Hit or Miss

           Today I’m browsing through H and M on a singular mission. I have exactly one afternoon to find something to wear for my girlfriend’s country/Japanese themed garden wedding in Virginia. I would’ve named this honey comb of a store Homos and Metrosexuals myself. Guys were tearing clothes off the racks like frenzied girls clawing each other’s eyes out over a Balenciaga scarf at a juicy insider sample sale! It wasn’t pretty. In fact it was borderline Animal Planet. It was truly an urban free for all, the stuff reality shows are made of in fact. You would’ve thought these dudes were poor third world refugees fighting for food and provisions dropped from one of those rescue planes into the heart of a hungry village.


           I’m minding my own business in the suit department when this woman urgently says to me “You can’t buy That!” just as I was trying on a beautiful overpriced navy blazer. Her statement was desperate and had the intensity of what I imagine a tsunami warning to sound like from someone fleeing the beach. She startled me a little. “Sorry?” I say. “That doesn’t fit you at all...it's way too short...put it back.....NOW!” It took me what felt like a hundred years to even decide on a color scheme. And Poof, just like that, within one breath she had flooded me with instant doubt. I sadly took the coat off and hung it back in its place, resigned to starting over from scratch. Actually, I didn’t recall asking her opinion on the matter either. She proceeded to follow me around the men’s section like a puppy in the kitchen, seemingly underfoot at all times, but not approving of anything. She talked me out of almost everything I touched. “Too short...wrong color....those blacks don’t match!” Every edit got me one step closer to a looming panic attack. She was like my own little mousey personal shopping terrorist! She chased me around the isles saying “Daaaavid...where aaaaarre you?” Now imagine one of the busiest stores in New York, a true 5th Avenue nightmare, with theme- park lines leading to a single fitting room. There were piles and piles of picked through clothes casually discarded. It was torture. At first she was like the mosquito you can’t quite successfully swat but after a few minutes I realized how sweet this little lady actually was. She explained to me that her husband’s name was also David and that he had been a high end British custom suit tailor his entire life. She certainly talked the talk that’s for sure and after hearing her professional opinion I chose to open myself up to her valuable input...not like I had a choice! But as much as I appreciated her helping me in my time of need, I eventually grew tired of putting away all the clothes she was pulling off the hangers and throwing at me. A few times I even ducked under a rack of pants pretending to drop something, hoping she wouldn’t see me and eventually give up this unwanted hijacked makeover. Then she’d come flying around the corner with fifty more things for me to put back. I had just been secretly wishing I had one of my girls or gay boys with me in times of crippling indecision like this. Careful what you wish for because the universe gave me a fucked up version of that. Instead of sending one of my sassy fashion savvy buddies, it sent me some homeschool, marm-like creature obsessed with keeping me from blowing 129 bucks on the wrong blazer!

          After fifteen minutes of assisted shopping my eyes were open to how other people see me and how my first choices desperately needed a second opinion. Every look I put together ended up being some kind of poor man’s jitney, nautical, Ralf Lauren situation. “Is this wedding on a boat?"  "No maam."  "I didn’t think so” she said. This awkward intervention actually ended up guiding me to a better, cheaper, and more polished looking suit than I would’ve picked out for myself without her help. This four foot hilariously helpful woman was a gift from above on a mission to save me from my arm full of Hamptons bound ship wreck attire. She was a life preserver of common sense confidently rejecting my every instinct. Lord knows I need to pull in the reins of my fashion focus. My style is really an absence of style. A tank top and straight-boy cargo shorts generally complete my homeless gay Chelsea look....carelessly crunchy noncouture! I needed to open myself up to the unsolicited fashion advice from a stranger. She was nothing but sincere and all her help came from the goodness of her terribly sweet heart. In New York if someone speaks to me I instantly assume they want something from me and it’s usually money. My second thought is that they are possibly insane or fresh out of Bellevue. And if the desperate voice is neither of those things, it’s probably some bright eyed Big Apple tourist asking how they can get to Radio City. I’m never really approached by people that don’t want something. It caught me off guard.

            I’m reminded of those ear piercing, chipper, high-voiced volunteers standing outside Penn station raising money and awareness for any number of causes. They block your path and insist on making you stop and talk and guilt you into donating money and giving them your email address at emotional gun point! These college(ish) kids thrive on making you late for the 16 bars of shame you’re about to experience at the Ripley Grier audition studios. You can’t really be late for an appointment that generally lasts less than one minute! “Sorry, I don’t have the time today!” If you don’t make eye contact and keep on walking past them then you obviously don’t want to save the starving children and openly don’t care about the Cathy Lee Gifford-like sweat shops around the world, or fresh drinking water for the poor. And everybody on 34th st. knows it! These clip board holding, visor wearing, good deed doing Samaritans give us all a bad name in the human contribution department. God I wish I cared.

            Back to the frenzied game of human Tetris that is Hit or Miss (or H&M). It’s a bustling store of nightmarish crowds packed to the brim with sassy sardine spenders. I didn’t want to close myself off to a valuable set of eyes willing to take a moment and help me look my best for my “strife’s” wedding. Strife is a term me and my engaged girlfriend came up with years ago when we were dance partners in a regional production of Beauty and the Beast. You may have heard of my Tony worthy performance as the gold painted knife? No? I was featured as a dancing, singing piece of cutlery in Beverly Massachusetts....really big stuff. And Christina was a beautiful blond, all American Radio City Rockette dressed as a pink and gold napkin doing a can can atop a huge revolving punch bowl! She was a homo’s dream. The term “fag hag” doesn’t apply to girls like Christina. It was love at first cooter slam! She’s my straight wife, my strife, and I’m her gay husband or Gusband....Gus for short. This is my girl and this is her big day. It’s mandatory to go to the few weddings within your inner circle that matter this much. Even in this day and age with all the options a couple has to break free of a legally binding commitment like marriage I know this will be her only one. I just feel it and I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Wild horses couldn’t stop me from going to this picturesque Vogue wedding except my inability to commit to a single outfit. With a VIP of this level the pressure is on to look as cute as possible while operating on a serious unemployed budget.

        “Go with something purple....I loooove purple!” This little female Tim Gun tailed me closely, chasing me around the maze of racks, throwing billowing linen pirate shirts that look like blouses with draw strings and pin striped suits into my arms. Her personal taste reminded me of an International Male magazine full of everything in the world I’d never ever pick out for myself. The only reason I know the truth about this particular magazine is because I used to flip through the underwear section every week as a horny, young, closeted teenager!

         A beautiful young Spanish girl who was working there was watching us while she folded over priced cashmere cardigans into neat little piles. She was obviously enjoying the colorful game of musical blazers I was playing with this stranger. She asked if she was my mom and remarked how cute it was that we were shopping together as mother and son! Her jaw dropped in disbelief when I told her we had just met right then and there, picking up right where we never began.

         Human kindness is a mirage in this urban desert. You never seem to arrive. It’s hard to make out normalcy in a city that feels like a shaken up snow globe. I’m surprised every time I interact with somebody who has truly good motives and the best of intentions. I’ve become numb to kind acts in the city I’m sad to say. I yelled at an old lady today because she was screaming some toothless babble at me while I was trying to eat my lunch.  I couldn’t decipher her loud, unintelligible, gummy words despite my best effort. It would’ve taken this woman five months to chew through a soft pretzel. After about a minute of her pestering me forcefully about who knows what, I screamed “What do you WANT!?” I mean who yells at an old woman? My fuse is alarmingly short these days. Between my room mate Danny getting horribly and tragically hate crimed in some gang initiation attack right outside our front door and the 77 year old woman that was robbed, raped, and badly beaten in her elevator in the building across the street from us, I’m left disenchanted by this New York hate story.

         Every day vulnerable New Yorkers dangle from overused elevator bands high above Manhattan’s floor, yoyos of hope and shady trust. Will anything snap....them? The elevator? Kind minds melt at a glacial pace as this city becomes an illusion to me. A chorus boy’s crows' feet are completely revealed under the shaking subway bright fluorescents.  And my youth seems to rumble out of sight down the dirty, dark tunnels underneath New York City. My last decade or so here has felt like a skip stop during track construction. There never seemed to be a good time to accidentally fall into a Broadway contract is all I'm saying. This city is the Bermuda triangle of me first. I still, after 12 years, rarely meet people that want to help out of genuine goodness. They always want something. Blatant desperation catches me off guard every time.

(a gentleman taking a dump in my train station/please note the news paper)

       I appreciate kind women like this when I think about the infamous laundry wench that lives in my depths of my building uptown. I caught this bitch moving my wet clothes out of the dryer before they were even done! “You’re taaam s'up alls amm sayin'” she rudely hissed. My time is up when my clothes are dry Woman! Cunts like this make me want to pack my bags and make a quick French retreat to the suburbs. Alpha-urban personalities make me crazy in confrontational situations like this. The claustrophobia has set in officially. I think it may be time to check out of more than just this retail store. But where would I go? New York traps you. The longer you live here the harder it is to leave.