How to Grow Up by Michelle Tea Read Free Book Online Page B

magazines began to dry up from lack of payment, I became sad. Then I looked at what my
Vogue
subscriptionactually cost. It cost
ten dollars.
A
year
! Ten dollars! Well, I would spend ten dollars this week alone on burritos! I realized that I was making decisions with an old brain, having not yet grown into this new brain—a sober brain, a brain that maybe didn’t want to look and act like a giant angry dirtbag for the rest of her life. A brain that was maybe perhaps hesitantly interested in
growing up—
whatever that was.
    Despite the training wheels tacked onto its lobes, my new brain recognized that even
I
could afford a ten-dollar annual magazine subscription. And so when the next you-better-pay-or-we’re-shutting-you-off-we-
mean-it
-this-time envelope came, I stuffed a check for ten dollars inside it. And I crossed out the name ANGELICAFORD and replaced it with MICHELLETEA.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Between my cheap rent and the grand trine of a book advance, a literary grant, and a high-paying job at a fancy women’s college, I suddenly had enough money to buy something big. Something expensive. Something I wouldn’t want anyone around me to know I could afford, lest they all turn against me in hate and envy. It had been a long time since I’d slunk down a city street to cop drugs—skittish about being seen, slightly guilty about what I was doing, yet also experiencing a deep, dark thrill—but walking up to the possibility of spending a bunch of money on a luxury item felt very familiar.
    The object I’d been lusting after was a leather hoodie, one I’d first seen in the pages of
Elle
, and then in
Nylon
. Just the word combo—
leather hoodie—
was enough to get me a little high. Sincegetting sober, I’d found the most interesting things could get my body, desperate for intoxication, a bit high: spectator pumps, Mark Rothko paintings, the color orange, driving under overpasses, and the phrase “leather hoodie.” It was leather—how luxurious, how glamorous! It was a hoodie—how tough, how street! It seemed a nice way to slide into the realm of higher fashion—something already common to me, but insanely elevated.
    In order to see the leather hoodie, I had to go to Barneys. I’d never been in Barneys before. I assumed there was probably an electric sensor around the door that went off whenever a current or former dirtbag came through it (nope, only if you’re black!). I’d been enjoying a better reception from the world since living in San Francisco—a more open-minded landscape than chilly New England—but if there was a place in the Bay Area where one could be judged for how poorly one was dressed, it seemed like it would be Barneys.
    Though I wanted to pass as moneyed, I couldn’t risk bringing my fake Louis Vuitton—my Faux-ton—into the store. If anyone would be able to spot its ignoble Canal Street birthplace, it would be someone who handles three-thousand-dollar purses on the daily. I’d get more respect wearing something artfully, painstakingly thrifted, an ensemble that hadn’t
yet
reached the inside of a magazine, but could possibly arrive on the floor at Barneys in a season or two. With Coco Chanel’s command
Elegance is restraint
as a guide, I wore a simple pair of skinny jeans and a boxy oatmeal-colored top with some necklaces. A pair of grungy hiking boots I’d found at Goodwill completed the woodsy ensemble. I’ve never been a hippie and I’ve never spent time in the woods, so in punkparlance my outfit rendered me a total poseur. When your first entry into fashion is so subcultural, it’s hard not to see every outfit as a uniform, your clothes doing the double duty of keeping you warm while signaling to the world what you’re all about. But I wasn’t doing that anymore. I was wearing things just because I liked them and thought they were