Monday, March 03, 2008

Yesterday I was riding the bus, decked out in my new-old vintage finery, freshly inspired by wunderkind, Patrick Wolf. By itself, public transportation on a Sunday is enough to nearly inspire a Freudian fit, but then I glanced down to take an inventory of the items I was transporting:

- a shoebox containing gorgeous new Brown's boots, on route to be sprayed with leather conditioner
- my Louis Vuitton wallet, beginning to fray at the edges after nearly six years of abuse
- a martini shaker, containing various tonics destined for embibement later that night
- Tzatziki

All were being transported in a plastic purple Superstore tub. And then, right there on the 18 Corydon-Tuxedo, I had an existential break down. How the fuck did I end up on public transit carrying various luxury items, mixed drinks and tapas? I was filled with a mixture of pride and repulsion, odd bedfellows to say the least. Like the contents of my cocktail shaker, what assortment of ingredients had made me into the uber-stylin' superfreak sitting next to Halytosis McPee-Stain onboard Winnipeg's finest?

There's a certain amount of pride that comes with the knowledge that one has successfully bucked the mainstream. Actually, let me reconsider that. There's a certain pride that comes of not fitting into the mainstream, carving your own niche and knowing that you are so much more satisfied with the life you've made than the one they would have offered you. Does it suck to be the queer, gimpy Jewish boy with the odd hairline and body image issues enough to kickstart bulemia if he was any less lazy? Yes. Frequently. But then you find a killer jacket at Chateau V.V. or finish a book that was last checked out the library in 1979 or write a pop song with chromatic disonance and you smile knowing that the vast majority of the populace has no understanding of the thing you've just done. If this sounds like a Me-Generation-aren't-I-amazing?-Love-me!-I'm-unique! diatribe, well, it is. I realize it's self-congratulatory, but if one, by force or by choice, lives, works and plays outside of the global mainframe, it really is cause for survivalist celebration. We'll be serving tapas.

3 comments:

Michael Park said...

In six years, how many times had Mr. Vuitton been lost/misplaced only to be found in a FOM couch and returned to you by some sort of divine miracle?

The Illustrious D said...

Not counting the time that some dumbass took it and forgot to tell me about it, one. Bitch. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Oh my god. Yes.
As I've said elsewhere in the virtual shadows, electrons came into existence so that, one day, I could too. This came into my self-important mind one day, on public transportation (my weapon of choice was the 11-Portage, which is more like a prison mess hall than a bus route), when I realized Winnipeg is too crappy to contain all of my excellence. So: who wins? Me, or Winnipeg?