on being underemployed in a fancy coat
I found my new coat at an off-island Renaissance in the Boutique section. My old winter coat, a long navy A-line coat with large buttons (very Condé Naste, as Noah would say), had been purchased for $10 at a Dartmouth Value Village in my first year of university and lasted me 5 winters. This winter, it has finally all worn out on the inside, the pockets are no longer pockets. But, mainly, I was suddenly so cold when I wore it. How had I survived my first Montreal winter? I don't remember being so cold. I guess the winter was all late afternoons rushing to the metro to the bar where I worked, then early early mornings stumbling home exhausted or drunk. I did not think about my coat and its thinning lining.
When I first touched my new coat in the Boutique rack, I felt weight; it felt expensive. My old one wasn't wool, but a wool-blend, I said without knowing, and I was looking for wool. The coat from the Boutique rack was long, black, heavy, with a fur trim around the neck. The inside label read "Pure Virgin Wool". It's a luxurious coat, a going-to-the-opera coat. An old Québecoise lady had surely died and left this coat to be managed by the estate. The Boutique price was $70, which was outrageous for a Renaissance and incredibly cheap for my estimate of how much the coat was worth. I put it on and it enveloped me. I wore it around the store asking, Can I pull this off? I bought it.
In my new coat, I am the rich lady with no money. Noah calls me The Grand Dame. I am always going to the opera, even when I am going to the Dep. The coat is so large that I have to tuck it under me when I sit and fold it up when I take it off. The coat demands a chair; it demands a hanger; and such luxuries are not always available.
I am ending the year with more freedom than last year, more happiness, more care, but with about the same amount of money (i.e. not much). I was not expecting to have more money, and I've obviously made no decisions post-grad that are sending me in that direction, but I wonder if I should be doing a better job, finding a better job. Maybe I need more hustle. I say, I am not capital, and wonder if I should fear the meaning of that statement a little more. Instead, I am applying for my master's.
Soon after buying the coat, I had the impulse to google the brand and style to see if they still sold one like it and, if so, how much it cost. I found out the coat (or its closest sister) retails for about a thousand dollars. That's bragging rights. That's increased personal value.
But what did I actually get from buying an expensive coat for cheap? What do I get from the knowledge of Pure Virgin Wool and a fox fur trim? Well, the idea of value, the dream of class. Some old dream, or, actually, a parody of a dream. (Because, really, it is exactly the wrong kind of class cosplay for someone of my demographic, and I imagine this is what makes it different than sporting Arc'teryx or showing off your Paloma Wool). Isn't it blasphemous, I think, if I wear polyester under this wool? Isn't it funny that the 23-year-old in the fur-trim coat can't afford her metro pass? Isn't it a gag? Isn't it a steal?
But it's not that funny or particular, because such contradictions exist everywhere and are proliferating. I am home for the holidays, and all I do is sit and eat and sit some more. Indulgence in a time of scarcity. My body hates me. I am cantankerous and cankerous. When I leave the house in my long Pure coat, I'm confronted by the evolution (gentrification) of my neighbourhood. In Toronto, you have strange regularities like a woman wearing Margiela tabi shoes and slinging a virtual-looking leather tote walking down a barren industrial street towards a new japanese coffee & whiskey & vinyl lounge that feels strangely like a movie set. There are luxury condos built up around small houses where factory workers once lived. There are apolitical bookstores that smell of Le Labo perfume. There is Aesop soap for your "significant animal". There is a broken transit system. There are parks full of tents.
Though really, most cities are in the same or similar spot. I walk through Toronto, Montreal, etc. in my fancy coat, walk through poverty in cosplay, and perhaps there is something wrong about that. I have the desire to say things off-handedly like, "I'm poor," when I will always (hopefully) have a home to return to if I cannot pay my rent. Though, technically speaking, I am poor. In a thousand dollar coat.
(I often end things– years, days, paragraphs– thinking of all the sentences I didn't write and all the places my thinking could have gone but failed to. Melancholy tendencies. I'm awaiting the kind of person these tendencies will transform me into. Though I guess I can exercise a bit of control, can't I.)
After all of this class performance, I will say that I am rich! wealthy! in time. I'm barely beginning to come to terms with this and already realizing how soon that may change. Though change will probably be for the better. I am hoarding time. I am in the 1%. As we approach the new year, I am looking to share my time more, to invest in more people and projects and communities...
But, maybe someone will give me money too. DM for etransfer :)
xoxo
tessa
