I often joke that at any given moment, I’m either thinking about cheeseburgers, the Internet, or sex. The attention I devote to these thoughts is so great and intense that I often walk into walls, doors or fire hydrants, and I fall down stairs with a frequency that borders on alarming. And I don’t just stumble down the stairs, I spiral down in what I call a “Twelve Coconut Cream Pies Fall”, a reference to an old Sesame Street bit where a chef, carrying said number of pies, tumbles dramatically and vocally down a flight of stairs. But I digress.
Nowhere in this city have I fallen more frequently, spectacularly, and painfully than on the stairs at the Art Gallery of Ontario. What I’m saying is that I should have thought twice about the shoes I wore yesterday to a preview of the Inuit art exhibition opening soon at the AGO. In fact, given that I was meeting my good friend A's very fancy parents for the first time, I should have thought twice about the entire outfit. But, no. That’s not what happened at all.
For most of my life, I’ve felt as though there’s been a major disconnect between who I am and what I look like. We never had full-length mirrors in the house growing up, and I still don’t have one now (which is why I sometimes leave the house in dresses that are, in fact, shirts. Again, I digress). I don’t dry my hair in front of a mirror. Until I started wearing makeup a few years ago, the only time I looked at my face at all was when I was either brushing my teeth or shopping for clothing. So when I decided to take the time to figure out who I was, I also made a conscious effort to work out what I looked like. Consequently, a lot of my clothes feel like markers along the path of my 'journey' over the last year and a half.
Right. But what was I wearing? Well, because I’m going away to the Arctic for half a year, I’ve been digging deep into the closet and pulling out old sentimental favourites that I won’t get to wear for a very long time. Yesterday, I wore one of my favourite blouses. It’s a vintage cream thing with giant puffy sleeves and tiny pearl buttons and pleats and a collar like a Georgia O’Keeffe iris. It’s also completely transparent. The last time I wore it, my friend C. said “It only looks slutty when I open my eyes.” And then we went out and had a night that I remember with great fondness. It wasn’t until I arrived at the gallery that I also remembered that the tiny pearl buttons fly open if I’m not completely motionless. So that, a cream leather jacket, a high-waisted black skirt, metallic bronze tights and stiletto-heeled granny boots. All in all, an excellent outfit to meet very reserved parents and/or fall down stairs.
A. and I made our way to the gallery's basement cafeteria to wait for her parents. I gripped the rail tightly and managed not to fall. As we sat there, I grew increasingly more anxious about my outfit, and A's parents' reaction to it. I got nervous, and started talking too much, too fast. And sweating. Obviously.
Someone recently said that an outfit I was wearing effectively gave them permission to say whatever they wanted about me. That I was "asking for it" by dressing a certain way. I went berzerk. Cleavage is not consent, first of all. But also, because I now feel that I look more like who I really am, superficial criticism hurts/insults on a completely new level. This isn't something I really had to contend with before, somehow. The possibility that A's parents would judge and potentially reject me based on my appearance (and therefore my personality) nearly did my head in. As we climbed the slippery wooden spiral stairs, my wet palms could barely grip the railing. Which only made me more anxious about the falling, which was an inevitability in my mind.
But none of this mattered the moment I stepped into the room full of art. The work of people I've known, whose homes I've been in, on the walls of one of the largest galleries in North America. I was almost immediately overwhelmed. And then I saw Tony's drawing. I nearly came undone.
Tony, it was said, had sustained a moderate head injury a long time ago. But what really messed him up was the gas huffing he'd done after. He used to sit in my office 3 or 4 times a week, grinning, grinding his teeth, drinking our shitty coffee. He was looking for work, and it didn't matter how many times I told him that we weren't hiring, he'd be back a day or so later. When I first started, Tony had been employed by us out at the tent camp on the tundra. He had been charged with emptying the giant buckets in the outhouses, and then setting the waste on fire along with the other garbage. He loved his job. The position no longer existed, but he always asked. His snowpants were held together with duct tape. He was always dirty. He reeked of smoke. I would sometimes pretend to be on the phone when he came by, having one-sided fake conversations with a ringtone.
But his drawing. Was beautiful. I stood in front of it for a long time, in my ridiculous outfit, in a Frank Gehry designed building, thinking about Tony and his duct tape repaired clothing and how I'd judged him, and I felt like a royal asshole. I tried to imagine how he would even feel about the show, if he even knew about it. I didn't want to even think about the valuation of his work, how little of it likely makes it to his hands. All I know is that when I get back up there in a month, I'm looking forward to telling Tony about how much I liked his work, and how proud I am to know him.
