I spilled chocolate soy milk on an old dress yesterday while looking at a
photoblog of the most rich, colorful photos of a portland man's daily life. i hadn't thought about the dress in years, in fact have never worn it, but was briefly overwhelmed by the memory of when i bought the dress. maybe it was looking at another person's memories that triggered my own.
the tag is still on the dress, a gauzy pale blue thing with tiny polka dots, round buttons up the chest, a white peter pan color and white cuffs at the end of long sleeves (very pre-surgery courtney love): the new store $8.
the new store was the first genuine thrift store i had been in, and i can still picture it. dark, wood panneled, bright light from the open door filtering through the dust rising from the old clothes, the unmistakable 'body odor + grandma + must' smell of a used clothing store that is now so comfortingly familiar. i was thrilled.
i didn't wear the dress because kinderwhore doesn't really work on a 15-year-old girl who still looks like she's in kindergarten (i didn't grow breasts or an ass or confidence until college). but buying the dress at all was important. it marked my first brush with underground culture; the realization that the downtown art crowd weren't birthed by some unholy union of coffee + cigarette + unimpeachable snobbery. they actually
bought their tattered hipster shit in stores that
i could enter. the closest i had come before that was sacks of goodwill t-shirts and dark jeans, converse and the wrong doc martin boots in 8th grade (the soft, sueded ones instead of the shiny black ones).
people always assume that since i grew up in olympia, i experienced k records + the riot grrl revolution first hand. truth is, i was just as clueless and alienated as any kid in the suburbs. the whole downtown scene scared me. not because it was so weird or transgressive, but because i wanted to be a part of it so badly and didn't know how.
i was vaguely aware that some sort of "indie culture" existed, but didn't know anyone that was a part of it or how i could approach it. i certainly couldn't do it on my own. i was incredibly shy + kind of a pollyanna. so instead, i read books + did my homework on time + sometimes let my shitty friends cheat off my papers (they'd give me pens that made thick black strokes so they could see my answers better). i played soccer constantlyh + took bit parts in plays + scribbled strange drawings in my notes + couldn't decide what cd's to buy at the used record store. i drank beer with the punx + turned down pot from the theater crowd. i went to concerts backstage at the capital theater friends i didn't like + felt lonely + stared at the kids i wish i could talk to.
the dress didn't really change anything, but it made those kids a little less foreign.
a co-worker recently asked me what i was like in high school. i told him and he said he wasn't surprised: no one in high school can care so little about what people think, he said. no believes me anymore when i tell them i'm shy.
in a way i guess this move has been good for me. with all my free time and loose ideas about the future, i'm discovering girl punx + riot grrls + dreaming of my girl band, inspired by the slits, kleenex, bikini kill, penelope huston of the avengers. (i remember my lesbian friends playing me l7 in 8th grade, i think. i hated it.) i will teach myself to play guitar badly as soon as i can afford the cheap guitar, though sometimes i'm afraid i'm about 10 years too late. is 24 too old? i wish i would have learned this all years ago.
so when my first niece reaches 12 or 13 or 15, i will take her to the new store and help her find that awful, $8 used dress.
