179: Best Fit
(I know I promised this to y'all a long time ago, but I'm proud of it, so this is how my summer went, in a short-story-esque sort of format. ^_^)
"Best Fit"
I'm trying on two items of clothing in a dressing room at Crossroads, worrying that anyone passing outside the door will be able to see my naked form in the mirror as I take off my clothes. Slipping my legs into the jeans, I turn around in front of the mirror. Excitement vacillates through me as I realize this is the first pair of jeans that actually fits me--a seemingly impossible feat, my legs being far too short in proportion to my waist. That's why I was excited to find a 34x30--not a common size--on the rack, and for only $10.50, which is about how much I am willing to pay.
Still, my legs are more like 28, but 30 is far less ridiculously long than 32 on me, so there's no way I'm not getting these pants. All my old clothes don't fit me anymore, after all the weight I've lost this past year, my waist size shrinking a couple of inches. Also, I'll be leaving for college in a few weeks, thus creating an even greater need for new clothes.
I take the other item I have brought with me carefully, somewhat nervously, off the hanger: it is a grey track jacket, much like the one I always saw Nick wearing. This is much the reason I paused and took it reverentially off the rack. It is a lovely gray, with a pattern of flowers and leaves stitched in white thread on one side. This is something which could easily be ugly or ridiculous on a piece of men's clothing, but this pattern is beautiful; it fits me. When I am always talking about leaves and petals in my poems, I envision these sort of ethereal forms splayed across this jacket like a rain-soaked cloud.
With some effort I slip my arms into the sleeves and pull up the zipper, even though I am not wearing a shirt underneath. This is probably one of the reasons the jacket clings to me in a way which I would rather not be clung to. I check the tag: S. I've lost a lot of weight, but only enough to realize I'm a medium.
Still, I turn, pose, laugh, then worry my teeth are still too yellow. Like my weight, this is something which has improved, but is not yet where I want it; blemished where, I imagine, others are perfect. The shirt is not so small I am uncomfortable, but I would look ridiculous. But it is such a beautiful jacket, that I take it off with an almost tangible sense of sorrow and longing for the impossible--rather akin to my feelings for that boy with the hair like straw...
***
Finding a pair of pants that fit me, that I think make my legs look good, is very momentous for me; the only other pair of jeans I have ever owned were always too baggy for me. They were part of that trip two years ago, when Mrs. Summers took me to get a 'fall wardrobe'. It was the first time I had actually gone shopping in a clothes store in the better part of a decade, and it was a new experience to be asked what I liked, what I wanted, instead of having the old, raggedy clothes of my family members thrust upon me. Considering that my family consists of three women and one vastly overweight men, this had the effect of making me look like a bum.
"What's you size?" Mr. Rakela asks as we search for pants.
I didn't know, never having had clothes that fit properly.
"No, that shirt does't really match with those pants; get it in another color," Mrs. Summers comments.
This is an new idea to me, that certain items of clothing go better together than with others. 'Outfit'--a new word to add to my vocabulary.
This might have seemed awkward, or perhaps taken for charity--and indeed, I still feel a little awkward mentioning it to people afterwards, but I am close to Mrs. Summers. I become a little overwhelmed when I think about how much she has nurtured me; so much so that I called her my second mother. She was one of the first people to hear me actually talk about literature, to read one of my early poems; it was the thought of her and Mrs. Abbott, my then teacher, about a year and a half before this trip, that kept me from killing myself when my sister was abusing me.
When we get back out to her black jaguar, I give her the poem I have written for her birthday, some weeks past. I will continue to rewrite this poem obssessively, but she was moved by even this rought draft. This became a pivotal poem for me; the one that ushered in a new, more polished stage of my poetry; a poem which several people have told me is my best. Mr. Rakela is surprised by Mrs. Summer's awe, and she spends the ride back telling me how good it is, how I write poetry, and Mr. Rakela offers his own encouragement in my direction.
After they drop me off, I carry my clothes back up to my room, spilling out the two huge bag of clothes, hanging them up like the treasures I consider them. And even though, now I don't fit into most of them, they were still an important awakening for me. An awakening to the simple but powerful joy the right clothes can bring; the confidence, the ability to hold my shoulders straight, the pride and dizzying excitement of picking out what I'm going to wear each day. In short, the power of choice.
***
I haven't gone on a shopping trip like that since--getting a whole new wardrobe at once--but I've steadily built upon my collection of clothes. Over the following year, I got a lot of clothes from other people: I have a lot of shirts I got from Eve, whose husband, Paul, is a rock poster artist, and makes shirts with prints of his artwork on them. These are very punkish, but Paul's work has a very art nouveau meets nightmarish surrealism that I find alluring. A few weeks ago, I got another shirt of his, this time actually paying for it, so I would have a wide representation of his shirts so I could properly exhibit his work at Whittier, with my torso as the appropriate frame. I now have them in black, red, green, and now white, making it easier to mix and match them with what few pants I have.
Another shirt I love was one I got from Mike. One day, after I complained I had no shirt in my favorite color--purple--he brought me a dress shirt of his that was too short in the arm for him. It was the most beautiful shade of purple, rich and filled with subtle reflections. I put it on immediately, and it fit me better than any other shirt I had ever worn.
And this past summer I have been using the five twenties my Aunt gave me for graduation to purchase more clothes. I have gone to a lot of thrift stores, looking to stretch my buck, and hunt down some cool items. I managed to find a sweater vest--something I had longed after for a year--a beautiful black affair that makes me look positively professorial. I mix and match these things with my existing clothing, expanding from my motley collection of clothes some kind of amalgamation of clashing styles that is uniquely me.
***
It is things like this which make me self-conscious:
This night, several days before my foray at Crossroads, I'm walking down the street near my apartment complex, on one of my walks driven by nervous energy. A sudden noise and movement from a passing car alarms me out of the train of my thought driven by my steps.
"Great tits!"
I don't see who yells this, as the car passes as quickly as I look up, but I get the sense he is leaning out of the window, which leads me to think he is possibly drunk, or just an asshole.
Still, I am overcome with a sudden shame, a feeling of indecent exposure. I look down at my chest for a moment. The shirt I am wearing, a green polo which I got at a thrift shop out at Auburn for sixty cents, fits me oddly. Ironically, it is a small size, but hangs in a way that mostly hides my protruding stomach, but which seems to accenuate the fullness of my chest.
Passing under a streetlight as I turn into the parking lot, I impusively cup my breasts, lifting them upward momentarily in a motion of humurous sexuality and a bold recklessness. Long gone are the days when I slouched and wore baggy clothes to hide how fat I was. And really, I think, I *do* have great tits.
I begin to glow inwardly, turning what is obviously meant as ridicule into some kind of compliment. I think it unlikely he thought me a girl, no matter how long my hair or dark it was. But I've always thought my 'tits' made me look more like a girl, and in my more wistful, private moments, I cup them in just the way I have just done, and pretend.
***
Crossroads deals, apparently, in traded clothes, and all the items sold on the racks appear new and even fashionable. The texture of them is even soften than those at the Target in Natomas, where my sister has now brought me to get some last minute items before I leave for Whittier in less than a week. I have come here, mainly, in search of a certain brand of polos they carry, which are made of a fabric softer than any I have ever felt.
My sister seems to have this annoying habit of pointing at every item for sale we pass as if either she or I are seriously considering purchasing it. I tolerate this to a certain extent because I can feel my last twenty curled in my pocket, and she has agreed to pay for half; and I feel slightly guilty, because she her photographer's eye for detail questions the fact that I don't have a written list.
"This shirt is so you," she says, inspecting some shelves stacked with shirts. "They're only eight dollars," she prods me, looking up at a sign on the wall.
The shirt she directs me to is indeed something congruent with my personality: it is a tan color, featuring a stick-figure man wincing under the attack of two other winged stick-figures. "It's all fun and game until flying monkies attack," the caption reads in black letters. I add it to our basket and we head for the dressing rooms.
The area directly by the dressing rooms is dedicated to the brand I'm looking for: "Mossimo Trading Co.". I am drawn as much to the Italian-sounding name as the velvet-like texture. They had these at the other Target I went to, but not in medium: even here, there is only one left on the shelf, in a lovely burgundy color, with powder blue stripes. Each of the polos has the logo of a classical lion sewn in colored thread, the details of its mane and tail making it appear at a distance like some griffin-like bird.
I recognize the logo, and realize that I have seen these shirts before, and suddenly I know I will not leave this store without this shirt. It is very much like one I have seen Nick wear, and I after the track jacket, I want very much for it to fit.
Examining my form in both mirrors, I feel a sense of elation. I don't know whether it's the darkness of the color of the fit of the shirt, but it fits me almost as beautifully as that purple shirt I love so much. It suddenly occurs to me that just a few years ago I wouldn't have tolerated a shirt this size; I always chose a baggier large before I realized I was really a medium. Even then, I still bent forward, attempting to hide what I couldn't change. But after so many attacks of a backpain so intense I had to bend over my knees to be able to bear it, I realized bad posture wouldn't fix my self-esttem.
Yes, I've lost thirty pounds this past year, but my stomach still protrudes, and I still have 'great tits'. But now I hold my shoulders high and run my hands down my sides, luxuriating in the softeness of the material. A smile spreads across my face and I hold my shoulders high. I was never really that fat to begin with.