Jack Spade

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."

Where are your Jil Sander pieces?

What a weekend I had. In my recent obsession with "decluttering" my apartment, I went through my closets and threw away or donated at least ten years' worth of old clothing. It was really a moving experience, and some pieces were very hard to part with ... some had, over the years, become signature pieces of mine. Notably, the jacket I am wearing in this picture, my houndstooth coat by Jil Sander. I remember working at Harcourt in 2005, wearing this coat, or maybe some other Jil Sander piece. My crazy boss at the time came out and said, "What are YOU wearing?!" I replied, rather coldly, "It's Jil Sander. Where are YOUR Jil Sander pieces, Ms. Gilmore?" (I believe she was wearing something from the Gap).

Over the years, though, the coat got worn, and was pilled in places. Plus, the sleeves were too short for my long, muscular arms. And I seemed to have to have the lining replaced, like, once a season! I had to say goodbye to it, with regret.

I don't know why I was making this face in this picture, which I found in a little box of pictures of myself as a younger person. Perhaps I was making my "model face," which in retrospect, doesn't really make me look like a model. Perhaps this is my imitation of "Ape-X," a simian character from Marvel Comics' Squadron Supreme (which, I must be honest, was just a rip-off of the Justice League). Ape-X seemed to be around primarily to make this face, which she did quite often, heart-breakingly, usually after one of her teammates was slain. She had sort of a great effect on me ... I used to puzzle, reading comics, "Why do people wish that animals could talk?" Poor Ape-X, I don't think her "psychotic break" was ever resolved, a cruelty by her illustrators that mirrors humans' cruelty towards animals of all kinds. She just exists in a kind of limbo now, forever going insane. Ah, well. We've all been there, Ape-X ...

I guess what I was doing by cleaning out my closets was "culling." Once, when I was working at a toxic literary agency (but aren't all literary agencies toxic?), the singer Suzanne Vega wrote me a letter saying that she was "culling" her journals for material for a book. I looked off into the distance and wondered at that word. I knew what it meant, but I had never heard it used before. I remember that I imagined Suzanne with a giant scythe instead of an arm. Cull ...

As I was culling my closet, I was able to acknowledge various stages in my fashion history ... my Burberry phase ... my cardigan phase ... my vest phase ... certainly my Jil Sander phase ... and move on, with hope. My fashion history continues to spool out; I am currently in a kitty cat t-shirt phase. And a plaid sport shirt phase. The phases will continue, as life continues, like a wave of molten lava. And at the end, everything will solidify, and I will breathe my last.

I suspect that after you have read this post, you will cull it.

Zoe at Burberry

I accompanied one of my authors, Zoe Heller, to her reading at Burberry on 57th Street. I sometimes don't go to my authors' events, but this one was so goofily arranged that I elected to go to make sure Zoe wasn't harangued into getting a plaid tattoo or something like that. We sat together in Burberry's "green room," and a parade of beautiful, waifish, bubbly young women and men came in and out (one by one) asking us if we needed water, champagne, magazines, to go to the bathroom, a special pen, etc. I confided in Zoe that, last year, I had handed my business card to an ugly fellow who works at Burberry, with the internal logic that an ugly fellow was my lot in life now that I'm old. That this ugly fellow, my last resort, would now, in some final, horrible irony, be my true love - teaching me a difficult but necessary lesson about the nature of love itself. Needless to say, the ugly fellow didn't call me, and, as I walked into Burberry for the event and saw him standing there, I burned with the shame of it. Burned!

Zoe is an amazing writer - I think of her in the same category as a Lynn Freed or a Mary Gaitskill. Her writing is clean and harsh at the same time, and laugh-out-loud funny. In the green room, she peeped inside the closet and found boxes of "Burberry Brit" cologne, which she cagily suggested that I abscond with. (I didn't). After the reading, she was trying to get Burberry to give me a clothing discount, as well. I was as charmed by Zoe as can be - she even shared her limo home with me. We talked about the gays, about Christmas, and about her boyfriend, who sounds cool. The night made me think of countless other wintertime nights of author readings, sudden bonding, and fresh evidence of old rejections - and, as Zoe's limo pulled off, I ran across the street to meet up with Chris, and I felt so much fondness for Chrismastime that I practically burst with the wonder of being alive. Merry Christmas to everyone! Except for the ugly fellow from Burberry. May you, sir, have as preposterous a Christmas as has ever occurred.