fooled you

I do a lot of my online lurking at J.Crew because I like to think that (a) someday I'll be of the set that can get away with wearing whales embroidered on my khakis without having jeers and insults thrown at me and (two) I love plaid and cashmere and I have to stalk for sales because my baby needs to eat so I can't buy billion dollar sweaters anymore. The home page shows a little video of a catalogue photo shoot, complete with fake snow and leafy green trees and men in t-shirts and women in winter coats. It's all very confusing, yet charming.

Picture it. Rittenhouse Square. 2004. Aprilish.

I woke up early one Saturday morning in a hazy cloud of whiskey and lager and good times with a check made out in Dave's name for several hundred dollars in my pocket that really really really needed to be in the bank so our rent check didn't bounce and we could keep our swanky address.

It was that time of year when winter coats make me sweat and spring jackets aren't enough and my scarf kind of stinks from months of use and lack of dry cleaning so I can't just throw that over my jean jacket and I'm tired of boots and my sneakers are in my gym locker because I realize that I have about a month before I will be forced to show flesh again and I remember that I was a bit warmish last night but it may have been my liquid longjohns (purchased for $4 a pint at any local bar) kicking in but the bank is only three blocks away so I settle for a light jacket since the sun is shining and we are past Easter so it should be okay and I walk out my door and I bust my ass on a thick sheet of ice. Then I walked down Spruce Street soaking my sweet green Pumas that I only wear in the summer with the slush all over the sidewalk that wasn't there at 5 am when I decided it was time to come home before my husband sends out the hounds to drag my drunk rear end in the house. Weird.

18th Street is somehow free of ice but there is some snow and I'm getting really warm and boozy sweat is running down my sides out of my armpits. The Park is covered in really pretty white fluffy snow and everyone is bundled up in really nice richy-looking coats and high heels but it's only 8 in the morning and the dogs are wearing Burberry sweaters and they are all really groomed and no one else seems to be dying of heat and I start questioning my sanity and maybe it was Christmas dinner and not Easter dinner I was eating a couple weeks ago and maybe someone slipped something in my drink or maybe I'm drinking too much and it is time to go to a meeting of some sort or maybe social services was really getting to me and hallucinations were somehow contagious off my schizo-affective clients or maybe I am only dreaming that I got out of bed and I'm really sleeping and hey- there is someone I know from somewhere. who the hell is that? and that older lady too. and that other lady, who is totally from South Philly somewhere, I can remember seeing her in someone's house down there. where do I know them from? maybe they can tell me what effing day it is.

Or maybe some weird guy with a bad goatee is lunging toward me and now he's pushing me and yelling for me to get out of the way because I just walked into a shot.

Ah, big city life with it's movie making and whatnot, always tricking nice girls like me into thinking they have some sort of mental/drinking problem. As if.