fashion?

I am having a terrible time finding a new top. All I want is a glitzy looking evening top, one of those with that ever-mentionable day-to-night versatility, so I could just throw it on over tight jeans and boots and look suddenly glamorous and wildly elegant, and not like I’ve been sitting a desk for eight hours, as I indeed have. Easy, right?

When I was eighteen these were all the rage. Everyone wore jeans and boots and a nice top. Only muppets wore dresses to town! Muppets who had been dressed by their mothers! We were far too casual for dresses, too cool to try so hard, and primarily, too cold. But sadly, the times have changed, now being some seven years later. How I yearn sometimes for the mid naughties and their jean-ridden winter nights.

Now, when I enter a store looking simply for a flattering, fitting black singlet with the right amount of perfectly designed draping that clings in the right places and casually skips over the wrong places, I find myself besieged by flirty, tiny dresses. All manner of sequined dresses, cutesy pastel dresses, cut-out-so-that-the-diamond-of-skin-below-your-breasts-is-visible dresses!

‘It’s freezing!’ I want to wail at the racks. ‘I don’t want to wear a fecking dress! My knees will be cold!’

So I was driven online. Now I know that they rant and rave about how terrible it is that people shop online, that the average Jane Bloggs shopkeeper just can’t compete, that she can’t keep up with all of her rent and overheads and the old man she employs out the back to hand sew on all of the buttons. I know this. I know it’s better to shop locally and not to support ‘the man’.

But it’s so much easier! And free shipping! To New Zealand! A few years ago this was unheard of! Or only available with orders over $1,567 US dollars or suchlike. And there are categories, listed simply down the side! Which means that I don’t accidentally end up in the men’s section, holding a hot pink T-shirt and wondering if it would fit me, and that it looks far too big to be a small. There are no burdened sales racks, creaking under the weight of years and years of stashed clothes, the hangers so tightly stacked that to pull out one surely means that five others will come crashing down with it, and you’ll have to pick them all up, bobbing up and down awkwardly and apologising repeatedly to the shop assistant who is watching you contemptuously from behind the counter.

No trudging through hoards of last years gold hotpants in XS that an over-exuberant manager ordered in a fit of Kylie-nostalgia. No fourteen year old sales assistants calling you ‘bub’ and swinging open the curtains to eye your half dressed figure beadily before proclaiming loudly, ‘That’s too small. I’ll get the next size up, if we have it…’ and swishing off, leaving the curtain open so that a skinny cluster of heavily eye-lined teenage girls are treated to a lasting look of your greying polka dot underwear.

So yes. I went online.

I went to boohoo.com, selected Tops, and prepared to be wowed by the dazzling array of perfect, flattering, edgy singlets and flowing evening tops. But, horror! Even worse! Crop tops! Acres and acres of midriff on display! And huge, oversized jerseys, like David Bain’s except with pandas and flowers on them, and cute phrases like Love, and No Photos Please. When did we all turn into eight year olds again?

I filtered my search and gratefully selected Evening Tops, hoping to end the madness. But again! When did it become okay to wear a leotard, even if they’re calling it a body-suit? Is this how acrobatic dancing is becoming these days? That you need your top to be attached to your undies? Why on earth would you need that? Unwanted visions of frenzied dance floors scenes fill my head at this thought.

Or what’s this, a see-though black lace number with a bra beneath? Well, don’t mind if I do… I may star as an extra in a remake of The Matrix one day, you never know! Another one just looks like a run of the mill black polo neck. Warm, decent, sturdy. The type I used to wear to school, except that mine was a hideous yellow and was still in possession of it’s bottom half, so that my stomach wasn’t naked below the bra – like this model’s is.

And these are the bestsellers! I am utterly lost, and I feel about eighty years old, peering at the screen in pompous disbelief. Everything is either skin-tight and completely revealing, or shapeless and unflattering, the type that only the truly thin and fabulous can pull off.

Maybe I should just buy a dress and some tights…

milk run – a short story

I wrote this at a writers group a few weeks ago. We were given prompts, ten minutes and told to write a 100 word story. Among the prompts were things like ‘the silver teapot’, ‘dry as’ and ‘plum tree’. I chose ‘the man in the yellow cardigan’ and wrote this…

The man in the yellow cardigan was in a hurry. His head was bent as his feet slapped the pavement, shoulders stooped against the rain. His dark hair curled into tendrils in the wet, rain seeped up through the sides of his canvas shows.

They would be waiting, he knew, Deirdre and Aiysha.

‘Did you have to milk the cow?’ Deirdre would say, her cold attempt at humour belying her annoyance.

‘Your shoes are wet, daddy,’ Aiysha would say, more softly than her mother’s harsh tones, her blue eyes wondering.

He could see the red door frame now, and the plastic bottle of milk swung from his slippery fingers, cold and white in the grey gloom.

It happened so quickly that later, if asked about it, he could not quite explain how it had happened, what had slipped.

He saw the sharp flash of the headlights as they swung across the road, heard the screech of the brakes, felt, rather than saw, the locked tyres careening across the wet tarmac.

His body tensed as he realised the car’s path, his heart jumping to his mouth. He saw the young woman against the shop window, the little boy splashing in the shallow puddles, laughing as the water sloshed over his blue gumboots.

The man in the yellow cardigan ran, dropping the milk. It landed in the street, the blue top cracking, the white liquid melding into the rain, washed down the gutter.

The boy squealed as he was grabbed roughly and spun out of the way. A yelp of pain and surprise emitted from the young woman as she was pushed aside, her head knocking the rough wall.

There was an explosion of glass and noise as the car collided with the shop front. Then silence, punctuated only by the wet hissing of the engine, the spattering of the rain on the metal roof.

The man in the yellow cardigan righted the boy and walked away from the scene, brushing off the thanks, the grateful round eyes of the young woman. He reached the red door, broken milk in hand.

‘Did you have to milk the cow?’ Deirdre said.

‘Your shoes are wet, daddy,’ said Aiysha, her blue eyes wondering.

 

another fiction snippet – sorry to infuriate!

The feeling rose up inside me like a wave, hot and heady in its passion. It scared me. I felt my pulse tapping at my skin, a tiny hammer, furious and afraid. I laughed to shake it off, and the sound was too loud in the muted bar. It rang out across the gleaming heads of the clientele, arched eyebrows turning, mouths closing elegantly. The sound died quickly, sucked into the heavy red carpet of the large room. My high heels dug into the back of my ankles, the patent leather squeaked against the other shoe.

I felt so out of place here, and a dim flush seeped upwards toward my hairline. The angry blotches of red skin would be quivering on my chest soon, a telltale sign that I was drunk, or flustered or worst of all – both.  Avery swept her eyes across my shining brow, the patches on my chest, and then her gaze came to rest on my shaking bottom lip. She smiled at me quietly, surreptitiously, and snaked her palm into my own. Her hand was warm and dry, and it calmed me a little. I watched my thighs, and listened idly to the chatter.

‘Well I’m not sure what you’re going to do with all of those anyway,’ Millie was saying blithely. ‘You’ll never find anywhere to put them.’

The ladies tittered and rustled, and it was a minute before I realised that their collective eyes were on me, waiting for my input. I looked around at them, suddenly hyper conscious of my over-waxed eyebrows and thick bronzer. It was Charlotte’s pitying gaze that did it.

‘Well I don’t know,’ I said brazenly, flipping my hair across my shoulder. ‘With a husband like yours, I hear that anything is possible.’ My chin was high as I gazed down the barrel of the room at Chelsea, daring her to argue, to deny it. The rumours had gone around like Chlamydia in Hamilton, wildfire through the women in our circle, but never – no never! – mentioned in Chelsea’s presence, and definitely not directly to her. What did it concern her that her husband had a warehouse full of stolen car parts and laundered money. I was sick to the back teeth with it. With the deceit, the hidden agenda.

It was Avery who saved the situation.

‘Okay,’ she said lightly, drawing the word out as though waving a verbal white flag. ‘Enough for you I think Zoey.’ She moved my soda water lightly away from me on the table, the joke failing to raise a smile with anyone. I felt ashamed suddenly, and I watched Chelsea’s face, ashen but smiling, her eyes overbright. I was the only one to notice the tremble of her lower lip, and I felt bad.

Lunch ended shortly afterwards. Despite Avery’s cheerful banter she could not achieve the upbeat vibe that had reigned easily before I had spoken. We said our goodbyes, Chelsea turning her face so as not to meet my eye, and left.

‘For God’s sake Zoey!’ Avery scolded as we marched down the road outside Friars. It was cold and grey, and leaves skittered across the road, loud and metallic against the tar seal. ‘What did you say that for?’ She turned to look at me, stopping abruptly on the pavement. A woman with a pram almost walked into her, and peered carefully into our faces as she navigated around us. Avery’s dark hair tumbled around her pale face, and the concern across her brow almost hurt to look at.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled at the ground. ‘I don’t know why.’ I felt chastised and horrible, almost defiant against it. I felt exactly like I did when I was a little girl and I pulled a chair out graciously for a boy in my class, jerking it a the last second so that he landed heavily on his tailbone, and regretting it immediately as he started to cry.

Sydney lights

I wrote this last week when I was in Sydney, before moving on to Brisbane and Byron Bay, and then home to Taupo, NZ.

Sometimes things are almost more beautiful when they are blurry. Tonight I came back from yoga, at hom in Sydney, a delicious place where the heat from our collective breath steamed the high windows, the 38 degree humidity felt as though it was sinking right into my sweat slicked chest and they sold iced coconut water from a tiny fridge nestled beneath the reception desk.

I walked back to my hostel through the bustling crowds and lights, holding my bag to my side, my steps slow as the warm evening air swirling against my still hot skin. My eyes were still blurry and short sighted from the class, so used to focusing on my breath and staring lazily at my upside down shins through half closed eyelids. As I stepped onto George Street, my breath snatched away as my eyes trailed up, above the crowds across the road. The Town Hall was aglow, its beautiful old stone an exquisite canvas for the light from the projector that was wreathing it in radiant, brilliant patterns of colour.

I stood across the street with my wet hair, marvelling up at the hall as I waited to cross, my eyes not quite picking out the design, but not trying to either. It was as unimportant as it was beautiful. Some others around me ignored the magnificent show, their impatient glances flickering between each of the streetlights, anticipating when they would turn, their clenched hands tight on the straps that held their bags. Eager to get home, I guessed, to wives and boyfriends and new babies and houses that smelt of warm cooking. But many more took photos of the Hall, pointing and smiling in wonder, or turning to friends with delighted, open mouths, their cameras forgotten in their hands.

The streetlights turned and the green man shone across at us, the sound of his tapping feet echoing across the empty, grey expanse of intersection. The rush of people was immense, like the sea, crushing in on each other, hundreds of steps crisscrossing and darting between others. I love crossing the road diagonally. Something about it is so thriving metropolis, so urban, so, Tokyo.

It makes me feel the way I am, just one tiny fish in an entirety of a huge melting of culture, insignificant and immensely small. Something about this thought awakens me, enlivens me, instead of being the depressing notion that it sometimes would be, if pondered differently. There is nothing expected of me, nothing to stop me, nothing to hem me in. I just have to live, and be content, and that’s all right with me.

It was only when I got closer that I realised what the design was. Christmas wreathes, green and red and gold, winding their way across the stone façade. It made me smile even more, until I was grinning alone in the street, taking blurry photos with my cassette clad iPhone. I am a Christmas freak. Goes with the territory of having a name like Holly, I suppose.

Tomorrow I will go to see the Opera House and the blue water of the harbour, the green trees nestled amongst the houses of the opposite bank. I have not seen it before, only from the air as we flew in, our plane hanging low above the near suburbs. The gorgeous Harbour Bridge stood proudly above the twinkling blue of the ocean, reminding me, bizarrely, but perhaps expectedly, of Finding Nemo. I smiled looking down at the winding blue, imagining a little clownfish in there, and angry crabs.

Excerpt two

Zoey ~

We ate our french toast sitting on the steps of the deck, plates balanced on our knees. The eggs had been relegated to Gavin and Tame, and for this reason I think they quite liked me. No one had made any mention of the fact that I tried to run, or made me feel in any way uncomfortable, but as each minute passed I feared more and more of being that girl. You know that girl, the girl who hangs around until four o’clock in the afternoon the day after a one night stand, despite repeated and increasingly obvious hints to feck off from both the boy and his many flatmates, who are keen to play some Halo without a girl sitting on the arm of the couch and asking them to teach her how to play. No, I lived in terror of becoming that girl.

We watched each other through askance eyes as we ate, passing the bottle of maple syrup back and forth between us. Neither of us bothered to make small talk, but the silence was nice, relaxing. Birds swooped from the hard grey sky, and my bare arms were cool in the morning air. Again I could smell the sea. As we ate Gavin and Tame left the lounge and retired to their respective rooms, I can only assume, to leave us in private. I couldn’t believe how civilised this flat was.

It looked as though there were families living either side of the house, I could tell by the trampolines and swing sets on the lawns. Either that or this was a raucous party neighbourhood, and if Lucas invited me out back I would be greeted by an over sized bouncy castle and a pool with an Audi parked at the bottom of it. Families were more likely, I thought.

We had been eating for a while before the taste registered in my brain. ‘This is good.’ I smiled up at him, to show that I really was genuine, and he laughed.

‘You sound so surprised. Didn’t you think I could cook?’

‘It’s just, unexpected, that’s all.’ I speared a piece on my fork and wiped it in the maple syrup. I brought it to my mouth and paused, a sudden thought slicing through me. ‘Do you cook french toast for all of your one night stands?’ I was genuinely curious. ‘Is this like, your thing?’ I used my fork to outline his face in the air, as though to physically demonstrate his ‘thing’.

He laughed again. He seemed to find me very funny, and it was quite gratifying.

‘No.’ He chewed his mouthful thoughtfully. ‘My thing is usually eggs. But since you screwed that up…’ He gestured to the plate. ‘This was the best I could rustle up. My one night stands don’t usually run out on me though.’ His eyes roved across my face, searching for a reaction, some clue as to whether or not he could joke about this yet.

‘That was very asshole-esque of you, you know.’ He chewed again, thinking. ‘One of my mates does that, to girls, usually.’

Something Real – excerpt one

Zoey

Life seems so much simpler in the click of a shutter. The tap of a key, the scratch of a pen. Life is framed, frozen and still, poised for just one second of eternity, finally perfect. I have loved photography all my life for this exact reason. Take four people, each with an individual motive, a difference, a fight, and put them together with a lens, a frame, aperture and light. The result is something completely different to that of a hundred real Christmases, bickering across the dry turkey. I loved my grandparents’ smiles in that old photo, their teeth so white and gleaming, dimples and crinkled eyes in exactly the right places. Picture perfect.

My family have always been argumentative. I think it comes from something our father instilled in us. He always wanted to be a lawyer, I think, before Mum got pregnant with Elsa and he settled himself into the soil, the landscaping that had been his business throughout his teenage years and would be so for the rest of his life.

When I say argumentative, I don’t mean that we bicker about small things, rather, we like to debate, to push our point for each side, regardless of our actual thoughts on the matter. My most memorable birthday was my eighteenth. I was lying on the grass in front of the kitchen, and my lazy eyes were focussed on the black gleam of a Tui, upside down in our Kowhai tree, my mother’s pride and joy of the garden. I was only half listening as they chatted behind me, Elsa, Mum and Dad. My stomach was full from the carrot cake Elsa and I had made, swirls of the lumpy cream cheese icing still lingered in my tongue’s memory.

‘But you can’t argue that Dad,’ Elsa was outraged, the wine glass in her hand glinting in the afternoon sunlight. ‘That denotes a complete condescension for anyone who lives south of Tarras!’

I can’t remember what it was, maybe something in the pompous lyricism in her voice, or maybe in the rare use of the word ‘denotes’, but something sparked it.

Dad was the first to erupt into laughter, and as he caught my eye I felt it bubbling up from my stomach, and then we were all howling with laughter, raucous and rolling on the grass, as Elsa sat and tried to feign wise indifference. She took a slow sip of her wine, eyes averted across the lawn in a show of her detachment, and at that exact second, I kid you not, a large, slippery smear of bird shit splattered onto her left shoulder and slid down towards the latticed detailing of her pretty yellow dress. We were silent for one incredulous moment, no one daring to breath.

Mum was the first to speak. She nodded towards the stain, ‘That’s lucky, apparently.’ Her face was perfectly straight.

We all collapsed into convulsions, even Elsa joined in this time. I laughed so hard that day I got grass stains on the elbow of my white cardigan, you can still see the faint mark there now. That photo sits on my bedside table, in a red beaten-shell frame that is now chipped and dull. We look so content on the dewy grass, Elsa’s dress still wet from where she sponged it clean. Mum is sneaking a furtive look at Dad, and you can see in her eyes that she is still shaking with mirth at what has just happened. Elsa and I look exactly the same, our dark hair flipped across our right shoulders, the same chins and mouths pulled into identical pixie smiles, legs tucked up beneath us.

I remember feeling like nothing in the world could make me unhappy in that moment. As though nothing out there could pull me from that happy paradise of sun dappled lawn and birds in the trees, warm cream cheese icing and my fathers hands, scarred and always covered in dark, fertile soil.

I think that day was maybe the beginning of my bad luck.

Heya stranger

Snippets of writing, the sharp line of my pencil as it scratches, dancing across the page. Where did my passion go? Nowhere. It is huge and breathing, like a dormant expanse below the surface. It is always there, I just forget about it, cover it up with busy-ness. Times passes, suddenly three months are gone, and still I do not feel the itch, the crave for a pencil between my fingers.

Then it creeps in, slow, lazy. A warm afternoon, the comforting rasp of the couch against my book. The early morning, before the dawn seeps beneath the curtains. Suddenly that need, that excitement. As though I have something to share with the world, as though I am waiting for a gap in the conversation, my mouth opening and closing at each false attempt. I have an idea… so NaNoWriMo 2012, here we go.