My September issues.

I remember, way back in my youth that was ever so long ago, getting fired up over fall and the idea of going out and buying all sorts of cute new outfits for school. I say “idea” because, as a young chubster, buying all sorts of cute new outfits simply wasn't going to happen because they didn't actually exist. I would buy the fall issue of Seventeen magazine, big and thick and crammed with all sorts of fashion ideas and tips and tricks and ooh and ahh over the assorted ensembles on their pages, and of course not a stitch of the ensembles came in a size bigger than 12.

I would try to cobble together something that could be interpreted as being sort of hip or current, but I had two stores from which to cobble – Lane Bryant (back before they decided to make clothing for women under 60) and Sizes Unlimited (lots of basics. Lots...of basics. LOTS). I remember buying a hot pink studded belt from maybe Claire's or Contempo Casuals or maybe Express (since all I could buy were accessories if I went shopping with my thin friends), a belt that was meant to go around one's torso twice. Of course, it only got around me once with perhaps another six or seven inches available, and I spent ages tweaking it so at least I could wear a COOL BELT (it was 1985). A particularly disagreeable male classmate decided to call me out on it, of course, since what business did I, Fat Girl, have trying to look like the thin girls?

Oh, there was so much polyester in my life. So much damn polyester. It wasn't until junior year of high school came along that it seemed like clothing from a planet closer to mine began to be made for the fat chick about town, and I had settled into my “I Am Robert Smith of the Cure In Drag” phase so I could slap together lots of black and skirts and such that made me feel more like ME than someone being forced to wear god-awful shit because that was all that was available. I want to say Mode Magazine appeared around that time as well, but the internet is not helping me and at some point, there's a lot of blurring beyond a certain date, if you feel me. Reader, I'm 39. BLURRING.

Had Torrid appeared when I was 16? HOLY. SHIT. I don't know what I would have done with myself from all the joy that would have been coursing through my veins. Mind you, I'm referring to version 1.0 of Torrid, when it was Goth-esque and DARK and I WEAR BLACK ON THE OUTSIDE BECAUSE BLACK IS HOW I FEEL ON THE INSIDE awesome for suburban teens such as myself. And I'm glad that Torrid exists for fat teengirls now because Lane still just doesn't quite cut it if you're below a certain age. Well shit, Lane doesn't really cut it for me at 39, but so few clothiers do. If I do decide I must buy something, my first stop is going to be Vive La Femme in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood because owner Stephanie Sack is made of 100 percent pure awesome and makes shopping for clothes so festive. I always thought I was sized out of what is carried at Vive La Femme, but Stephanie is magic. I also will snarf around LucieLu.com and I have some dresses from her that are also magic. Lane gets my business for my unmentionables and jeans and that's about it because I'm sniffy and refuse to be anything other than comfortable these days. That may mean I dress like a 20-something fat skater kid, but I'm not constantly pulling or yanking or adjusting something to get it over my belly/out of my ass/up above my knees. I can't present myself in a manner which I appreciate if I'm in shoes that are making my size Tenleven gunboats hurt.

I'm looking at my closet right....NOW and there are so many items in it that I haven't worn in literally years, but it's as if I'm keeping them for a rainy day where I'll suddenly come over all I MUST DRESS UP. I just hope they'll all go with jeans.

Thirty-niner.

So I did this thing where I turned 39 years old today, and it's just kind of weird because when I was 25 and throwing a brody over turning 25, it was borderline incomprehensible that I'd be 39 one day.  I mean, I grasped the concept of time passing and aging, but I was 25.  Thirty-nine seemed to be so far away.  And shit, I could barely manage turning 25, what the hell was I going to do when I turned 30?  Forty?!?!

Oh Christ, how I spent so much time fretting and hand-wringing over where I was at any given age.  These mysterious milestones and achievements I should have been racking up all passed me by.  Didn't get married, didn't even get into a relationship, didn't have a career to speak of, didn't have an agent, didn't sell a screenplay, didn't didn't didn't.  I built quite the little self-pitying industry based on all the things I figured I should have been doing, how I should have been looking, the life I should have been leading.  I can remember walking home from the el in the dead of winter, leaving work in the dark and trudging down sidewalks in the city that were NEVER shoveled (seriously, fucking shovel your sidewalks because I did not appreciate doing headers or doing the super-cautious weird walk thing to try and avoid doing a header), and glancing at windows in assorted condos and apartments, convinced that whomever was living inside that particular place HAD to be having a better time of things than me.  And I was sure the fix was so easy - be thin, be pretty, change jobs, cure the common cold, get super into particle physics.

To avoid making a long story longer, shit worked out.  I still don't have a career to speak of, but I was never built for having a career.  I'm fine just having a jobby job, being at the same place for 20 years.  I don't have an agent and haven't sold a screenplay, primarily because I lack the crazed ambition and drive to do such a thing.  I reckon I could crank out a nice screenplay that would make a pleasant movie, but yeah, that having a "drive" thing?  I don't have it.   Some days I wouldn't mind having that semi-drive and sort-of-ambition back, mainly because I would like to knit something other than a very long, very cushy scarf.

Shit worked out in that relationship department as well, which still takes me by surprise every now and then.  It's been a year and a few days since things changed, and it's resulted in me having random revelations about assorted items.  I hung so much of my lack of success in the romantical department on being fat and fuck, that really did not have much to do with it in my experience.  Me not going out and about and being social and owning my ass (and the size of it) and banking that every stinking thing in my life would change the second I got to a size whatever is what jacked me up.  Me not figuring out that being single was certainly NOT the most awful thing to ever happen to me is what caused my major malfunctions.  Me waiting for someone to come around and make me "me"...oh MAN the time wasted...and the god-fucking-awful poetry/song lyrics written. 

You know, it's dumb luck, dumb fucking luck that things happened how they happened between me and my beloved, terribly handsome, incredibly awesome partner in crime.  I took major risks, stepped out of my comfort zone, Oprah the Secret Deepak Chopra Eat Pray Go Fuck Yourself Touchy-Feely Horseshit cliches whatever.  And I did that shit while being fat and not wearing makeup and not sporting the super-stylin' threads and being absolutely 100 percent me.  No compromises.  No putting on shows, no playing dumb, none of that pathetic horseshit that women are told they MUST do in order to find themselves in a relationship - note that so many of those magazines and self-help books never quite tell you to aim for a relationship that, you know, doesn't suck, it's simply far better to be with someone (no matter how loathsome) than not. 

It crossed my mind that a song by the Cure that I'm terribly fond of is called "39", and I'd wager it was penned by Robert Smith in one of his many funks about being on the brink of 40.  The lyrics, as you can imagine, are terribly chipper:

So the fire is almost out and there's nothing left to burn
I've run right out of thoughts and I've run right out of words
As I used them up, I used them up...

Funny how it's only as I've found myself on that brink that I seem to have finally found some fire.  And ohhhhh, how it's blazing.





Well, isn't that just a wretched "let's all join hands and kumbaya and then marvel at how clever we are" kind of ending.  I kind of want to punch myself right now, but instead...I leave you with....



I...I've got nothing.  Shit.  Fucking blogging.