I wrote this ages ago....
Second Hand Heroes
Second Hand Tramp is a vintage clothing shop downtown. You can go there to daydream about flamboyance and masquerades. It’s a store where you can dress up like a doll, in classic relics of the glamour years. You can rummage through the flapper aisles and find a slinky feathered boa. A five point rhinestoned tiara. A pale creme slip dress with a plunging sweetheart neckline. But everything is too expensive for you take home.
Pomade Johnny works in the 1940’s section, whistling a kiss is just a kiss. You show him everything you want but can’t have. In strapless mint chiffon, he says you’re breaking all the rules. You should try it with some fishnets, (baby)< to be fancy.
You are here-in a costume shop and a playground. Those are words your mother might have said, while flipping through dresses on a 1950’s rack. The undesired left-behinds from an overdosed blonde with vintage curves.
Here, you can feel inspired to write love poems for boyfriends who you have misplaced. Poems that you had chosen not to finish. You left those lovers dreary and ambiguous.
Scotty is your closest friend. He found you at the end of spring, one day, when your face was a smear of teardrops and the rain. He took you home when you said you were a stray. A soggy stray, he must have thought. You stayed for soup. You stayed all spring.
Slow afternoons in dim blue light, on a flannel sofa with no social calls. Then the quietness made memories and loneliness noisy in your head.
Scotty is a New York anti social wreck. His apartment is full of books- long books that he starts but can not finish. He never reads fiction. And he never lies to you. He never hurts you. He always wants you around. But there is something wrong. There is something about comfort that has always made you nervous. Perhaps because you swear you've seen him lie to other people. Perhaps because
he has never learned to understand your point.
Last night you made banana splits. You told Scotty some stories about Shu-Shu, your old orange cat. He was your closest friend when you were a little girl, before you started getting boyfriends.
That honey natured, handsome brute. You loved every whisker. El magnifico. He was Zorro, when you strapped your mother’s nightshades to his ears. He wore a paper top hat, every Christmas. You've got all those Holiday baby photos, like the one of you in your mother’s arms. You put that one in a frame; She’s holding you mid giggle. The paper hat is on the tip of Shu-Shu is between you, pressed like sticking paper to your mothers Christmas sweater. Your father took that picture. A record of what your family looked like before everything changed.
Shu-Shu had piggy fat. You called him pig. Love was kissing your pig. That’s what you told Scotty last night. His nose was in a book.
You moved closer on the sofa so that the book jacket brushed against your brow. You lost an eyelash in its spine. Then you told Scotty you were having a fantasy.
“Tomorrow morning, a rail road train. Don’t bring bills to pay. Don’t bring the paper, don’t even bring the crossword. No books, and no magazines will be allowed.
Only holding hands and legs. And thighs.
We will pass run down houses. Clothing lines with hanging bed sheets and small town people’s underwear. We’ll get off to have pie. And then if inclined wine. And then if more inclined a bedroom somewhere to ravage each other meaningful. Then a bath and eggs sent to the room. The night will come, midnight blue with two pale stars. We will re-train. When we get back we’ll be emotionally evolved. We will be so charged with Technicolor visions and panoramic memories. We’ll need to walk around in shady eyeglasses so our iris and our corneas can readjust.”
It was a flashy fantasy. It came out fast, and in excited run ons.
“Was he a nice cat? Like a dog?” Scotty asked. And swished the eyelash off his book.
“He wasn’t like a dog Scotty. He was like a cat.”
Scotty picked up his reading again. He stayed breathing into his book. Not on you. Mae West was on t.v. Whispering, want me. Want me. And you ate all of Scotty's dessert.
Maybe if you had loved your man last night, you could have writen him a poem this afternoon. Maybe now you could write a poem to fix everything that has going wrong.
You start one in your head. About a boy in glasses who writes non fiction. He hates all fiction except for Bob Dylan. And he romances you in black unlustrous swoops.
But...you are distracted by a red velvet clutch purse. It looks like a valentine. It was made for you.
Pomade Johnny smiles as you press ruffles to your cheek. He is Southern, like a poster boy in a retro ad for Pepsi Cola. Full lips to kiss a girl passionate, on the hood of a whisper blue Trans-am, weeping cowboy music. All in denim, with a tattoo on his left arm bicep. A heart torn in half. One side says I Never Cried the other side says Cherry Pie. You feel he has a tickle for you. You make eyes at Johnny, then shyly turn away to look at hats.
As a child your mother was very sick. She lay in bed for days. You knew she got lonely. You would tap dance for her, and hula-hoop with Piggy.
Knock Knock,
Who’s there?
Shu-Shu Piggy’s underwear!
Settle Down, she’d say. So you’d lie with her and pretend to sleep. Her hands were cold, and she always lay with a pillow between her knees. Sometimes you could make your mommy smile, but you could never make her well.
Johnny comes behind you and smothers you in black feathers.
“Shanghai Lily,” he suggests.
“Trouble is my business,” you return.
He starts you up a dressing room of the costumes he’s watched you get dreamy over. First you try a twenties tutu dress that’s waisted at the hip. You’ve got flappers rash. Like a Kansas City candy girl, who packed her bags to be a Hollywood jazz baby.
Pomade Johnny turns your stockings down. He sings about Charlestons, gin fizzies and a manhandled coquette. Ziegfeld’s folly. You twirl fake pearls, and go back to your dressing room, walking on your toes.
In a dark velvet smoking jacket with padded shoulders, you look on your game. You are a broad. A postwar handsome dame with guts. The kind who wears pants and never turns her men off. The kind with over penciled scarlet lips to reaffirm she’s got a big mouth. The jacket comes with an ivory ermine muff.
Johnny brings you after dinner gloves in dove grey, and a cloche hat lined with pearls. It’s too small. It triggers hat nostalgia. Sad hat mishaps. You begin hating nostalgia and Tramps.
When you were thirteen, you pinned shoulder bows to your mother’s hospital gown. When cancer drugs made her lose her hair, you designed a delicate bonnet trimmed with crepe paper. Yellow roses. Hats became your bag. You did a summer line. Her favorite was made of navy straw and glue gunned red felt ladybugs.
The last hat you made for your mother was a style you had copied from a movie with Claudette Colbert. You were too fast and imprecise. It was a bad hat, because it didn’t cover enough head. You cried about that hat. You cried so much on your mother, that her pajamas became soaked.
When you grew older, your mother told you to keep making new friends. She told you she was sorry she could never make you laugh.
In the mirror at Second Hand Tramp, you are crying into the costumes. And you don’t want Pomade Johnny to catch you this way. You miss her. You try to make friends easy, but you can only attract downers. You get close to a guy like Scotty, and you feel that it is your calling to lighten him up. But he’ll hate cats and hula-hoops and candy.
You change back to blue jeans, and try to sneak out of the shop unnoticed. You walk into another rainy day, and then suddenly you are being umbrellaed.
Pomade Johnny puts you in a cab. He has snuck out the valentine clutch purse, and he tucks it in your lap.
“You might have said goodbye,” he says.
“ Next time,” you say back.
The taxi takes you home, and you hold onto the purse tightly.
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