CW: mention of r*pe

at the etcetera, lynn teaches me early to thrift. sometimes a building is one thing on the outside and another on the inside. sometimes you approach a building so nondescript its color & texture don’t survive with you. inside, you’re home. you’re in someone’s home. you’re in someones’ homes, any home but yours.

sometimes a (girl) is one thing on the outside and another on the inside. sometimes you’re assigned a girlhood. sometimes you put on what anyone else has forgotten about. get forgotten. forget.

sometimes you put (her) on
etcetera.

/

after her death, gg taught me about receiving what’s passed to you. the first thing i hang in every place i live is gg’s hat: bright red wool l.l. bean. matching grosgrain ribbon band. the exact right color & texture.

i’m often thinking about this hat. or about the heart-patterned dress shirt i wore to visit family that i might love them better. or paul’s denim shirt with the loon embroidered on it, how my brother and i both showed up to paul’s memorial wearing his clothes.

maybe once a year, i wear the hat. it holds me, but it doesn’t feel like me. it holds how i struggle to locate my body inside things that are said to also hold meaning. maybe it’s the hat that contains my final form.

a reminder to keep going
etcetera.

/

the etcetera is like someone’s house overfull of things in a tidy sort of way. full enough to get lost. tidy enough to steer your loss. until just now i’d completely forgotten about the second floor: a theater of sporting goods and dress clothes, also known as costumes.

how many easter sunday outfits does the etcetera provide? white straw hat: check. high-waist pastel dress: check. cropped jacket: check. pov: it’s easter, you’re a (girl). you’re second-hand pure. you find an unscuffed-enough pair of white mary janes to fit your growing feet, worn with new white tights that won’t make it from sunrise service to potluck. there is, at least, the satisfaction of decorating your tights. earth’s texture, grass’s green smudge.

it’s an etcetera of costumes, and not just upstairs. it’s an approximation of girlhood. it’s the best you can do: the etcetera’s large caverns are quiet, and away. we all seem to breathe better in here. you get lost and then you take your time. try on some other people, some ways of being you won’t think about for a couple more decades. do you recall your age the first time you noticed a bowtie? do you remember your earliest feelings of envy? of leaving your body in the full folds of long pastel to imagine a thick ribbon done up at your throat?

and then it’s halloween, the etcetera provides a suit. you make a dashing groom to laura’s tiny bride. sure, it’s a disturbing display for children, but it’s allowed. in the photo, you look like you haven’t yet but are going to figure something out.

you are open to figuring
etcetera.

/

while thrifting into and through my twenties, i experimented with castoffs from men i dated. m, whose discards became a uniform: worn-soft five-to-a-pack undershirts and already-thrifted button-ups that taught me to love discordant plaids. much later, another left his boxers in my bed, the first pair i ever wore.

my fashion quivered, and femme became a costume i sometimes put on. i wasn’t thinking about it: i was falling in love with a woman for the first time. my desire became multiple: for people, for color & texture. i couldn’t place my body but i could place on my body. could place my body in.

/

years after those early etcetera days, lynn and i are thrifting three thousand miles away, in deep nowhere. sometimes we’re digging through boxes. i adore this store and its limits. unlike the etcetera, which felt like a forever of options, this little hole is less curated than catch-all: a town’s worth of little discards, every local who dies with a closet glut. a structured blazer. a white faux-leather pencil skirt. a new easter, friends: resurrect me.

that summer i learn to sew a dress with thrifted fabric & pattern by sweating and swearing in the heat of the day. gunmetal singer’s song. orange with white polka dots. white & orange plaid lining. a square halter so my shoulders can burn a different summer in another time zone. blaze orange for deep maine, brought to you by the castoffs of rural california. i do a pretty good job. i misunderstand myself very well. i hope someone finds it secondhand and considers its mistakes charmingly vulgar.

the thing about thrifting, about handing-down, is the ghosts. we put on so that someone can take off. when i release a floral dress i’m raped in to the thrift wild, its full skirt and scoop neck show up a few weeks later where i work and it’s something else. it’s a piece in someone else’s closet. it’s not a wearable memory. i’ve taken it off.

we put on & take off: little spells we cast, lines we cast, characters cast for us. question &/or answer. something floods back into my body for a moment. it’s not much & it’s not nothing.

it’s just a dress
i was just its ghost
etcetera.

/

after multiplicity stayed, after i searched for brighter colors & bolder textures at every thrift store i could find, after i was photographed in yellow and purple, after learning to layer flannel tights to walk maine winters, after the three of us moved into little blue, a house with its own outfit, i moved out alone: i packed up my clothes to discard every stitch. i haven’t stopped thinking about s’s color palette, the way she layered clothes on the hangers, a gallery of putting on. i stopped thinking about m’s closet immediately.

i purged years of thrift to exorcise twice the heartbreak, and then i met a man who committed my body to memory too diligently: bought me my first real heels in my mid-thirties, bought me dresses that reminded me the kinds of shapes i was taught i contain, and should conceal, lest i appear desirous. i was to appear desirous: i went full costume, full femme, learned to turn on the ball of my foot, learned how each skirt moved in a spin. my body changed under a blur of movement, in the stress of constantly forgetting. color fell away, and texture, and knowing. i buckled into womanhood, hard. i lost my balance, fell back against category to steady me. i was identified, woman, and told where a woman goes on the dance floor.

there is a part here that isn’t concerned with what i put on.

/

eventually, i wear the bowtie, open back up to the etcetera of becoming. i thrift fabric’s ways of collaborating in this: roll a waistband, cuff a sleeve. leave it unbuttoned & tie. button up a little higher, crop it a little shorter. i keep femme in rotation, let womanhood go: for the first time, the search is for what feels good. and true. and expansive.

what lets the ghost of me go
over & over
etcetera.