Cosas nimias

There are things we do, little things, to make ourselves feel human again, after being dragged through the muck of disillusionment. When we realize that we are worth more than what we have been offering ourselves, or than what we have been accepting from what has been offered us. Insignificant, really, but important nonetheless.

Today I got myself ready, pulled my hair back into a beautiful silver clip that Kirsten had given me, and I realized that I like wearing my hair this way, I like not hiding behind my mask of curls, letting show the tiny dangling pendant earings that I bought myself or were bought for me, I can't remember, in Taxco. Silver and turquoise, little teardrops. I slip on a black velvet scoop neck top, and smile because I like the way it falls along my collarbones, and the contrast between the soft black and the smooth pink. I have had this shirt since my sophomore year of high school, I bought it with Meaghan, before we had our awful car accident and before the Dead Milkmen concert at the Trocadero, I smiled because it still fits, although I am quite certain that it hangs differently. Back then I would wear it with a long, ankle-length black velvet bell skirt and black Doc Marten's (the closest I ever got to being a goth... and I wonder what happened to that transparent black lace dress that had been my grandmother's, and how in God's name my mother ever let me out of the house in it, with nothing but combat boots, a black satin bra and panties underneath). I slip on a pair of sueded black pants from my Sophomore year of college that Pamela and I bought on an uncommon trip to the mall. I slipped on the high-heeled leather ankle boots, pin a turquoise and amethyst pin in the center of my blouse and wrap an extravagant maroon shawl around my shoulders. I even dig a simple, smooth black purse out of its hibernation, slip my wallet, keys and phone inside and ponder what to do about the somewhat scuffed appearance of my boots. I find saddle soap in the closet. I set it on the banister and return to the bathroom, where I proceed to paint my lips once with color (long-lasting) and then with a top coat of gloss, for the look of just wetted plumpness that we are led to believe is requisite in fashion mags and television adverts... I find the practically unused tube of mascara and decide to paint my eyelashes so as to look slightly less like a teenager. I spend an excessive amount of time in the mirror telling myself that I look cute, even if I don't fully believe it, my eyes always look greener when I have cried a lot, and lately, it takes very little to set me off. Goodbyes are always so hard, it is like someone has died once you can no longer think of them in the same way. Once the desire to hear their voice has dissipated into the nebulous place of used to be.

I decide to ignore grading for a little while longer and instead visit with my neighbor who is unofficially babysitting, we drink coffee, share gossip, and she comes through with black shoe-polish. We talk while I bend in half shining my shoes, their supple leather smooth under the cloth. I look at myself again in the full length mirror. Not bad. Not great, but not bad. Hell, I am what I am, and there's nothing I can do about that, at least not today. I decide inwardly that it has to be good enough, and if someone prefers to turn their back on me, I will not let it hurt my feelings. Not today. I shuffle us off to the car and drive downtown.

Spiritland Bistro is a cute little organic restaurant that meets the needs of every quirky dietary restriction imaginable, but Debra, Jesse and I have none, so we share a nice Syrah and discuss the university's policy on sexual harrassment, the meaning of such lesgislature for us (D. and me) as females in academia, and other sundries like how certain professors abuse their graduate students. J. jokingly suggests that someone do a sociological study about the power dynamic between advisors and their graduate students - not bloody likely. I am horrified by stories of professors that force their grad students to dog sit, or do laundry (and I inwardly applaud myself for being assertive in my recent "no"). Things feel good, I feel good, or at least comfortably numb, and the wine makes me laugh a little more easily, with a flush in my cheeks and a heady, throaty rumble in my chest. We go to hear the choral society. The concert begins with a Requiem and we are five minutes late, we sit and I close my eyes, letting the sound movements flow over me, somewhere after the Kyrie I realize that I will need to pee, soon! I wait for another movement and then slip out. The usher, a man of fifty perhaps, thick grey hair, not unattractive, sweeps along beside me to the door, and points me across the courtyard to the ladies room. I shiver, more from the effects of the wine than the cold, as I come back in and try to delicately close the glass doors behind me, he receives me at the door, tells me it is ok, and says in a voice of warm admiration that I haven't heard in years, "You have such beautiful hair, and complextion. You are just gorgeous!" and I bow my head in a mixture of gratitude and shame, and amusement all at once. I guess there is no accounting for taste. And I realize the ultimate inappropriateness, or how odd it is in this country for a man, any man, and much less a not so young, not so old man, to directly approach you and comment on your physical attractiveness. And despite our conversation about sexual harrassment just a few minutes before, I find myself smiling inwardly, instead of repudiating him, because it was such a genuine and kind sort of utterance, with absolutely no personal interest involved. A random act of kindness or a senseless act of beauty. And the music rolls over me like waves, or river water in rapid swells, and I close my eyes and let my head spin, just a little, and think that maybe it does make a difference, how we care for ourselves, instead of waiting for others to care for us, and to forgive ourselves even when others can't.