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Calling from the Funhouse

There are many places I like to avoid.  Renaissance fairs.  The back of those white rapey vans that have no windows.  Classrooms with calculus happening in them.  But one place that proves difficult to avoid and has haunted me for years is the women's dressing room.  Several factors contribute to my aversion, and I mostly blame florescent lighting.  I had a recent run in with the dressing room in Macy's, and my experience there did more than remind me of the virtues of online shopping.  Even so, I went willingly into the dressing room then, and I imagine I will continue doing so for many years to come.  Why?  Because I am a girl, and we are crazy.

I needed a dress for an event at work.  When I say need, I'm openly lying.  I have a talent for ignoring the mental images of perfectly wearable clothes already hanging in my closet, and I will tell myself, "you don't have anything."  This is a lie that always works, and this day is no different.  I leave work on a Monday evening and hop on a train to herald square.  On the ride over, I continue my internal conversation with, "this is going to be a good, easy experience."  This is a lie that never works, and this day is no different.  However, at this point in the shopping experience, anxiety is usually dulled by the hope of new, pretty clothes, and I'm always surprised that I never learn that hope is kind of stupid.  Yes, it momentarily suppresses the inevitable spiral into insanity.  But it's like watching the preview for The Way We Were but then having to actually sit through Deuce Bigelow, Male Gigolo.  Or rather, hope is the floor with all the beautiful dresses on display, leading to the inevitable carpeted closets covered in mirrors.

Don't get me wrong, there are things that I love to shop for!  I'm a great jeans shopper.  I can spot a good jacket or blazer easily, and this is mostly because I don't try any self-trickery when shopping for these items.  I'm not stupid and I have eyes, so I know what looks presentable on me when it comes to pants and jackets.  I am not sure where the disintegration of my faculties happens exactly, but when it comes to the genre of dresses, I completely lose all knowledge of self.  I still know what looks presentable on someone with my body type (no ass, linebacker shoulders) and my body size, but my awareness and my actions do not cooperate on dress shopping day.  And this only leads to a breakdown that occurs inside the suffocating walls of the dressing room.

When dress shopping, I tend to take several laps around the floor to weed out the areas I don't need to thoroughly navigate.  These include Mother of the Bride dress/jacket combos, the entire juniors section (which I sadly have never really been able to utilize - even as a junior) and Quinceañera dresses.  Usually at this point, I feel good that I've narrowed it down, and I can move to the next phase which I call "delusion leads to poor choices."  Because department stores don't usually put a limit on the number of items you can squeeze into the dressing room with you, I will literally collect up to 18 dresses to try on.  I feel there is safety in numbers, though typically about one of the eighteen dresses is a reasonable choice for my body. But as we've established, I pretend to have a different body on dress day.  But wait!  Don't you hate trying on clothes in the dressing room?  (Yes!)  Then why so many?  (I'm crazy, remember?!).  I also think the sheer amount of fabric I carry with me serves as a buffer between myself and the mirrors - there's an obvious pattern I follow of delaying the inevitable.  Let me have my routine.

Casually carrying 8-9 hangers on each hand like it's no big deal, I nod at the Macy's employee guarding the entrance to the dressing room.  I have the usual urge to run away, but I can't, so I instead focus my energy on assessing the emotional state of the woman assigned to work  in my personal hell.  I have found that approaching dressing room workers (and retail workers in general) requires finesse because they are often just as volatile and dangerous as the rooms they stand in front of.  Who would voluntarily work inside the space where half the women who enter leave there completely shattered and the other half haven't yet mastered the art of getting a shirt back onto its hanger?  These employees are masochists posing as sadists, and I never know whether to feel sorry for them or write them off as simply mean.  I do fear them though, and I regard them carefully, assuming there's a personality disorder to contend with.

The saleslady's name is Maureen, and she nods back at me and then points to her right.  "Over there in the back.  Hang your clothes UP when you're done.  Then you bring them here to ME."  I realize this speech is necessary for the women in the second group I mentioned before, but I always feel somewhat insulted when I'm not recognized as one of the women in the first group.  My eyes are pleading with them, "I do not want any trouble.  I can hang clothes up.  I'm just afraid of what's about to happen in there."  I walk back to my assigned closet and hope to Jesus that Maureen is not the type of dressing room employee that checks on her customers.

When I said before that dressing rooms have haunted me for years, I really meant that.  More frequently than I like to admit, I will sit and think about the absurdity of their design.  Tiny rooms with no air.  Two hooks to accommodate 18 hangers.  1 to 3 suspended mirrors.  And the mystery that has plagued women since the industrial revolution: florescent effing lighting.  I don't care if you are 9 or 87, tiny or large, Republican or Democrat, happy or unhappy - no one looks good under (under! shining down!) florescent lighting.  I cannot imagine a semi-intelligent girl with a marketing degree pitching to Macy's: "We keep the lighting!  But we change the carpet to taupe.  And turn the music up louder!  LOUDER!  The shoppers, they like it!"  So instead I imagine men with cigars sitting around a table laughing at women and saying things like, "Florescent lights!  That'll teach them to stay home and cook instead of spending all our money on dangerously high-hemmed skirts, heh heh."  [this is seriously what I imagine].  It's the only explanation, and it kind of works.

I sigh and smash together all of the dresses onto the two hooks provided.  As I stand with my eyes closed, preparing myself for destruction, there is a knock on my door, and I overreact with an audible gasp.  Damn it, Maureen.  She's a checker.  "Everything okay?"  "Yep!  All good."  She is fast - too fast.  I haven't even faced the mirrors to do the initial self-assessment in my bra and underwear yet.  (a ritual of mine that lasts under twenty seconds but has consequences that last for years).  With each failed attempt at the fun, trendy, flowy dresses I foolishly chose, the sadder and sweatier me begins to emerge.  Perhaps if this me were around all the time, I wouldn't be in this mess!  I'd stay inside and accept the fate of being the mom in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?  What's so bad about a good mu-mu?!  But sad me is still being upstaged by hopeful me -- the me who still pretends to be in a disney movie and is waiting on the birds to fly in and drop Belle's yellow gown over my tiny frame.

About halfway through my insane dress choices, Maureen comes back around to check on me.  I am more stressed at this point but also less surprised by her appearance. "Everything okay?"  I can't answer right away because there is royal blue fabric pressing down on my diaphragm.  I manage a "mmm hmmmm" and after a pause, I know that Maureen knows.  She knows I am standing in the corner, hair in a knot, mascara running under my eyes while I fight my way out of yet another dress.  When she asks, "You need anything?  Another size in something?" I recognize this as employee code for I know you, girl.  I can hear your ribcage collapsing under the strain of the zipper.  Stop fighting with that size 6 BCBG dress, idiot, and allow me to direct your attention to the simpler, more forgiving fabrics fashioned by Jones New York.  I enter into defensive mode and snap back with a quick "no thanks!"  I feel like she can see me through the window-blinds that act as a door, and I am aware that I probably look insane -- huddled against the wall like a neurotic cobra. "You sure?  We're slow right now, so I can help you."
Is. she. kidding. Me?  "I'm sure, thank you" [gasp for air].  I am spiraling, and it is going to get worse before it gets better.

I tear out of the cute, flirty BCBG dress that, when placed on my body, looks like it was draped over an oversized locker.  I look at feral me in the mirror, and I recognize that I am approaching a crossroads.  I seemingly have two options:

1. allow disney me to take over, adopt a positive attitude, and continue with the torture fun of finding a new dress!
2. take the well-worn path of sadder me, hang up my clothes for Maureen, and officially cross over to the group of weirdos who sob uncontrollably on the subway.

Who am I fooling?  Even disney me has given up on Belle's gown and is in the process of settling for the scene from The Little Mermaid where Ariel relies on the seagull to fashion a dress out of burlap and rope.
And yet, I haven't considered that there could be an option number 3: grab a dress that has more than a 50% chance of fitting, buy it, and go home to watch Ellen because who cares?  This is an event for work where you will be working.  You will be wearing a lanyard and pointing people toward the bathrooms.  Just pick a dress.
I suddenly love this carefree, wiser, more mature me.  Look who's growing up?  Then it hits me: maybe I'm not that crazy!  Maybe I am no longer crippled by full-length mirrors and harsh lighting.  But given that three minutes ago, I was prepared to strike the saleslady who probably just wants to go home and make soup, I decide that I'm probably still crazy, but I should seize this moment of buoyancy and get the hell out of the store.  Flushed, hot, emotionally unstable and tired, I all but run out of the dressing room with a farewell nod to Maureen.  

I can breathe again!  With two dress choices in tow, I know full well that one dress fits well and requires a large amount of my money.  The other dress does not zip up all the way (which is the softer way of saying it is too freakin tight), but it is from the sale rack.  I ask the lady behind the register to check the price on the sale dress.  Not wanting to be bothered with walking a few feet (which I totally get), she says, "Oh.  I don't know.  Let's say fifty dollars."  Done.  Sold.  Never mind that it's too small.  "I'll make it work!" I think as I exit Macy's.   I shift my energy from hating dressing rooms to finding a way to fit into my new dress.  A new dress!  I did it!  I feel relieved and completely sane.

Later in the evening, I call my dear friends, the Wadens, to say goodnight to their girls.  I tell Taylor, the four-year-old, that I have a new dress.  "Can I see it?"  Luckily it is bedtime, so I don't have to explain that maybe one day she too will be just crazy enough to buy clothes that don't fit in order to avoid time spent in  tortuous, clausterphobic cubicles with funhouse mirrors.  "Goodnight, Taylor! I love you."

Steve gets on while Kami does bedtime, and he feigns interest in my news:
S: "So you have a new dress?"
T: "Yes.  But it doesn't technically fit yet."
S: "What does that mean - yet?"
T: "It's too small.  Won't zip up.  Yet."
S: (not satisfied with my monosyllables) "Why don't you just, you know.  Get a bigger size?"

[silence]

T: (exercising patience) "That's not how it works.  I will force my body to go down a size before I would ever go up a size, Steve."
S: "I...don't understand."
T: "I know...I don't really either."
S: "Here's Kam."

K: "You got a dress!"
T: "Yes!  Yay!  It won't zip up all the way yet."
K: "Oh okay."
T: "Steve told me to go up a size."
K: "Oh god.  I'm sorry."

We shared a knowing silence that people with penises really don't get it.  But as I told Steve, I don't really get it either.  I'm not fooled by the moment of semi-sanity that got me up and out of Macy's that day.  It could have just as easily gone in the opposite direction.  Unless you are currently the most infantile Victoria's Secret model, you've probably had to do the hop-hop-shake-shimmy in and/or out of a dress before.  I have simply taken this predicament to a pathological level.

I did get into the dress for the event.  It was a small act of Congress to get it on, and I imagine that had anyone been unfortunate enough to witness me wrestling myself into the dress, it would have been like watching a live birth.   Totally gross but also kind of like witnessing a miracle.









Comments

  1. my god. I just had that moment in macy's for a gala for work. and my roommate, my mother, my father, and my aunts were there. i might have sobbed. i'm trying to block it from my memory.

    this was genius.

    ReplyDelete
  2. there was something lost in translation when you told me this story on the phone and although i loved hearing it because that meant hearing your sweet voice, it was much better to read!

    I'm so happy that the dress was a success...uh-hmm...a miracle!

    ReplyDelete

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