Second Hand

I stand in the mirror looking at my mismatched underwear. There was a time when I refused to wear bra and underwear sets that didn’t match. It was an expensive caprice. I pick up the flimsy plastic package that promises happiness once opened. I tear the resealable side of the packaging carefully so I can reuse it at some other point. You know, reduce, reuse, recycle. I like the prolonged moment of anticipation. There is a lot to be said for delayed gratification. Moments like these, anymore, are the closest I come to those waning minutes of a date when dinner is over and the last remnants of a melted cocktail slosh in the bottom of the glass. You know what is coming but waiting for that moment when anticipation crystallizes into certitude hangs suspended in the dim light.

I carefully slide out the contents onto the bathroom countertop. Despite being second hand the clothing items are carefully wrapped in tissue paper as if they were silk or cashmere from a top-end department store. I roll my eyes a little bit. The pageantry seems unnecessary and wasteful. And yet, it adds to the prolonged wait, the anticipation growing as I have yet to see fully what is wrapped up under the paper. I gently finger a silk camisole and a polyester dress. I let my fingers roll over the silk again and again. There was a time when I didn’t think I would ever own something so luxurious. It makes little difference to me that I bought it second hand. It is silk. Beautiful, soft, smooth, and obviously too small for me. I sigh and carefully refold the camisole and slide it back into the packaging.

I turn to the dress. Just polyester. The kind of material for plebeians like me. I let my fingers glide over the material the same as with the silk. For polyester it isn’t bad. But it is definitely not silk. I lift the dress over my head and let it slink down my neck, push my arms through and feel it fall in a heavy wave over my hips. Polyester lacks that lighter than air quality of silk. You can forget you are wearing silk. Polyester weighs on you in a way that doesn’t let you forget its presence. I look in the mirror, it fits well, skimming my hips, covering my breasts, and floating over that stubborn bump on the lower abdomen-a gift from my daughter. I don’t look bad but I don’t feel great either. I tell myself that I should keep it anyway. Keeping it means it won’t go in a landfill. I am doing an environmentally friendly thing by keeping it. How can a person say no to that?

My mind wanders to various different articles and claims I have read over the years; the disastrous impact the port-a-prêter clothing industry has been for the environment due to the chemical runoff from making synthetic materials and the carbon released into the atmosphere from the several rounds of transportation it takes to get to the customer. I think of all the underpaid seamstresses in sweatshops. The child workers who live in near slave-like conditions. I frown at myself in the mirror. But, it is second hand, so, haven’t I prevented all of that from repeating just so I can have a new dress? And even if the dress isn’t new, it is new to me. And I had read that the circular economy can save billions of tons of greenhouse gases from being released. But how much carbon did I use having it delivered to me? Does my second hand purchase take money out of the pockets of those seamstresses, even if they are underpaid?

This dress is just an over indulgence on something I don’t need. And an overindulgence on crappy quality items at that. But if buying this dress was an overindulgence then so was buying this house built with construction grade finishes. So was the expensive degree from a fancy university I barely even use. So was last night’s dinner. Back in the days when anticipation could flavor even a fast-food meal, the quality of the moment was wrapped up not around the burger but around the imagined and unimagined outcomes of the evening. Dinner now usually takes place at a posh restaurant and the anticipation is not the seasoning that makes everything taste great but rather something that needs to be imbibed. The moment is heady in crapulence and liquor induced intoxication. It feels a lot like this dress. Something I wrap around myself so that I have something to unwrap again.

I turn in the mirror to try to gain a look at my backside. I have to admit, if my stomach is a let down when seen in the daylight, my derrière certainly is not. I have managed through diet, exercise, and a bit of genetic luck, to keep a firm, perky, round behind. The material of the dress slides over the top bump of it and then waterfalls over the curve, teasing at what might be underneath. I sway my hips side to side to watch the material swish and sway, licking up the right side and then the left, exposing the top of my thighs but never quite giving away the bottom curve of my buttocks. I have to laugh a little. Here I am, a middle-aged woman, acting like a teenager who is still play-acting at seducing the boys. At my age there is no one left to seduce. Not when you are married and have a daughter together. The infidelity paradigm is just not my thing. I can’t imagine the anticipation of the sloshy cocktails with someone not my husband being as gratifying as the real deal. Maybe I am old fashioned. Maybe I am a prude. Maybe I am whatever else you want to accuse me of being. But does your gluteus maximus look like this? I didn’t think so.

I hear his car pull in the driveway. He sits there, no doubt talking to one of his friends or family members on the phone. Then the chug-chug of the too-old garage door opener sounds. It shakes the upper story a bit. I hear the twinkle of something glass hitting something else glass but I don’t know where it is coming from. Probably some chotchkies on a shelf somewhere. Why did I acquire so many little knick-knacks that I now never look at? I hardly even think of those trips anymore either. And, frankly, have little desire to remember them. I have a feeling they weren’t as worldly or awe-inspiring as I imagine them to be. It is probably best to just leave them there in a safe little corner of my mind. If I bring them out to examine they may just be a polyester memory. And I would rather pretend they were silk.

I wait for my husband to open the garage door and hear the clomp-clomp of each of his shoes as they hit the floor. He drops a pile of papers on the counter next to the door and washes his hands at the sink. He crosses over to the stairs. The whole house shakes with each step, he is heavy-footed, and the house looks pretty, but underneath is shoddy workmanship. He climbs the stairs at his even pace, creak, clack, bam. Each stair has its own designated note. The music of his footsteps is predictable after being heard multiple times a day, every day, for years now. The bedroom door bangs lightly against the wall as he bumps into it. I haven’t turned to look but I know he is at the bathroom door. I breathe out.

“New dress?” he asks.

“Well, new to me.” I say. He looks at me, puzzled, but waits for me to explain. “It is second-hand so it isn’t new, per say, but it is new to me.”

“You look nice in it.”

“You are supposed to say that.”

“No, you do.” His fingers rub a corner of the skirt. “That feels expensive?”

I stifle a laugh, “No, it is definitely not expensive.”

“Well, it is nice all the same.”

“You are supposed to say that too.”

“Just because I am supposed to say it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t say it, does it?”

“Well, tell me what you really think. Don’t gimme no lines…”I half-sing to him.

“I think I am glad I came home early.”

“Why is that?”

“Because if I hadn’t I wouldn’t have caught you trying on this dress.”

“And, what difference would that have made.”

“Oh, probably not much.”

I roll my eyes a little bit and smirk by pushing my lips over-exaggeratedly to the right side. He takes two steps towards me and rests his hands on my hips. The fabric is thin enough he can feel the outline of my underwear resting there. Through the fabric, he runs his fingers just ever so slightly underneath the elastic. I know what is coming. There is a dance that we have choreographed together through the years. His hands will now slide around to my back and cup my buttocks. I will raise my arms and place them on his shoulders. He will lean down and kiss my neck. I will raise to my tip-toes so we are nearly the same height. He will slide his hands under the hem of the skirt and graze the skin ever so lightly. I will scratch the top of his back, between the shoulder blades, because it is the only part of him I can reach with my arms over his shoulders. He will cup my buttocks underneath the skirt now, and lift, so that my toes come off the floor. He will half carry, half scoot me back into the bedroom.

I know my complimentary steps and reach to flip the hem of his shirt up over his head. But he will undo the belt buckle. He always undresses before I do. I wait. Still entirely dressed, on the edge of the bed. He will look at me and slide his hands up my legs, under the dress, around my breasts and then back down. He then studies on this new dress of mine. A light smile goes across his features. He is having fun trying to figure out how to take it off. Finally, he reaches down and swooshes it off over my head. And there I am, unwrapped, in my mismatched underwear. We both know how the choreography continues.