Tonight I go to this sweet little dive bar to see Noah read from his new book.

I’m having trouble assembling the right outfit, but in the end go with a fitted grey trench coat and fedora with an attention-grabbing fuchsia stripe. It’s raining, for one thing, but more importantly, I’m a wee bit undercover.

Of course, I’m always a wee bit undercover.

It’s the primary method I employ to keep myself amused.

Also separate.

Probably more separate.

In any event, I struggle with what should be worn under the trench coat, and really the best choice is a v-neck black slip, but at the last minute I decide on a particular dress I’ve worn only once before.

I don’t think much about the dress as I don it. I think about it not at all as I drive to the sketchy part of town and stand at the bar and drink vodka and watch Noah read. Not once. All of those elements of the evening have their own life.

It’s not until I get back home, and am stripping in front of my bedroom mirror, that I take full stock of the dress.

Tonight I went to see Noah read from his new book.

And wore a dress I’ve worn only once before, over a year ago, to a boxing match of my x-boyfriend’s, in which he broke his opponent’s nose.

The dress is black, a pencil dress, with white piping. At the time I bought it, I believed it had a hint of a referee vibe, if a referee could double as a femme fatale. I bought the dress very specifically for the boxing match and, if I’m painfully honest, wearing it was the only element of the entire evening that excited me. Well, that and the wide-brimmed felt hat I wore to accompany it.

And perhaps the heels. It has been a while, so I really can’t remember.

I’m surprised now that tonight I chose the dress so haphazardly, as if I didn’t know it from any other dress. Because I did. For over a year the dress has been idly hanging from the garment steamer in the far corner of my boudoir, wondering, I imagine, why I’ve passed it over so many an evening.

“You are a very bad dress,” it might have imagined my saying. “You are a dress that doesn’t deserve to be worn.”

When in fact it’s the body that dress is covering that has been undutiful. Or perhaps, though I hesitate to take full responsibility, the mind that operates said body.

In any event, and as is likely obvious, my wearing the dress tonight was symbolic, though I can’t say of what. Either I’m bound for trouble, once again, or I’m baptizing the dress for a new era.

Either way, it’s a beautiful dress.

~