Weekend, Where? (Or Wear!)
I work on weekends. I teach Yoga on Saturdays and Sundays in The Village(s). I give people the weekends they deserve after they’ve spent their week hunched over desktops and stuffing their feet into Prada Loafers. I correct their posture, as they’ve carried the burden of upholding capitalism on their shoulders all week.
Ah–The Life of a Villager. A 401K’d, boss-bitch life, brief-cased and designer-suited.
They leave my 7 a.m. class, put their Uber on the company card, and type out their first e-mail for the day, ignoring the quiet presence of their driver. Their day has started right.
At the same time, I’m on the M train home with sleep-eyed construction workers. We sip on our canisters of coffee in silence. Quietly knowing, a day off is a luxury we can’t afford.
My day will now consist of a mid-morning nap and an afternoon existential crisis on the meaning of being a starving artist.
But on the weekend, the playing field is almost leveled. My students and I show up to class in the same wardrobe, sherpa jackets, too-expensive leggings, maybe a clog. We walk side by side, draft oat milk lattes in hand, and swap stories of the best farmer’s market near the LES. (Union Square’s is too crowded!)
But there’s still a discernable difference. We both know my clogs are Amazon knock-offs of their genuine Uggs. While they join my class, dragging their inflexible bro-y boyfriend with them, my inflexible poet of a boyfriend is serving them brunch at celebrity-spotting-bistro on W 12th.
They sit at our cafés catching up with fellow balayaged sorority sisters, and divulging the bit of work they’ve had done. (One unit of preventative botox at their 11 lines, and 1ml of lip filler.)
I sit within earshot of them, practically banging my head against my laptop’s keys, forcing creative inspiration.
Their perfect eyelash extensions blink at me slowly. “Is she ok?”
The 1 and L keys from my laptop stuck against my brow bone. How about those 11 lines? Huh! HUH!
We both buy into the frivolity of the $10 smoothie we’ll sip halfway down before discarding. We’ll walk the stacks at The Strand on a rainy Saturday.
We’ll buy the bouquet of baby’s breath from Trader Joe’s to “brighten up our room.”
Their self-care sweet treats are pocket change though, in comparison to their 70k a year salary at [insert consulting firm here.]
Whereas I have bankrupted my checking account through too many “I-deserve-it” stops at my bookstore. HOW ARE HARDCOVER’S $30! HOW DID THAT HAPPENAHGJKJH!
And reader, this isn’t me, not-like-other-girlsing my financial/creative sacrifice situation.
God, I WISH I was like these women. I’m jealous! I’m in love with them! I teach them Yoga and mean it when I thank them for bringing their unique energy into our shared safe space!
I live vicariously through their Instagrammable weekends; forcing their brothers to play Pickleball with them on a bright Saturday morning, indulging their boyfriends as they let a Sunday evening creep by in a sports bar, trying to cheer at the right parts.
I wish I’d made it to Smoragsburg this summer and eaten some hot-cheeto-dog-donut monstrosity. I wish I was an NYU student with an eclectic fashion sense and Daddy’s AMEX to spend at Vegan-Eco-Friendly-Atelier-Baggu-Verified-Seller-Thrift-Stores.
I could join a pickup soccer game, donning a torn-up Pennie, at Roosevelt Park. I never do.
I could jog alongside the running group, mimic their dayglo wardrobe. I’ve never tried.
Instead, I take long walks, waiting to teach my evening classes, meditating over where I should waste my time. The streets become a playing field of envy for passersbys. The sidewalks, a Runway for Weekend Wear.
Wait a second…floodlights, pulsating music, Paris Fashion Week, bed bugs, haute couture!
This fall we are loving the Real World look, here we see Blonde Lady as she marches down Canal St, in chunky black ankle boots, straight-leg-jeans, an iron-pressed oxford, a camel trench long enough to touch the bottom of the Mariana, and finally, a Bella Hadid slick back bun. Matilda Djerf eat your heart out, this gal’s brow lamination is better than yours! She’s ready for her Spicy Rigatoni from Carbone! (The reservation she’s had since November of last year.)
Waltzing down 2nd Ave, we see a classic look for the Lower East Side, The E-Girl. This season she is dabbling in Korean aesthetics to an uncomfortable extent. Today, she sports an oversized black denim jack, matching cargo pants with silver hip chain, impossibly chunky combat boots, a Stray Kids T-shirt, and a problematic amount of eyeliner, in an attempt to rock a “fox eye” look.
Ah, third in the lineup for the Houston Street Stomp, is a seemingly Colonial-Harlet-inspired look. Yes, a person (we’re not gonna assume genders, here), rocking a shaggy wolf-mullet, cowboy boots, a pilgrim collar, and (gasp) are those–they stop dead in their tracks:
“-the lace-trimmed Adidas shorts? Yeah, they are.”
I black out from fashion-induced-bliss in front of the Delancy Essex Trader Joe’s. After a full beat of nothingness, I come too, desperate to see more style icons.
Here she comes now, the trendiest look to make the runway this season; meet Woman Who Just Got Microdermabrasion! She’s making a really big deal about it in front of her boyfriend! In every new passing light, she lifts her phone’s camera to her face:
“Look! LOOK! I’m so RED! Oh my god, are you gonna love me anymore?”
The boyfriend mumbles a lazy affirmation.
“I’ll look so good so soon though babe, don’t even worry.”
The winter sun starts to slip into the East River. I trek across the Williamsburg bridge, after what turned out to be a long day of teaching yoga, sipping matcha, critiquing the lint stuck to my Alo ensemble, thinking about death, and of course, most fun at all, judging stranger’s quality of life, based solely and how they dress themselves on a rare day off from the goddamn hellscape that is this city.
I wear black, almost exclusively. I believe it conveys chicness when really, I’m a messy eater and I ride the subway, black hides the stains.
I exist solely in athleisure wear, not for hot-soccer-mom purposes, but the opposite; I make the soccer moms hot, by busting their asses in Hot Yoga. Our outfits match, our lifestyles do not.
The few nice pieces I do own, are destroyed within a wash or two by the industrial dryers I use at my laundromat. I wither when a stranger discovers a pulled string, a new hole, or a scarred wrinkle.
I often teach 5, or 6 classes in a day. I eat breakfast on the go, I have to pee in public restrooms between work shifts, and I run across the entire swath of downtown Manhattan bouncing between workplaces. I use an unlimited Metrocard to get everywhere, and I write in the commutes between. I end most days as a puddle of sweat on my bedroom floor. My boyfriend has to mop me up.
I want to live a nice life. I want to wear nice things on the weekend. I would love to actually have a weekend. (Reader, you’re gonna have a heart attack when I tell you I haven’t had a day off since Labor Day.) These are the things I’m working for when I work….which is every day.
As I ruminate on all these things, and more, the finale of our Weekend Wear runway sluggs towards me.
PULSATING MUSIC, LIGHTS, ANNA WINTOUR DARLING, MILAN FASHION WEEK
Wearing A New York Knicks Jersey, and a pair of distressed knee-length basketball shorts, I must blink my eyes quickly to ensure it isn’t Adam Sandler in a Fashion Week First Cameo! No–no, it’s an average thirty-year-old-man….his head is shaved…he wears an ensemble of silver jewelry…no earrings though, intentional…? Ah–the piêce de rėsistance! He wears only socks…in his hands a pair of scuffed-up roller blades.
He must see my awe-struck expression because as he passes, he leans toward my listening ear:
“I forgot my shoes at home!” He laughs, boisterously, trotting off like an eager labradoodle, like the ones East Side girlies buy, not fully grasping the responsibility of being a pet owner.
I watch as he walks towards Manhattan, in his perfect disheveled lewk. He gives one final wave of his hand.
“Happy Sunday!”
And just like that…his weekend is over. And my week has begun.
Wait did I just finish this blog like Carrie Bradshaw? Okay, SJP now THAT’s a style icon
