Sooey Says

It was a nice summer day and I was walking up Bank Street in the Glebe
Picturing myself looking just like Jean Shrimpton in a photograh I've seen of her in the Book of Life in which she's walking up Fifth Avenue in New York in her Mary Quant mini, meeting the lens of the camera with her "I am the 60s you will want to remember when you are an old and dying boomer" gaze.
You remember Jean Shrimpton, don't you? The mini skirt model, a brunette. But not just any brunette model - a brunette model who could wear blue eye shadow just like Twiggy, a blond, did.
Twiggy, by the way, now looks exactly what Baby Spice of the Spice Girls fame will look like tomorrow morning when she wakes up at 10:00 a.m.
I'm a bit young to be remembering Jean Shrimpton, to be honest. I only remember her because I devoted hours of my life as a kid studying the Book of Life. In fact, I studied it so much, I believe I lived the 60s every bit as much as Edie. Which I suppose would mean I lived the 60s in the 70s.
So, Jean Shrimpton. That's who I was picturing myself looking like as I sauntered up Bank Street on that nice summer day back in '07.
Except my skirt wasn't a mini skirt and of course I wasn't wearing blue eye shadow.
Afterall, Jean Shrimpton was probably 21 in that photograph.
No, my skirt was an age and leg appropriate "just above the knee" length - even though the economy was good back in '07, none of us realizing the house of cards was about to have the support wall dealt to the dealer.
But I don't pay any attention to skirt lengh fashions - I never did - and now I'm almost a decade over 40 when the fashion rule is quite simply "you'll never catch a break in fashion".
Anyway, there I was, doing my no eye contact unless a weirdo walks by (my eye goes to weird automatically) summer saunter up Bank in my brown skirt with the light blue teacups all over it neatly tucked up at the back into my underwear and my shocking pink way too tight, way too thin tee-shirt over my see-thru bra that I had no idea showed my nipples off to all and sundry to perfection.
No, I didn't have socks on with my sandals but I did have a particularly awful haircut and I'd just dyed my hair maroon.
So there I am, a fashion disaster, heading up Bank Street in the most fashionable part of Ottawa (in that Tilley hatted and Roots sandalled way of the Glebe) and I'm passing by Loeb's when Panny McHandler who sits leaning against the Loeb all day with his cap on the ground beside him turned upside down for Da Man to drop loonies and twoonies into pipes up, "hey pinkie - nice teacups".
Now, being brought up to feel guilty BUT also to rage against the random and mindless sexism lunging at women from all sides of life, I always get that sick, deflated feeling when Panny McHandler types (and they can be anywhere wearing their "haha - you're still trying" attitude like a frickin' badge) say something that could just be a rustic version of a smile and nod or could be a refined version of "wanna fuck?"
A minor digression. When I was fifteen or so I lost my period, probably because I was dieting in that anorexic way teenaged perfectionist girls of average size sometimes do when they accidentally lose a pound or two and believe it has magically altered reality in such a way that movie stars will fall at their feet to worship their beauteousness if they can lose twenty or thirty more.
So I was on my way to see the new gynecologist in town. It was early afternoon and I was missing class for this important excursion, walking down Pim Hill in the Sault, on my way to the General Hospital.
Coming up Pim Hill was a boy I recognized as bad, younger than me, with bright blue eyes and dark skin.
I was wary. He was clearly not following the rules.
As he passed me, our eyes met and he sneered, "wanna fuck?"
I'll never forget that feeling of being grossed out, but oddly flattered. Mostly because that's pretty much how I still feel when an unsavory man is attracted to me. The uncanny thing is that when I was in the gynecologist's office and I'd had an exam I really wasn't quite prepared for or I would have shaved my legs with my older sister's shower razor and not my mom's electric one which left a fair degree of stubble, the gynecologist says, "have you been fucking around"?
I mean, really. What are the odds? Again, grossed out, but oddly flattered. And wishing I'd worn my older sister's nylon panties instead of my Buster Browns.
So all this runs through my head as it does any time any man ever says anything even remotely complimentary to me and I'm all set to smile and say "thanks" when I think, "yabbut, he's kind of being an asshole and if he wasn't sitting on the sidewalk being Panny McHandler I'd just give him the finger".
So I did. I gave him the finger.
Then I saw my reflection in the Loeb's window. The first two things I saw were my nipples, like two very excited raspberries poking out of the inside of my tee-shirt. Then I saw an unevenness in the hem of my brown skirt with the light blue teacups all over it that, as I turned, got worse until it was quite clear that I'd walked up Bank Street with the back of my skirt tucked up into my underwear.
But that's not all. Oh no. You remember your mother telling you to wear clean underwear and make sure it had no holes in it? Well mine always said, "who gives a shit what your underwear looks like, no one's going to see it".
Yes indeed. My underwear didn't just have the usual faint old menstrual stains on it. Oh no. It also had holes. A couple of medium sized holes (medium-sized for bikini-sized underwear, anyway). It was what married men call "my wife's underwear" underwear.
And there's ol' Panny McHandler snickering, just like the time I thought I'd finally arrived early for school and I was lined up outside waiting for the other kids to show up and the bell to ring so I could be first inside when I hear a knock at a window and there's Kelly Johnston, my neighbour from up the street, pointing at me and calling for all the other kids to come and laugh at me standing out in the snow thinking I was early when I was so late everybody had already gone inside and the day was well underway.
But I guess the beauty of getting older (old?) is that you can only feel the embarrassment for a second or two before it's just another funny slice of life and you realize you'd have been better off not wearing any underwear at all that day and why are you keeping stained old underwear anyway and why not just take them off right now and throw them in the upside down cap and let somebody else get that grossed out, oddly flattered feeling.