No, I'm not an alcoholic, though there is cruelty and addiction in my forbearers, as well as an overwhelming sense of passive non resistance, a sort of "go with the foe" waywardness that I often fall into. Its just that I went to Earth Day and the library with my mother, we had a nice time but it made me unaccountably tired due to my middle aged period and generally constant experimental state, and I had to lie down and read a bit of a novel. Then I realized just how bright the novelist (Maynard & Jennica the book is called) was making this character Maynard, how alarmingly well spoken he was, so I got a talent blast, then I went to meet somebody for the first time, somebody who managed a person called Wavy Gravy. You would think that, being called Jennifer Blowdryer would give me an automatic affinity for people involved with, say, a Wavy Gravy or a...oh I can't think of that other visionary hippie ensemble's moniker right now...not Captain Beefheart, another one...but it is not so. We stirred up an air of mutual dullness, then parted ways.
I went to the closest Thrift Store, Out of the Closet, and again managed my addictive tendencies successfully by realizing that I didn't need to try to squeeze into any of the frocks and that although they had Join Me and Wake Up Sir on their shelves, two books I know for a fact I could give to somebody and they would consequently enjoy them tremendously, I didn't have to buy them just to give them to the perfect reader for that particular book in the future. I imagine myself a tutor, mentor, curator, and part time librarian, but if you look at my taxes it has none of those titles. So.
Triumphant, I walked five doors up to ReRuns, which is my favorite thrift store in the world because of the family that runs it. ReRuns is owned and operated in Berkeley California by a large African American family, helmed by Wayne, who has a lot of strict rules regarding the general operation. You can NOT donate to the store. For awhile, you were permitted to sell them items for a quarter each, if they were not STAINED, WRINKLED, or smelling like CIGARETTE SMOKE. You could only do this at one pm on Fridays though. The last Saturday of every month is Free Day, you can take whatever you want, from I believe 9am until noon - or is it one? See, I feel as if I am irritating Wayne already. He then closes up shop until 2pm, because he needs an hour to restock with all new inventory. Did I mention already that it is my favorite thrift store?
So anyway, as one would caution a freshman scribe to NOT BEGIN a paragraph, I strolled into ReRuns but I could tell that Wayne was tired. He is good and smart and wierdly artistic, same as myself but wildly different due to race and gender seperation, due to about a hundred things really. He said I'd been away, it was nice to see me back, and I agreed. I had been in NYC, it was nice to BE back. There were about 3 OCD looking pickers sorting through things in the Everything For A Dollar store. I know that the family doesn't want to answer any questions about how they are doing, business wise, or why did they close the Everything for Three Dollars store down the block and are they making it, so I was speechless for a moment, trying to think of a follow up.
"I was working for a hoarder" I volunteered. "I've been doing some reading about it."
"It's a disorder" he replied quietly. "I was in a hoarder's place" he continued. "There was no room to move, things were piled up everywhere."
"I've been doing some reading about it." I repeated, inanely. "They call that 'goat trails', those little spaces they have to walk in."
He took it in, still looking quiet and tired. I was in a strained mood, from not connecting with the Wavy Gravy handler. Not everybody should wear a gag hat. I for instance do not even wear gag hats. I will wear innapropriate attire, short skirts, too much cleavage for my age, but that is because I am going for a BLOWSY affect. I am trying to bring back the word BLOWSY.
"She says she's opening up her mail now" I continued. With this kind of self educated creative mind that Wayne has, on top of the fact that he's not that interested in talking to me in the first place, I figured I would skip the part about how I can't save anybody just get them to help themselves a tiny bit more possibly from lavishing them with caretaker love and good examples. Plus it is the female gestalt, at least mine, to surround facts and answers completely by context until nobody but another woman or gay with the same brain has a clue what the H - E - Double Toothpicks I am getting at, so I tried to bypass all that patter.
"I opened up 7 years worth of her mail!" Wayne looked a little bit impressed. I picked through a little of his inventory, pulling a plastic toy with no head out of a lucite box.
"Everything in that box is free" he told me.
I picked up another toy, strange like they all have been these last 29 years or so, some grey plastic figure with tiny legs who actually could stand up on his own when I placed him on the counter. I moved the toy near a couple of shoes on a bureau, sizing up how it looked there. I told myself it would be absurd to bring it home. I told myself it was not my place to position toys in another person's place of business. I put the toy, reluctantly, back in the box. I opened up a top bureau drawer that I know is their women's lingerie and underwear drawer. I had just brought them, on 25 cents day, a pretty nice purple corset that is way too small for me. I bet that got snapped up right away.
A widower gave me the corset, though I'm not clear if he divorces each one or really marries any but the first, it doesn't matter. He says that because he is unusual (this widower, not Wayne at all speaking here), he can only get girls with something wrong with them. This second wife had some odd physical configuration, cerebal palsy, a hairlip, I don't remember, but she also had a deadly disease and they talked on the phone the day before she died.
"You were the only one who was ever really nice to me" she told D, or something like that. After she died he spent a year in bed, not washing, not moving, not eating, and shriveled up. Now he can walk and eat and is back with the schizophrenic one, his life partner through a default combination of sex and kindness and convenience and I'm sure love of a type, but he wanted somebody flashy to have that dead woman's clothes, and carry on the flash. Well she was smaller than me, so though I adore the Donna Karan sunglasses and the wildly shedding rabbit fur coat, that corset didn't fit by about a good foot, but it was a great find for somebody at ReRuns I'm sure.
In that underwear drawer I found an pair of orange nylon underpants that originally hailed from Mervyn's, the store tag was still on them. I am no treasure hunter. They were once, according to the extremely faded store tag, $2, but here I was getting them for $1 plus tax. Still I had to buy something. Maybe in the end we just can hope for Harm Reduction. Plus I got a pair of 'tap pants' type Victoria Secret undershorts, size medium, as I've been slimming down quite a bit. I would NEVER have tried them on in the store, under my skirt.
The ReRuns mother, of Wayne and his at least I believe three sisters, and grandmother to their kids of course, is sometimes manning the counter and an OCD middle aged Chinese woman goes there probably every single day and picks and picks at the items and once I saw her crouching down and the mother said wearily but firmly "You can NOT take your clothes off in here!", a reasonable boundary, but the Chinese woman could not resist, she crouched down with an odd compulsive smile like expression, and took off her shirt, and shoved the shirt on anyway, and I could tell the Grandmother was experiencing a mild and continuing hell. I WILL put something on, say a pair of pants or a skirt, UNDER a longish skirt, or a dress OVER my t-shirt and pants/skirt, but NOT if I can tell that would strain the fabric.
My Macrocosm is your Microcosm and I RESPECT that unless you have been EXTREMELY unreasonable and worked my last nerve.
