right and true, pure and wholesome as apple pie -- are now too amoral to realize how evil they have become?
Our enemies have no care what our coeds do. At most, it's an invitation to the unwed young male masses to find a wife, since the rich marry them all in small herds in their homelands. The morality of it might be an added whip to convince their soldiers they are doing the right thing. But the leaders know that casting stones in glass houses must be done with the greatest of care.
I sometimes agree with your general assessment of modern America. Then I wonder if I am comparing an ideal history to a real present. In my diggings, there are elements of both. As for whores, they are redeamable. And, if they love incorrectly, sometimes just that they love is more than I am at times. Still, it would be good to live in more basic times. What have you given up of your modern conveniences that would lead you into that more idealic life? I ponder that often.
Chris, I have never met a man who did not wish that people would pay to have sex with him, which conclusively proves, in my mind, that men and women's minds are constructed in fundamentally different ways.
Doom, of course I do not mind! Welcome!
And actually, the main concern about whether global warming is real or not, is that it is third world countries who will suffer MOST when draconian controls are placed upon emissions. Thus we need to be very sure of our facts, before telling impoverished countries that they may not be permitted to industrialize cheaply and efficiently.
Anon, do not despair. It is not ALL women who are like this, or there would be no pesky quibbling about 'equal pay scales for women' and such.
And here I just want to comment on the gorgeous cat. What do you call him?
Have I ever told you that those are lovely hands? Yes? Well, just in case you forgot... Lots of strength there.
Pretty Lady,
Perhaps it has come later in life, but I would not accept money for sex. I couldn't countenance paying for sex either. Beyond that, I cannot even have sex with another woman in my life, even offered quite freely, unless she is the right one. It has been so for four years now. Though I am 40 now, trust me, it isn't age which has mellowed my desire. My yearnings are as mellow as the surface of the sun. I am just tired of wrong women, empty love, and things like that.
Just so that you do not lose all faith in men, there is at least one who would not, could not, accept money for sex. And I am not gay. *laughs*
I must admit it is refreshing to hear someone admit that if they had lived in a previous era that they would not be exalted in some manner or status. I recall meeting over the years a number of people who claimed to have been reincarnated from someone who held some lofty position in history. Most often, Joan of Arc and Cleopatra are named while there are a fair amount of The Reincarnated who were royalty of some sort usually in medieval Europe.
What I never heard when discussing reincarnation was someone telling me all the fantastic details of being born to a lower caste Saxon family, who spread straw on the floor of their stone shack to keep the mud from getting too soft, and who died toothless in childbirth or of cholera at age seventeen. Apparently, these people never were reincarnated.
No one ever tells of being a thirty-four year old slaughterhouse foreman in the late 1800's in the Bronx who died of alcohol poisoning, rather everyone was Caesar or one of the Borgias. In addition, no one ever seems to claim people who are famous due to some artistic merit either. You will not hear an up and coming writer claim he was Shakespeare in a previous life, nor will you see a famous painter claim that he was Gauguin in a previous life and try to lead a Post-Impressionist renaissance in the galleries of today. The reason is that when their talent is matched to that of their claimed reincarnated spirit, the modern-day reincarnatee is lacking in the required talent and originality.
Burned as a witch? Perhaps. Of course, I myself would be the village smithy, making horseshoes and nails and hammers and the like. Nothing exalted, just the smell of iron, leather and coal and a smile for the spooky lady as she passes my workshop in her hemp dress.
Crom
Good morning, boys!
Desert Cat--meet the Alpha Cat. Confidentially, his pedestrian name is Barney.
EN--the hands, as you know, are the result of a felicitous combination of good genes and unremitting hard work.
Doom, I do indeed have faith in men, or I would not be so Pretty. Cynicism creates those tight vertical wrinkles around one's mouth, and also causes cancer. ;-)
Crom, you've been hanging out in the wrong crowd of flakes. I knew a couple of women who suddenly decided they'd been sisters in Scotland in the 17th century, dirt poor, caught up in clan warfare, their parents killed when they were quite young. One of them died defending the other, a spear through her heart; the other's head was cut off a moment later. They told each other the story simultaneously, without having rehearsed it beforehand.
One of these women also exorcised the ghost in my house. Spooky ladies hang out with spooky people.
And village smiths make my knees weak.
Chris, having to face the prospect of earning a living by selling my hours in return for currency (by May 1), I have recently had similar "would some one pay me for sex" thoughts. Certainly, and unfortunately, devoid of any of the wonderful fantasy elements of younger years, just plebian "lay bricks, or have sex" what may pay better? type thoughts.
Maybe we could incorporate. I gather that the main trick about doing tricks is the marketing.
And to tie in "anonymous", I have often thought that I may have been incarnated (I neither believe nor disbelieve these things) from a Neanderthal cave dweller. Whatever I did was in the realm of using my hands, tool making or cave paintings. I still, today, find that my hands have a mind of their own and think better at what they do from the wrist down than I can think for them from the neck up.
One day, I hope stem cells will be able to bridge that gap.
Thinking further on it, I realize that the women who would be willing to pay someone to have sex with them would most likely be so frightening as to be beyond even my capacity for coitus. And, as a friend of mine once observed, "I'd fuck a snake if I could catch it."
That's actually entirely untrue, but I like the quote and had to slip it in somehow.
On the other side of the coin, however, I'm reading The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. The author tells the story of a woman whose complicated regimen of pills for depression made her so horny she started having sex with strangers in elevators, and she could come three times between the eighth and the fourteenth floor.
Why don't I ever meet these people?
Chris, you don't spend enough time in elevators.
wow, what meds was she on?
Would the Elevator Lady be as appealing if you knew that she had been riding that elevator for eight hours or so? And into her third day?
Indiscriminate sex sounds like fun in concept, but the reality of it is quite different. Most encounters of this type when viewed over the shoulder take on a different hue, one of where you are glad that nothing bad came of the event, rather than exulting that it happened. One of you most likely gathered clothing, and made the attempt to slip out the back Jack before the unstranger awoke. If there are no ill consequences, a sigh of relief is unconsciously breathed and the bullet remains dodged.
Perhaps I am just too old fashioned, but the idea of banging an unknown, overmedicated, clearly psychotic woman forty ways from Sunday in an elevator isn't terribly appealing to me. If I knew the woman, and had her measure that would be quite a different proposition, but the random encounter thing seems to me best left in the 'letters to Penthouse' fiction column.
Crom
Changed your picture did you?
It looks like you may be turning your back on us blogite fans.
Sob....
it looks like you may be turning your back on us blogite fans.
Quite the contrary, my dear Bob. Due to an unavoidable glitch with Blogger Beta, I have now exposed more of myself than I ever intended. ;-)
Crom,
I think that answers my thoughts well. After a foolish youth and a few dodged bullets, wisdom was gained and health maintained, by grace alone I should think. And beyond actually. Those encounters, long or short, allowed me to realize I was looking for more than what I was getting. So that junk sex, like junk food, neither nourished nor satisfied, merely teased my needs and wants.
Pretty Lady,
Perhaps what you say is true of cyniscism and doubt. Why then, at forty, when I shave my whitening beard, do I look 20'ish? *laughs* Perhaps I'm not as cynical as I sometimes want to believe? Oh, and I doubt a wrinkle or two or lines here or there will change the character or truth of your beauty.
I've never been given the opportunity to dodge any bullets. Either that or I'm so Neo, I dodge them without even realizing it. Which I doubt.
Put it this way: With my luck, the one night I went to the strip club would be overcoat night. No one ever gets naked and dances on the bar when I'm around. I hear from my friends -- a couple of them have even sent me photos -- of parties where the women take off their shirts and jump and jive and so on. This never happens when I'm at a party. Never mind that I wouldn't want to see most of my friends (male or female) topless. Generally, the only tits in evidence are mine.
Damn, I wish I was that thin again.
Chris, please never, never link to that picture again. And here I was feeling overexposed. You have more existential courage than perhaps you realize.
A gorgeous cat. He would however probably shed even more then my darling, Schatze, who is a shorter haired version of the same lineage. And alas, I am tired of going through vacume cleaners as if they were disposable napkins.
You my dear are pretty. Never mind the outside pretty that will fade and is all too admired by the shallow. You have a pretty spirit. That is a rare commodity these days, it seems. So of even greater and more lasting beauty. Wish you lived closer by. We'd treat you as the queen you are!
Awwww, Terrymum, I'm blushing.
And I have a heavy-duty vacuum cleaner that has already been to the repair shop once in its short lifetime. I often speculate as to how many times his own weight in hair has been shed, during his seventeen-plus years on this planet.
It's not courageous to be self-abnegating. Is it?
Some cats will shed much more than others in the identical circumstances. And in my experience longhairs in general are not worse shedders than shorthairs. Often the opposite, though I've seen extremes in both. Certain cats I've had will produce a spare-cat's worth of fur at every brushing in the spring months.
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