I am a child with a dress up box full of dresses, though some of them are not. I am Ozma of Oz in a stiff white tunic top, circa 1970 with white lace sleeves, half my mother’s wedding outfit. Baby doll pajama tops, layered violet nylon likewise en-dress me, simply because I am small. I am bedecked and gowned in sleepwear that no longer sells.
My mother allows me to wear dress ups and odd socks to kindergarten. The teacher says it’s wonderful what my mother permits. My mother is surprised. Why should anyone mind?
we have an LP at home entitled Free to Be…You and Me
Dress up. Open my imagination. I am always part of the story. Not always the princess, sometimes the fairy. Increasingly the gallant female on a dashing horse. And perhaps the horse can fly.
I love dresses, until I no longer do. When I have my first period I cut my hair short. Strictly speaking, asymmetric. I wear muscle shirts with the Union Jack and Synchronicity world tour. I feel safer in trousers. My best friend, ethereal and feminine, sports Grace Jones hair. We walk our complimentary contradictions into a famous wine bar and no one cards us. I wear a mini-skirt with black tights. We are the bomb. Waiters bow to us, straight off a Nagel poster.
I roll my Catholic school girl skirt at the waist like everyone else and save dresses for the prom. Dark blue lamé cut on the bias, a stunning throwback to the thirties. Comparing myself to rail thin Rebecca Romijn, I have no idea how wonderful I look.
London fashions are slavish or runway eclectic. There’s nothing in between. In hot college autumns, London spills onto the pavement. Five minutes of sun dresses and Parisian bon homie. Confused? I don’t associate bon homie with Paris either. The dropped waist, enemy to the curved form is back. I have a blue one which hides sex in the daylight on Hampstead Heath. In this way it earns its keep.
Usually leggings or trousers, I do have a white dress. A white dress with puffed sleeves and crocheted lace. This one has a waist. This one is Gibson Girl. This one clothes me as I read Christina Rossetti poems to an audience at Kenwood House. I am a princess again.
I meet an American actor who must play cowboy roles. Grizzled cowboy roles. Grim of mouth how could he not? He’s older than me. A lot. He asks me over for dinner. I don’t like him much and I say yes. I don’t remember what we eat but I know what’s on the menu. I wear a loose flannel dress in damask rose, mustard and brown plaid with outsize buttons and a wide skirt eclectic runway. Underneath I wear a bra, stockings, nothing else. His penis is the size of my thumb. I’ve never encountered this before and I don’t know what to do. I can’t tell if it’s erect. Impossibly, I attempt penetrative sex. He is angry when I don’t want another date.
Give me a bustle any day. A hoop skirt, petticoats, a corset. And yet I wear trousers.
To mount or be mounted.
To receive or to penetrate.
To fall or to fly.
Find me a ledge in the middle of the precipice. Line it with feathers, make the rope ladder secure. Here I stay, quite content. For a day or two.
As a child, my favorite story is Cap o’ Rushes from the children’s program Jackanory. Ad infinitum I listen to Jackanory audio tapes.
Cap o’ Rushes is a Lear-tale with Cordelia driving. Woven in the weft, three dances and three dresses. I want to stage this story. Every time I tell it to myself, hidden corners thrum. If I say this is my story, no one understands what I mean.
A man asks his daughters a question that should never be asked. His youngest daughter replies, “I love you as much as meat loves salt.” For her pragmatism she is banished. She hikes to a cave by a river in a neighboring county. Here she stows all she has in the world. Three dresses; one of cloth of silver, one of beaten gold and a dress made of the feathers of all the birds of the air. She bathes in the river. She weaves herself a cap of rushes to hide her marvelous hair. Dressed in homespun she finds a manor house and a job as a scullery maid. Young masters ever must marry and the lord and lady of the house seek a wife for their son. To which end, they host three dances for daughters of gentry.
“Cap of Rushes, shall we spy upon the guests if you’ve a mind?” says her bedfellow.
“I’m too tired tonight.”
Each night, Cap of Rushes feigns exhaustion and pretends to go to bed. Each night she returns to the cave by the river, quits her cap, and puts on, respectively, the dress of cloth of silver, the dress of beaten gold and the dress made of the feathers of all the birds of the air. Each night, she dances with the young master.
“You should have been there, Cap o’ Rushes. Such a lady wearing such a dress! The young master, he couldn’t take his eyes off her,” says her bedfellow each morning.
“Oh, I should like to have seen that.”
“Well, there’s to be another dance tomorrow you must come then.”
On the third night the young master gives her a ring. The festivities over, the bunting packed away, crumbs alone remaining of the tea cakes and the roast mere bones, the young master finds himself exceedingly bereft without her. Messengers are sent far and wide to seek the lady amongst all the daughters of all the houses. Discovering her nowhere, not to the east, nor the west, the south nor the north, the young master falls gravely ill.
always check the scullery
Cap of Rushes asks the cook to allow her to make a curative broth for the young master. She brings it to him herself. In the cup she has put the ring.
which he finds before it is aspirated
Accusations, reveals and unions ensue. Likewise-landed families are invited to the wedding of the young master and Cap of Rushes. The night before the nuptials, Cap of Rushes goes down to the kitchen and instructs the cook to omit salt from the wedding meat.
“What, all of it?” says the cook.
“All of it.”
“Are you sure mistress, that’ll be rare nasty.”
“Do as I say,” says Cap of Rushes.
Her father, now blind in fact, is given a seat at the wedding table. When he tastes the meat he begins to weep.
“Old man,” says Cap of Rushes “Why are you crying?”
“Oh! I had a daughter. And I asked her, daughter, how much do you love me. As much as meat loves salt said she and I thought she didn’t love me. Now I know that she loved me most of all. Woe for she is dead and I shall never see her again.”
“Father, here I am!” cries Cap of Rushes.
None of this would ever have happened if it weren’t for three dresses.
more adventures in dresses to come
A very imaginative and creative piece :)
Glad your back and in fine form. There's much to learn from children's tales.