A Self-Portrait of a Woman Who Hates Cameras
Click for larger view | Figure 1 Here is a self-portrait of a woman who hates cameras.Here is a self-portrait of a woman who hates getting her picture taken, who hates taking pictures of other peoplle, who hates seeing pictures of herself. Here is a self-potrait of a women who hates photography, loves French Food, Audrey Hepburn, and shadow dancing. |
I have no fashion sense. Let that be known.
In my closet are clothes, yes, that's true, clothing that I've no doubt kept around for years: the pair of chocolate-colored pants with buckles that my now-husband, then-boyfriend bought me on a whim at a Gap because they made my ass look nice, because I swooned over them in the store. He bought them, and I wore them once, once on our next date, and then only for a few hours, and then never again, the pivotal "then" moment of fashion forever abandoned in a closet of men's jeans (because they're longer, more comfortable); sweatshirts with football team logos on them, football teams that I've never watched a game of, but they are birthday present sweatshirts; Christmas sweatshirts that my brother Aaron finds on sale, that he mails me "Fed-Ex, Next Day Shipment" because he can't bear the thought that a Georgia bulldogs sweatshirt, a T-shirt with Tigger or Grumpy with the phrase "I don't do mornings" will end up lost somewhere in the U.S. Postal system, a chewed-up package in the "unsalvageable" bin in the dirty back room at some hub in the middle of nowhere in Wichita.
And he never sends a receipt, so I can never return them. [End Page 39]
I wear them on days like today when I'm cleaning the apartment, scrubbing caked-on piles of aqua-colored aromatherapy bath salts off the orange tiles in the bathroom.
There are more than sweatshirts, that's true. There are "vintage" clothes, too, I guess, because I've never bought anything for myself that wasn't on sale somewhere, that wasn't in some Salvation Army or Goodwill . . . clothes that never fit me quite right but cost five dollars for a pound . . . seriously, five dollars for a pound . . . kind of like five dollars for a bushel of apples . . . cram as many tweed blazers and plaid pants as you can into a five-pound bag, hope the lady at the register doesn't notice that your five pounds is more like seven. There are dresses that my mother sends me from Ann Taylor, nice dresses that I wear during the summer with cream-colored wraps that I bought on honeymoon in Greece, and that's such a nice phrase: "On Honeymoon in Greece." It just begs to be capitalized, muttered with a dirty Martini in hand, calamari, and filtered cigarettes.
There are these nice clothes, these wedding-capable dresses and slacks, interview clothes, clothes one wears to bridal showers and funerals, the standard black pants, black skirts in three lengths, an assortment of mix-and-match button-down tops.
There are T-shirts, too, T-shirts with sayings, with cartoon characters from ten years ago that no one really remembers, T-shirts that are slowly becoming "vintage" . . . my mother's T-shirts that I've stolen over the years, my favorite a much-too-large-for-me butter yellow shirt with a Kliban cat, a cat in a chef hat frying mice and cheese. I couldn't bring myself to lift her Kliban piggy bank, her Kliban kitty-bank of sorts, a black-and-white tabby with tennis shoes on his feet, a bank lodged on a shelf of outdated relics: a coffee mug shaped like Chewbacca, a bust of W. C. Fields, a pinkish Real McCoy vase that she kept irises in until I told her not to, until programs...
