A Material World

I was walking down Fullerton today in Lincoln Park–which seems to be ruled by painfully fashionable blonde girls–heading to the Bourgeois Pig to meet my roommate. (The Pig is a little cafe/coffee shop that caters to the DePaul literary set with sandwich names like “Pilgrim’s Progress” and “The Secret Garden.” It is generally pretty quiet, and a nice to place to get reading/writing/overtime copy editing done.)

Two guys stopped me, asking, “Hey, can I ask you a fashion question?” I nearly gave them the “no” hand and kept walking, having been stopped in the Loop no less than six times by a similar question (“Can I ask you a question about your hair?”), which I found out was a marketing ploy to get me to spend money on paraffin wax manicures/hair cuts/etc. But I stopped, and one of the guys launched into what was indeed a fashion question. “So, I had this brown leather bracelet on, but my sister told me it clashed with my green t-shirt, and what do you think?” Huh? He proceeded to tell me that he’d stopped me because I looked like a fashionable girl (since when?) and because I’d clearly matched my lip gloss and sunglasses (I had?).

I was mostly confused by the entire encounter–which lasted nearly 20 minutes–and was overwhelmed by the energetic question-asker, Nathan, who proceeded to try to guess whether I was the first-born, whether my sibling was a brother or sister, whether my degree was in chemistry (um, no).

He ended up asking for my email address–”so that I can email you the next time I have a fashion question.” Um, was he hitting on me? Because I’m not sure I want to date somebody who notices that my sunglasses and lip gloss match.

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current book:  nearly done with Blood Meridian.  Like, mere pages from completion. Next up: David Foster Wallace’s  A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.

current music: The Bourgeois Pig was playing Bob Dylan’s new album, which kind of blew me away. They followed it up with Elliott Smith’s Figure 8.

current socks: Time to get ready for Halloween! These have orange horizontal stripes (think: Wicked Witch of the West) with spiders dangling mid-ankle.