Mr. Blackwell and the Fishes

I kissed my Mona and her guy bye. At least he tried hard enough to buy the afternoon sandwiches at the Italian cafe, but suddenly it worked. I said, "I'm older, you lose," and he acquiesced. I mean, I like to take care of people. Besides, they don't have the money. Nobody consumed anything at the table besides the olives and the espresso. They would take the sandwiches home and survive on them for the next two days. If I were the one staying behind, I would have finished the paninis off in fifteen minutes then gone looking for a bottle of sauvignon blanc to wash down the residual from the green olives. Frugal is such an ugly word. I have finally accepted that I obstain only by preoccupation, not from any ability to deny myself, and so be it.

Preoccupied with catching an A Train for JFK, I left kids and sandwiches behind and headed for Argentina. I don't remember much about the trip. I got on the the middle seat in the third to last row. We watched a man try four times to stuff a carry-on into an overhead compartment. "Look at him. He's at it again," I said to the woman next to me, feeling uncharacterstically talkative. "I know. He's something. I work with him," she said.

"I'm sure he is lovely," I added, then straightaway took an Ambian and dreamed of pierced snake tongues for the next nine hours. I awoke in Buenos Aires, a few days before I was to be 50 years old. It was cold and gray and I wore creamy white. The city looked tired. The city looked mostly tired of not having a lot of money, except for the shiny, tall Sheraton where the convention was. The taxi would not pull up. I had acquired it at the airport taxi stand, but it must have been a gypsy, for it left me at the street below. I had to walk up the hill, with my small black roller computer bag, and a silly powder blue Nike backpack that I had to bring if I wanted both my cameras and a purse. I looked out of touch with the weather, the location, and my sanity.

The black bag contained my computer, a hard copy of my presentation, back up documents I knew I would never need, two New Yorkers, and pair of jeans and sweater for a photo excursion, and a summer dress for the presentation. I had stopped wearing suits. After two decades of suffering the man habit, I became claustrophobic. I would watch men on sweaty days, working to look collected while perspiring in woolen jackets, cotton dress shirts, and knotted ties, and think, “Take it off, guys!” and mean it in a nice way. As for me, jackets were rarely cut with any serious intention, and generally felt of the straight genre. Open blouse collars more and more threatened to catch a jowel. Buttons on dress shirts never matched where my chest was. My lower legs, the lone visual cue in a skirt suit, had become unpredictable. One day, my familiar fav pegs, the next, swollen road maps. And what about all that stuff around my middle? Who was marking Spanx or other girdle-with-a-kinder-name to put under a lined skirt with a waistband and blouse combo to make us all feel as if staged for a medieval joust? Instead of metal, however, our protective gear consists of rubber, wool, poly-silks, cotton, buttons, zippers, stiff interface, and trims. No thanks. There was a reason I wasn’t born in 1790 and mostly it was because the clothing protocol would have buried me alive. At least in this enlightened age I could show up at a meeting in a knit turtleneck dress or tailored slack and killer shoe and be appreciated.

Or so I thought. Invited to speak at a conference, I figured I couldn’t go wrong in a Kenzo wrap. Sure it was a business group, but top designers always mean business. I figured wrong. In the flash of a second it took my brain to whisper to my ego, “You’ve screwed up, big,” I counted 350 black-suited career women – women who looked equally capable of stealing a heart or ripping one out of another’s chest cavity with a ball point pen. You could open envelopes with their marathon-trained calves. Their suits were made of wool that only Oxford educated sheep could produce. Schools of these deal-makers were passing before me like an overpopulated aquarium, with not an open toed shoe in the joint. Even the wait staff wore black suits. I looked like I was dropping off someone’s musical instrument: nice, but on a different mission. I had no choice. I had to find a way to resuit.

First, the structural defects. Compression stockings worn the day before a suit call would help me fend off ankle bulge, so I visited a surgery supply shop and asked to see their vice grip collection. Did I know my size? “A small when I have them on, and a large when I take them off, maybe?” But the salesperson ignored me. “We have several styles. There is the open toe, the knee high, the thigh-high…” Thigh highs? Open toes? What, exactly, was so titillating about a legging with the transparency of an ace bandage. The thought of fat toes squishing out of one end and fat thighs squishing out of the other made me hungry for cake. “I’ll take three pairs of the black solid knee-hi’s please,” a phrase I modified to “one pair” when told the uninsured price. It dawned on me as I left the store that the end is probably near when you spend more money on Jobst than on Legg’s. Next I went to see one of the famed Argentinian doctors about my veins, on a referral from a panel-mate. “They’re neither spidery nor varicose, but they seem, let's say, tortured?" the doctor said. “Let's” I thought, as I gave permission to have each read its last rights, individually euthanized, and put out of my misery. “Might this be insured?” I asked. The office personnel just smiled.

This whole process was beginning to feel like fixing a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, – with a never-ending list of problems I would have to cure before actually getting to the point. And what was the point, for that matter? Should I add laser lipo to my knees and inner thighs, and a tummy tuck to the mix, just so I could dress like a man in a state of perpetual mourning? On any given bleary Monday and with a cosmetic rider on my insurance policy, I’d be up for the adventure, but I had no rider and with legs already wrapped and sore from the expensive deveining episode, my head was starting to look for the exit ramp off the makeover toll road.

I explained my dilemma to a tailor. “You are not a fish. Your heart would stop if you became invisible. You need a little more bespoke in your life.”

Maybe. Was it a drug?

“I can make you a jacket of a beautiful material. Fabric solves every problem. Wear the jacket over what you already love. Get two, a short suit coat for good days, one long for not so good days. Or maybe one that is structured and with a serious weave, and another that is lightweight and satiny.” He was starting to transcend. I was starting to drop. Maybe I needed six for each of my monthly body types or maybe ten for each of my personalities, and would any of this be covered by insurance as part of a therapy treatment? I uttered only, “What do I do about my waist?” “Are you asking me to help you keep your head out of the refrigerator? I do not have that strength. But no waistbands. Elegant sweaters do not need to be tucked in. Buy only those. But you must promise me no white. White is a billboard. Oh, and one fabulous, long black cashmere coat for your entrance. Seriously, these things are all you really need. Elegant and simple and never wrong.”

He was right, of course, but he was also backing me up on a theory that simple done to magazine cover perfection can require a lot of effort and a big checkbook. I calculated that it would be cheaper to stay for two months in Argentina for a delumpifying overhaul and buy a pocket steamer and back-up Gen Y suit from Banana Republic – in black, of course – to keep stashed in my briefcase for those occasion when my own style sense misses, than to stuff my closet full of cashmere and 150 grade woolen suits. Then again, perhaps to be safe, I would have to figure out a way to do both. Either way, he couldn't fix me up in time for my lecture. But on the Pacifica pedestrian street I did find a Zara, Spain's answer to Sweden's H&M.

The day of the presentation was my actual 50th birthday. And despite the dress code, I couldn't show up in a cheap imitation. I wore thick stockings to hide my bruises, put on my open toe shoes (I know, I know you can't wear them with hose enough already), and the Kenzo dress. It was so beautiful, but still two months ahead of season. My bad, and again, I know. The program ran two hours over schedule, so I had to rush and and reorganize for the plane in the hotel bathroom, where I polished off a bottle of wine in the bathroom stall so totally against all rules of style and sanitation, but it was for me.

Anyway, Mr. Blakwell, I'm so sorry. I'm working on it.