Things I Ate That I Love

“That’s real blonde, isn’t it?” said a voice behind me.  I was dancing in a minidress, dripping with sweat and making eyes at every man and woman in the half-lit nightclub. Wait, no: I was in the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station, which despite recent renovations is one of the saddest places known to New York public transit.  The whole thing is basically constructed from rat corpses and peeling paint and its location near the hub of several City social services headquarters means that the people passing through its turnstiles are, best case scenario, in bad moods. It was 20 degrees out, I was wrapped head to toe in utilitarian outerwear, but my ponytail was still visible and that was enough.

“Is it? Are you a real blonde? I know you! I see you around here! I know you!” the man continued. I didn’t get a good look at him; he was just outside my peripheral vision, slightly behind me, over my right shoulder. I was in that vulnerable moment of taking my metrocard out of my wallet, it usually only takes a second but it was so cold that all the pieces of plastic were stuck together in their sheath.

19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 year old me might have turned her head and automatically flashed this person a polite, disarming smile. Without realizing she was doing it she might have laughed a perfunctory laugh, as though he’d told a joke.  God forbid you make someone uncomfortable.  God forbid you give someone every right to follow after you shouting “Bitch!  Stuck-up bitch!” so that every other commuter turns around and looks at you and you end up drawing attention to yourself.

30 year old me just kept walking, unstuck the card, swiped it through the turnstile, didn’t even turn to check to see whether he was still following, didn’t even speed up, not even a little bit.

This is a game Ruth and I made up today when we were sitting around drinking coffee and trying to wrap our minds around the idea of emerging into a New Year/putting on real pants. I woke up with the Katy Perry song about smelling like a minibar stuck in my head and so I’d been thinking about KP, specifically about how she and Zoeey Deschanel, in addition to being human beings, also seem like variations on the same brand concept aimed at slightly different demographics.  This is related to but distinct from Molly Lambert’s black swan/white swan game, which evaluates twinned entities and determines which is the evil/better half.   To be a trash swan (Katy is Zoeey’s), you have to be the more accessible, mass-market version of a person, band, concept, food, et cetera, but you do not have to be evil necessarily.  You shouldn’t be related to the class swan except via this relationship: a brand’s diffusion line is not its couture brand’s trash swan, but probably something else is.

The Eagles are the trash swan of the Byrds.  Liz Phair has staged several attempts to become her own trash swan but can’t get around herself, thank goodness.  My inability to think of more good ones right now might be a sign that this isn’t a great game, or it might mean that I’m still brain-damaged from last night.