What occasion do you borrow clothes?

Here are my two

The extreme nature of the news has me determined to make focused segments of my day when I am not worrying. This exercise prompts old memories. Yesterday I reminisced on occasions when I borrowed clothes. I remember two incidents. They are sweet and isolated.

One of them was during a time I was going to therapy on the upper East side, my therapist would periodically fall asleep during my sessions. He was also getting hair plugs and wore a knit cap to hide them; it was a prolonged time because his doctor committed suicide and he had to find another person to take over his process. I stopped going to him, it was torture waiting for him to wake up.

I got invited to the Met Gala; it was the year the King Tut exhibit arrived at the museum. There were three of us, a man named Owen Ryan invited us. He was tall and worked at an ad agency.

I went to my friend, Gail Blacker who was a designer and asked what I should wear. She offered her mother’s Courrèges mini dress from the early 60’s. It was silver and made of geometric shapes sewn together. It felt other worldly compared to my own clothes. My mom’s best dress from that time would have been very different. I remember a knit rust suit, she looked elegant in.

The big doors of the Met were propped open and as soon as we walked in Bill Cunningham waved his arms to motion me to step back to take my picture. I remember flash bulbs and the blue worker jacket that was his uniform. I am sure I posed. Flash bulbs and cameras held up create a specific atmosphere, and the dress was holding up.

The bright part of the night was dancing with the King Tut artifacts. No security, we were party dancing with very old stuff. I wonder if the Steve Martin King Tut parody was out. And how would I have seen it if it was, we take so much constant information that our algorithm chooses for us for granted. But these are musings without a care. It is a first draft version, born out of free of worry time. I am messy.

The only other time I remember borrowing an article of clothing, I borrowed a mink coat. Even the thought that I ever considered this glamorous or fun feels incongruous, but we change. We were going to Brooklyn Academy of Music to see Pina Bausch, I think. A mink coat and Pina Bausch do not go well together but I was young. And decades later I could be wrong about what we were going to see but there were three of us again. I vaguely remember borrowing my friend’s oldish Fiat station wagon. It was burgundy. I have no recollection why I would borrow a mink coat, I do remember this was not a close friend, she was tall and offered it to me when I admired it. I probably borrowed the car because of the coat and not taking the subway. As soon as the night began, I knew I made a mistake, no amount of softness could rectify it. It only became clearer.

On the way back to the car we walked through the old BAM neighborhood, pre-gentrified Brooklyn. Folks started hollering at us out of upper floor windows. And then the eggs began. The folks throwing them were great shots, and I scooted this way and that. We picked up our pace to get past the egg throwing block. Everything seemed symbolic, there was no fooling anyone. My fake glamour snuffed out instantly, you must love truth.

• An old plate is a good gift. If you visit a friend with a plate full of cookies wrapped in parchment paper or with a hunk of fine cheese, they will think of you when the plate is used again and again. My friend Mindy gave me a small bowl from her mom years ago and I think of both every time I use it.

• We are watching a Hulu show that my daughter Kris recommended. It is “Say Nothing”. It is good.

• I am listening to a new album by Bon Iver.

• Go to a film in a theatre and my new favorite expression is “The juice is not worth the squeeze.”

• I love Costco, for many reasons. I did an Instagram where I talked about a person who worked there who was sweeping up sugar. I saw him sweeping an aisle over and I said, “thanks for cleaning up that sugar pile” and he said that because the big sugar bags are paper, they often leak and folks walk all over the store trailing unknown sugar streams. We smiled. And a friend watched the reel and sent me this poem. Thank you, TC. I love community.

The Monk at Costco

There’s a man in aisle B sweeping up sugar,

a white cloud spilled over the glazed cement floor,

an entrail beyond his broom he’ll follow to the end.

Thank you, I said, for keeping things clean.

People don’t realize, he said,

looking at me with cocoa colored eyes,

with a crow’s fine precision,

people don’t realize when they take a pound,

the sugar seeps between the folds.

I could sweep all day. I don’t mind at all.

Stacks of paper bales next to bales of flour,

white granules and dust on the bristle of his broom.

How tightly sweetness is packed, how slow the seep,

how much we want to lick the dissolving grains from our fingers.

3/19/25

T.C. Cervin

Sending you moments away from the swirl,

Darc