ACCESSORY

I am lousy at figuring what goes together with what. I know there is an art to this, making something appear finished, polished. I read articles that specifically instruct me how to, say, drape a scarf casually across my shoulders to look perhaps vaguely French and confident, but when I try someone looks at me and tells me that I look like a TWA stewardess from 1978. The scarf, once jaunty and Euro-cool, melts into a slump of fabric despair, and I take it off for another three years or so until I again forget I cannot accessorize.

I make attempts to buy saucy throw pillows for my couch and they look stiff. Like if you put pillows propped against a building or something. Just there. I don’t buy paintings because it seems like too much of a commitment to match things in the room to them. And coordinating paint colors? Oh, forget it, just forget it. I tried that once and I thought I really got it down – a combo of a rich red, a warm creamy white, and a khaki. The khaki turned out to be the very exact shade of newborn poop, a sick greenish-brownish-yellowish horror that was patently unsuited for the dining room it now covered. What do you match with that, HUH? Candles the color of beer piss? “Welcome, Guests, to The Fecal Room, enjoy your meal!” Fail fail fail.

I see fabulous shoes at Nordstrom, truly wonders of art in shades of pink or orange or with 4” heels and maybe their own wireless port, and my heart beats a little faster, and I examine them in my little hands with excitement. They seem like the ticket to some sort of really good fun. I get tantalizingly close to asking the salesperson to grab me a pair to try on, then my reality hits. WTF am I gonna do with these? Really, what? I’d have to have something to wear with them, clothes worthy of such gorgeous uniqueness. Then I would have to find the perfect matching purse, which currently is perfect by not matching perfectly but still has to be the perfectly offhand. The simple silver jewelry I wear is way too plain for such a grand concoction, so off to the jewelry counter for some artsy necklace I can’t even figure out how to get on. So, the shoes, the outfit, the purse, the necklace. I’m probably in for about $700 at least here. Then I have to have the good makeup and hair to live up to all this – that’s another few hundred. Then – then!—I have to have somewhere to GO in all this. Where am I going to totter off to? Starbucks? Yes, Starbucks. I would get my coffee and breakfast sandwich, too fabulous for words and tall at last, then I would go home and start the dishes. The dog would be frightened by my clatter of heels, jewels, and heavy mascara blinks. As she shivered, the dishes clanking away in the dishwasher, I would sit like Jackie O on a chair, all fashioned out and ladylike, and would realize I now have a raging blister on my heel from the fucking shoes.

I don’t buy the shoes.

The ultimate accessory for a person is another person. Sometimes that is all another person is, a thing to complete the look. I see plenty of the Trophy Wives around here, who all all all all all goddamn have the accessorizing thing down cold, and their husbands, coolly smug in their size 2 purchase. He looks not to her, ever, but to the faces of others to see them look at her. That is his payoff. Sometimes, they will have Accessory Children with them, adorable and beautiful, in clothes and shoes that are also matched with perfection. If the children are well-behaved, they may receive some polite chatter or a small smile from their parents. If they are unruly, the parents’ irritation is smoldering, contained, focused, cold. The embarrassment to them is too high. Something is whispered to the children, not heard by anyone else other than a harsh, sharp, hissing jab of syllables. The unacceptable behavior stops. The children look lost. There is something so sad about this that I have to look away.

If I examine my true feelings about accessorizing, I realize I really do not want to get it right. Some other creature in my head would like to be that girl every so often, but I’d rather come up with the things that go together effortlessly, and reflect dumb old plain me. I should get rid of all those stupid scarves, someone else will take them and make them look fabulous. If I look in my heart, I just want to be perfectly imperfect, surrounded by things and people I love for their dumb old plain imperfect fallible qualities, who love me back for my D.O.P.I.F. qualities too.

With my awesome silver leather rock and roll purse thrown in, of course.