Jaime and I went for one of our long neighborhood walks yesterday. Our turnaround point is the Salvation Army, and we wandered in because one of us had remembered his wallet for once.
When we moved to Kansas City, Jaime and I decided to continue our habit of buying almost exclusively second hand clothes. It was easier in Barcelona. I'd moved there with one checked bag but quickly pieced together a wardrobe perfectly suited to the absurd and unsustainable life I created there.
My most treasured items came from a suitcase left by a mystery woman in my apartment, the flea markets held along the beach in summer and in the train station in winter, the street and the "B" piles my friends moving to other countries couldn't cram into their bags.
Jaime operated the same way. We looked fucking amazing and cool as shit almost all of the time.
But somehow our lewks don't translate well to the Midwest.
People squint incredulously when Jaime or I explain what he does for a living. They never say what they thought he did based on his appearance, but I imagine it's something to do with wood or raising hippogriffs hither-hind Hogwarts.
I do get a fair amount of compliments, but they're almost always superseded with a version of, "but I could never pull it off." I stop myself from asking if that means I'm pushing it on, but I don't want to know the answer, so I just respond like a humbled valley girl.
Others have been more blatant in their interpretations of our clothing, and I admire their honesty.
When we lived closer to Costco, Jaime had a habit of walking to the warehouse with a large backpack to carry home a bag of bananas and net of avocados. "It's a bulk store!" I wanted to scream. "Take the van and fill it to the ceiling, so I don't have to go grocery shopping every other fucking day!" But I let his European ass do his European ass thing without much protest.
After one trip, he came home excited to tell me about a woman who'd offered him a ride. She'd unknowingly taken pity on a postdoctoral fellow carrying a bag filled with the most expensive fruit with the shortest shelf-life by choice. He was wearing a brown paper boy hat a neighbor had given him, an old rugby pull over, cut off jorts and unrelated socks. He hair was down and uncombed, and his wiry beard matched.
Then there was yesterday. While at the Salvation Army counter buying cropped polyester bell bottoms from the 70s for me but not the scuba goggles Jaime wanted from the same decade (he deemed them too breakable), a woman entered bringing in bags of donations.
She looked us up and down and thrust a black plastic bag in my direction. "It's towels! You should take these towels! It's your last chance to get them for free. If I put them in this pile, you'll have to pay for them!" Our bougie hearts and minds cringed at the thought of wicking water from our bodies with this woman's used towels, and we politely declined. Nevertheless, she persisted because we really did look like we spent our towel money on drugs.
I laughed about it again while I was in the shower this morning. I got out and dried off with a rough towel from a set my parents bought at least three sets ago. Then I wrapped a striped beach towel around my head and sat down to write this blog post.
