Thursday, January 09, 2003

I had to force myself

I had to force myself not to wear it yesterday. 

Kel came home from her family xmas with some gleanings.  The kids had harassed Big Frank too many times about his crammed, uncharted closets.  They galvanized him into action.  After the ensuing closet-clearing, Kel came home with relics, two, for me: a t-shirt, ‘York Bar Bell’ - XL from Dad, but fills a niche, I think I’ll keep it for a while; and then the prize - Maybeheather’s denim jacket, levi’s, circa 1985 or 90, smelled like once was dipped in coffee, put away unwashed and never touched for 15 years, sleeves down to my fingertips, crusted and musty.  I thought, “here I go again.”

I might have been 6 when I got my first denim jacket - was it green?  When I say I wore it out, I mean I wore it till there was nothing left of it, never took it off, and if I couldn’t bear the heat, I’d tie it round my waist.  And I developed a fetish for patches too, and had Mom stitch them all over the back of the jacket: ecology, peace, benign early-seventies stuff. 

When I was tearfully forced to replace it with another denim jacket - red? - I had Mom transfer the patches and I transferred my bizarre attachment to an article of clothing.  I cycled through at least a dozen jackets during grade school, and after those first fauvist two, my choice was always levi’s denim.  I got from them exactly what I wanted every time - high utility, high familiarity.  With some reluctance I weaned myself from them after grade school, when I started to think they were a social liability.  Like that made any difference.  Different story.

This story now picks up with the aforementioned Maybeheather jacket.  I washed it and it shrank up to fit me perfectly.  The smell was gone.  I think I will be able to resist sewing patches on it with cute sayings like “Speed Kills” and “Don’t follow me I’m lost too”, but that’s taking all my willpower.  The urge to wear the damn thing is omnipresent.  Thankfully I have some other nice jackets to counteract some share of my compulsion, but I know eventually I’ll wear this one out too.  Maybe I’m denying my true nature.  Do I need a support group?  “Outerware support” sounds like an underwire jacket, though.  I think I’m on my own with this one.