Jennie Smash

Next week, I will move to a new apartment and start a new job all in the space of, oh, about 48 hours. I have a lot to get done, and not much time to do it in. I should be extremely freaked out, but I’m not. Mostly, I’m concerned about what I’ll wear to work.

You see, I haven’t had any kind of a dress code for years. My last job distributed the dress code with the employee handbook on the first day of work. It read: “Employees are encouraged to wear clothing.” That was it. That was the whole dress code. So as long as my lady parts were covered, so was I.

My new job seems pretty relaxed about dress codes, too, but it’s in New York. Since my only work experience in New York so far has been working from home, and since New York is, on the whole, dressier than my hometown of Boston, I’m a little concerned. I think it might be a bad idea, for instance, to show up at work wearing a vomit-stained “Daubach is my daddy” t-shirt and a paint-spattered Red Sox cap.

So today, I went shopping. Please understand that I go shopping with the same joy and zest that I reserve for getting a Pap smear. I do not like shopping. I’ve never liked it. What I like is stuff. There’s a paucity of actual stuff-getting in the whole shopping experience, if you ask me. Mostly, it seems like you just kind of stand around in one line or another, waiting to feel bad about your body and then pay a whole bunch of money you don’t have to buy some clothes you might well despise next week. Also, in three months the weather will be wrong for your outfit, and by the time the weather cycles back around to where it needs to be in order for you to wear your fetching new pants, they will be out of style.

I once told my friend David in college that I was waiting for the Future of Fashion to arrive. I had it in my head that someday we would all shave our noggins and wear one-piece zip-up jumpsuits just like they do in science fiction movies, and then I would never have to worry about what I was wearing ever again. David said, “You are such a lesbian,” which wasn’t fair at all, because I know plenty of lesbians who have tons of fashion sense. I like boys and I can’t dress myself without help. Stereotypes hurt us all, David. If you’re reading this, I want you to remember that.

Anyway, I am now the proud owner of two pairs of grown-up person work pants and a shirt with buttons on it, as well as some cute sandals that do not completely reduce my feet to hamburger, and I’m feeling much better.