I was wearing my new Jack Spade coat yesterday evening when I was stopped and searched by the police in the Fulton Street station of the 4, 5, and 6 trains. This isn't going where you think it's going - I actually am not sure why the police don't search me more. I feel so clandestine and cloak-and-dagger almost all of the time - surely some of that feeling must be part of my visible "look?" The officer took one look at my coat and then leapt up from his seat in a Long Island sort of way and started pointing his finger at commuters on their way to the turnstile, like "eenie, meanie, miney, mo," and I got "mo," of course. He beckoned me in a pseudo-fatherly way over to a rickety folding table while my face displayed the coil of an almost imperceptible rictus of a smile.It is one of my worst nightmares that I'll wear some multi-colored, garish coat to work and then get fired, and have to try to hold my head up high, carrying a cardboard box of my belongings outside into the rain whilst dressed like a clown. An alternate version of this fantasy is that I'll be dressed like a clown while getting handcuffed by the police while a crowd of people gathers to watch, or while getting beaten up by some cherry-picking vagrant on the street. I used to dress like a clown all the time, but that was in the aughts, when I thought nothing of wearing avant-garde clothing to the bar, to work, wherever. Once I flew to LA wearing a see-through mesh shirt by Fendi and Alia and I lurked about Hollywood and were cold to passersby. Once I was wearing an enormous coat covered in Burberry plaid and the barkeep at the bar I was leaving said, "Girl, oh my Gawd you are leaving here alone tonight." I could only look at him sadly and think, But I am merely a harmless eccentric… Another time at a party, I coldly accused the writer Bret Easton Ellis of being a misogynist while wearing a beautiful, flowing wig I'd just purchased from Patricia Field. I peacocked long before Neil Strauss made the term fashionable in his douche-bag bible, The Game.
(Okay, I know, I know - Jack Spade is the ultimate douche-bag brand. But, grrrl, it was less than $200 on barneyswarehousesale.com, and I MUST HAVE A NEW COAT AND A NEW SCARF EACH YEAR even when I am not sure where my next rent check is coming from. It is my biggest revenge fantasy that, when I am finally ensconced in some sort of gay rest home, I will be able to dazzle the other old queens with an endless array of beautiful coats and scarves, like Diana Ross - and have the ability to say that I have seen EVERY MADONNA CONCERT [three, albeit, via DVD only :^( ])
The po-po, of course, found nothing in my bag. I am, realistically, far past middle age, and if I were to do drugs today, I would surely just immediately turn to ash like that blonde witch in "American Horror Story: Coven" last season. Sigh. Back in the day, though, I partied like a house afire. I will cling to that Gee and keep going to work and keeping it together and doing the best I can. I will cling to the Gee who, when given a copy of the AA Daily Reflections in rehab, immediately flipped to the last page in February and informed the doctor, "But, there is no entry for February 29th." She turned pale, and I continued: "How will your precious book save you then."
