East Meets West.
Steinbeck might have written about you in this tunic. Your agrarian symbiosis with nature. Your affinity for getting your hands dirty.
You could write books on the subject of leisure, early retirement, and casual encounters along the Zambezi.
You can do all that and wear this tunic with a colorful Japanese-inspired obi wrap.
The attitude is totally different, yet some core principles remain.
Even your confusion will be seen as contemplation.
Unencumbered pullover-style cotton voile tunic for comfortably and elegantly mixing it up in the non-virtual world. 14 pintucks down each side of the front placket that, when coupled with Indonesian embroidery, conjure up a cadence of old-world charm. In this, you’re already halfway to wherever.
-J. Peterman catalogue, 1992
I remembered the J. Peterman catalogue at rehab while standing in line for the salad bar. I had just been in the room of a young girl going through heroin withdrawals - which was every kind of awful one could imagine - and though I worried about her, I worried more that she’d ruined my appetite. The side effects of turning her life around (namely the sweating and Exorcist vomiting) had turned us all various shades of green, and it was lunchtime. There were few pleasures at the isolated Rehab Ranch beyond the flat, sunny weather; smoking cigarettes, the only drug available; and meals, which were three times a day in the dimly-lit, carpeted cafeteria.
Being there often felt like practice for one day living in an old folks home: boring and comfortable to a point, but not so much you forgot it was more prison than hospital - more hospital than school - more school than camp - and more camp than actual home.
I stood by the salad bar and scanned the lettuce for signs of decay. ‘When I get out of here, I’m going to eat salads every day,’ I thought. How hard could it be?
Answer: Monumentally.
For the duration of my stay, I never actually ate that salad. I added those greens to my plate twice a day for 28 days, then pushed them around and gestured with my fork like I’d seen women do in movies from the 80’s. I was cosplaying a healthy person! The salad was merely performative, like so many things in my life at that time.
I hoped my fellow rehabees would notice and judge me favorably for this foray into healthy food but they didn’t care. Nothing shocked those women. I could have eaten a bag of powdered cat paws and donkey feet mixed with radioactive soil from Chernobyl, and someone would’ve just shrugged and said Hey, addicts are fucked up, man, addicts always doing all kindsa fucked up shit, you name it: cat paws, donkey feet, dog dope, whatever and everyone around them would nod. My stepdad gave me cat paws when I was nine before he molested me. My cousin died in front of me from a donkey feet overdose. The women I passed in the hallways and stared at during daily group meetings had lived through every story imaginable. Shock fatigue had already set in. Nobody cared what I ate or wore or that my family thought I had endless pools of unused potential.
At Rehab Ranch, that was everyone’s story.
Despite this, I put that salad on my plate every day so people would see me as I’d always seen salad eaters: Responsible. Organized. Shiny hair. Running shoes. Salad eaters made it to work on time and paid rent with American currency. Salad eaters didn’t neglect their kids, and drank two glasses of good wine on a Monday instead of two cheap bottles. A salad eater didn’t need this place.
I waited for someone to say something to that effect, like maybe a counselor would lightly suggest I lead one of the groups myself since I was just so with it. Maybe they would even send me home early. “Marika, you have such great insights in group and eat so much salad, we called a special meeting to discuss it and decided that you just don’t belong here.” Then I would pack up my bag of powdered animal feet snacks, tell everyone I told you so, and bounce.
Instead I suffered in silence, seething with rage and shame and untouched salad. I tried in small group meetings to be invisible or “get the right answer,” and though there was never a “right answer,” there were definitely wrong ones. No one was allowed to give you tissues, and everyone learned that the hard way. If you handed out a tissue while someone was crying, you were enabling them; if you received one, you were supposed to reject their help and get your own damn tissue. Each girl was harshly reprimanded for their tissue fuck-ups like they personally put a bottle of whiskey to their neighbor’s lips, screaming DRINK until she did.
Back at the salad bar, some girl with a vicious V-name — Veronica or Vanessa — started bragging about her appearance on The Jerry Springer Show. The story was loud and disruptive — Too loud for a salad bar, I thought, like some kind of salad bar sound engineering professional — and winced at her 15 minutes of fame.
“That stupid ass hoe, she didn't see that shit coming. I was gonna fight for my motherfucken man, apologies to The Good Lord Above for cursing, but I swear to fucken Gawd I was gonna go fucken off. I threw a chair at that hoe and Steve had to carry me off the fucken stage! That's right, ladies, I handled my damn self and took care of fucken business.”
I was embarrassed for her — from the smug tone to the absence of -ing at the end of every fuck — and for the women around her making sounds of support and respect. These bitches have no fucking class, I thought, irony lost on me that none of us bitches had any fucking class and that's in part why we had landed there. At a minimum, we had failed to keep our drinking, drug use, parenting and professional fails leading to this line at the cafeteria rehab all that fucking classy.
At our core, we were a group of women who had unraveled around the same time; whatever the substance or reason for being there, our sameness was rooted in hopelessness. Having a place like that in common made connections intense and necessary, but inevitably doomed to fail. Why stay friends with someone who reminds you of that time you lost it all? Here, you had a front row seat to various levels of despair with brief intervals of trying to act normal. But no one knew what normal looked, felt, or tasted like. It was just something we had poorly mimicked and performed in real life until we wound up together at this salad bar.
As I shuffled through the line with my plate of greens, garlic bread, and cold spaghetti, an administrator walked by in a white linen tunic. I stopped suddenly, and the woman behind me rammed her tray into my back - I said sorry at the same time she said asshole - so I stepped to the side, staring at the administrator while she grabbed a plate of food. Her white linen tunic punched loose a memory that felt immediately like home.
I knew what she was wearing because I’d spent my childhood looking through my mother’s J. Peterman catalogue, which sold the romantic stories of shirts - sorry, white linen tunics - like the one she was currently wearing. It was embroidered and had a bib front. At that moment, I felt the catalogue paper between my fingers, slightly heavier than magazine paper and a little bit matte, which made turning the pages a pleasure and not an afterthought. I felt the sun, hot on my skin as I sat in our kitchen, poring over every word and savoring the clothing adventures each page had to offer. I felt the promise I’d had as a child, which was the last time I could remember truly being happy, and saw so many of the steps I could have taken instead of the ones that led me here.
The J. Peterman catalogue was the very first reason I wanted to be a writer. Other reasons included Judy Blume, Madeleine L’Engle, Tom Robbins, Raymond Carver, some key teachers, The Last of The Really Great Whangdoodles, and my dad. To a preteen/teen/beyond, the descriptions in the catalogue were lush and mysterious and nonchalant and effortless, that barely-attainable older cousin of cool. They sold an aspirational aesthetic that centered around the lives of their clothing and the people who lived in them. Instead of photos, they had watercolor drawings of handbags and floaty dresses and structured aviator jackets. Those drawings were marketing GOLD.
I wanted to live inside those made-up worlds of privilege, and write new worlds into existence. I didn't know you could tell the story of a $100 shirt whose life had humble beginnings. I didn't know the shirt’s story would reveal the bold plotline of its owner, or that the owner would take that shirt on extravagant adventures. I didn’t realize you could sell a shirt by describing the antique wooden boat it was on, or how the flowers bloomed early that Spring in 1968 Paris. Knowing everything had a potential story lurking within, from a flower to a pair of pants, changed how I saw the world around me. Everything had a potential voice from that moment on. I whispered things to plants after that, and made up dialogue for the mustard.
The J. Peterman catalogue also taught me all I needed to know about being an erudite woman of means with simple taste and endless privilege. The romantic life of this perfect woman I might possibly become — tiny waist, aviator sunglasses, no dairy allergies — filled me with enthusiastic hope for my future. Someday I would grow up to be a wealthy Indiana Jones type with no responsibilities beyond a dedication to nostalgia and old, beautiful things. I would wear a full-length skirt that a governess or duchess might wear in a novel and be this pioneer of style and womanhood. A woman with choices and tunics and power. An active seeker of adventure. 12-year old me couldn't wait for that life to begin.
I stood there in dirty cotton-polyester blend sweatpants that I’d gotten on sale at Ross, staring at the woman in her tunic, remembering all the things I thought I would become and the adventures I hoped would shape me. Disappointment bloomed in my chest, knowing how far I had to go.
Rehab was a chance to step back into reality again - or for the very first time - which was not the dreamy adventure I’d longed for but the one I needed most. I heard Veronica/Vanessa make a joke about Jerry Springer’s hair gel, and all the women laughed, and I saw myself as I was in that moment:
A lonely, frightened girl with frizzy hair and poor impulse control.
An angry, self-destructing tornado draining everyone of their everything.
An absent, heartbroken mom wearing ugly pants at a salad bar for addicts.
J. Peterman never wrote about this particular adventure, so I didn’t know how it would end, or what I would be wearing when it did.
Up Meets Down.
Someone might have written about you in these sweatpants. Your defiant nature with cops. Your affinity for fucking shit up.
You could write books on the subject of poor planning, disappointment, and casual encounters at bars you don’t remember being at.
You can do all that and wear these sweatpants with a three-day hangover and a sinking heart.
Your confusion will be seen as confusion.
Unencumbered cotton-polyester heavy knit blend sweatpants for comfortably mixing it up with addicts of all different backgrounds. Elastic waistband and cuffs at the hem of the leg that, when coupled with the word JUICY across the rear, conjure up a cadence of long-suffering despair.
In these, you’re already halfway to rehab.
Again, you always have me reading, and loving the words that you put down.
omg, marika, this is so beautiful. And I read the J Peterman catalogs with the the same hangry need. I wanted to be those people. I thought the clothes would make it happen. You nailed it. Amazing.