Some years back my friend and I queued to get up the Empire State. I was wearing a Burberry Prorsum light gray cashmere caban (Net-A-Porter, S/S 2014 runway pre-order) over skinny jeans by Victoria Beckham (Luisa Via Roma, 2013). Although we were inside, lined up at the elevator section, I had kept on my Chanel black framed cat eye sunglasses (Galeries Lafayette, Paris, 2012).
“Are you an actress?” a security guy wanted to know.
“Yes”, I answered, not looking at him, but straight ahead, as I imagined an actress would, and I followed my friend into one of the elevators.
Some other time – I remember this was in Houston, Texas – I walked with my friend into a Neiman Marcus store. They had Calvin Klein branded heels in snake-effect leather for something like $120, which I thought of as suspiciously inexpensive.
“Are those genuine CKs, at that price?” I asked.
“Are you a model?” the salesgirl asked in return.
“Yes”, I said, “but how does that answer my question?”
“What was your question?” she asked.
“Are you serious? I said, and I walked out the store erect and hips swaying, like a model, my friend following, as, no doubt, the salesgirl’s stare to where she lost sight of me.
Out on a stroll in my home town in the country of my exile, where my friend had taken the trouble to visit me, I said to a man trimming the hedge fencing off a large garden, who I felt looked at us as if we were of a lesser breed: “I live in a bigger house one street up and my inner world is much more interesting than yours!”, the former a fact, the latter conjecture. I had barely checked my pace, which I then notched up to jaunty, and my friend, catching up, cried out: “Have you completely lost your mind”?
“Yes”, I briskly said, “and good riddance.”
I left her standing dumbfounded, wondering if she had missed out on the full range of life’s possibilities. Or so I imagined.
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Hard Nosed Women 