I have a story that I like to tell myself, about how I’m going to be this woodsy, butch old hermit living with a vast hoard of treasure. And a sub section of that hoard (I think I mentioned it back in another post) will include spangled gowns, and elaborate, largely unwearable jewellery, and all the shiny lady things that you (by which I mean I) would never expect me to care about.
I’m learning to be cautious of absolutes. Though I’ve spent a lifetime trying to resist the pressure to appear correctly feminine, disowning that stuff entirely doesn’t seem to do me much good either. I’d like to learn how to approach it, as it occasionally appeals, without it feeling like a return to bondage.
This is where the hoard is a sort of saviour, you see. The hoard’s hunger is impartial; its appetites are irrational; its contents require no justification because they needn’t answer to any practical duty; and most crucially, you can let those objects be external receptacles for the parts of yourself you can’t comfortably (or consistently) contain. Not to sound like an evil soul-eating wizard, or anything. But really, it works pretty well.
By the way, there’s no reason for me to be an old lady in this story, except that I hope to have some real expendable income by time I get there. I don’t intend to have children, and probably none of my future dogs will ever need to go to college, so it’s not impossible that by the time I’m 85, I could: 1. afford a beaded Valentino gown, and 2. have the guts to zip it on whenever I damn well please and LARP around the forest like a drunken teenager. Also, I plan to be pretty damn foxy at that age, I’m just saying.
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