Author: the outside lane

Happy. That about covers it.
Style

Earth-tone Chic

the outside lane

Today’s polyvore picture comes from the Target clearance rack.  If you hurry, you might be able to find this sateen sheath dress in your local store.  I bought the brown and an orange for $12.98 each.  Online, they are still in the $20s (search “Mossimo Sheath Brown” on the Target website.)  The dress fits very well.  It has a little stretch to it, and the neckline is extremely flattering.  Unusually for Mossimo brand, the cap sleeves are sewn properly, making actual sleeves instead of epaulets.

I paired it with my brown wedges from Payless, and let me tell you, everyone who sees these shoes on comments on them.  I started to buy a similar pair at TJ Maxx yesterday, but after paying under $20 for the perfect wedge, I couldn’t make myself pay $50 for anything else.

Allergies are eating away at my looks, especially my eyeballs, so I’ve resorted to glasses today.  My vanity, she is wounded.  Right, you can see the actual glass frames, purchased at Zenni Optical–frames and lenses for $26 plus shipping.  I buy all of my glasses from Zenni now, including a couple of pairs of prescription sunglasses.  LOVE them.

Also pictured, bib necklace from Target, and earrings that I’ve had since 1987.  For real.  I bought them at a Contempo store in Columbus Square Mall in Columbus, Georgia.  If these earrings could talk…

The New York Story

Lasting First Impressions

the outside lane

Have you ever had an experience where you felt like you were outside of yourself, looking in, watching yourself make bad decisions and act on them?   I had one of those on August 24, 1992.

I had been expecting an Amazon goddess to meet me at the Newark airport, and had been worried about what she was going to think of pink, blonde me, and found myself stunned into silence at the sight of the girl who was calling my name.  She was short.  My height.  And she was much thicker around.  Instead of the runway fashion queen I had expected, I was looking at a girl with  chunks of purple and brown hair sticking out from under a black baseball cap, wearing a heavy, leather motorcycle jacket over an insanely short, black, pleated skirt.  She had on purple and black striped Hamburgler tights, and combat boots. Her eye makeup looked day old, smeared in some places, crusty in others, and a fine sheen of sweat stood out over her upper lip.

She did not look like Isabella Rosselini.  She did  not look anything like what my pen pal had described to me.  However, she was smiling, and waving, and calling my name.

I recollected that Isabella had told me a friend of hers was coming with her to pick me up at the airport.  I decided this was the friend.  I waved back, and made my way over.  We greeted and hugged, and then I found myself following her through the airport, wondering how I was either going to ask her if she was Isabella, and if she was, how I was going to bring up the discrepancy in detail.

She chattered as we walked, and I inspected her.  She sounded like Isabella.  She seemed to know me like Isabella should.  Maybe she’d just gained weight?  It wasn’t a big deal if she had.  I didn’t care what she looked like beyond knowing what to look for, but how could I explain the difference in height?  Had I misread her description?  Misunderstood?  Or was this just not Isabella?

I followed her in a daze, still not quite believing what was patently obvious:  That this was Isabella, and she had just been extremely creative in her self-description.  What else had been exaggerated?  Or flat out fabricated?

It occurred to me that I could turn around right then and go home.  I had an open flight ticket.  One phone call and I could get back on a plane and my mother would be there waiting to pick me up.  But that was admitting defeat, and just as I had ignored my mother’s insistence that my Hawaiian admirer was admiring me from the State Pen, I was ignoring my parents’ insistence that this trip was unwise and that I couldn’t trust Isabella to be who she said she was.  The last thing I was going to do was tell my mother that she’d been right.  Besides, I thought, I had a hotel booked.  Worse came to worst, I would just hide in the hotel.

We picked up my luggage and headed toward the taxi stands, and Maybe-Isabella started giggling, pointing to a driver holding a sign.  “Mrs. Khanada”  I stared.  She had hired car to pick us up from the airport, using my Smash Hits pen pal name.  Isabella had a car.  Why was she hiring a car?  This couldn’t be Isabella then, could it?  But she knew me.

I was confused, but laughed along with the joke and followed her into the car as the driver put my bags in the trunk.  As we drove, the right phrasing came to me.  I said, “So you came alone?”

“Yeah,” she sighed.  “Jerri couldn’t make it.  So I–”

And I didn’t hear the rest.  All I could think was, “Were you tripping on acid when you wrote me your description?!”

I came around to her repeating, “So is that okay?”

“Huh?” I asked, shaking myself.  “Sorry!  Skyline–  Tourist–  I didn’t hear you.”

She laughed good-naturedly, then shrugged, “No big.  I said that we can go straight to your hotel, but I really need to stop by the school first.  Okay?  We can put your luggage in the dorm.  Okay?”

“Okay,” I nodded.  At least she was really a student.

She sighed, “Yeah.  I’ve got to register.  Oh, and do you mind if I stay in your room with you tonight?  Because…I don’t think I told you.  I kind of have to find a place to live.”

Everything my mother had said about the stupidity of my trip came rushing back.  I blinked and said the only thing I could think of to say.  “Uh…sure.”

To be continued.

The New York Story

Pen Pals Should Come With a Warning

the outside lane

Some nights when I am in the bathtub, my mind starts to wander back to things I would just as soon forget.  I am SUCH a weirdo.  I have done some truly ridiculous, embarrassing, dangerous things.  I’m not going to tell you about some of them (yet) because I am still too embarrassed to put them in print.  However, the fact that I have considered it means that eventually, it will all end up on my blog.

But here is a story until then.

Once upon a time, there was a 16-year-old named Lane.

It was 1987, and there were no internets.  Al Gore was still working on that.  There were no web forums nor chat rooms, no fan pages nor official websites.  If a girl wanted to meet other fans of David Bowie, or Duran Duran, or Sigue Sigue Sputnik, or Strawberry Switchblade, she had only a few sets of recourse.  She could keep an eye out for familiar doodles on other people’s Trapper Keepers, hang out at the Sound Warehouse, try to get to the concerts, or, she could put an ad in Smash Hits (the imported version) and ask for a penpal.

I did all of these.  The latter I did without telling my parents, so imagine their surprise when mail started showing up addressed to “Khanada” (God, okay, that’s embarrassing right there.) from all over the world and prison.

My mother and I had a conversation that went, “Lane, that letter is from a prison.”  “No it isn’t!”  “Yes, look at the address.  I don’t want you responding to this.”  “Uh!  Mooooooooom!”  Of course I responded, and I asked, “Are you in prison?”  Of course he was.  My friend Jason wrote back and told my inmate-soulmate that I had been killed in a freak boating accident.

One of the girls who responded to my plea for fans of the Thin White Duke was named…  I have to give her a pseudonym.  We’ll call her Isabella.  Isabella was cool.  She wrote well.  She was entertaining, and we shared very similar backgrounds as military brats, and we ended up writing to each other for a couple of years.  We also started phoning one another once a month, or so.

She would fill me in on her fabulous, fascinating life at fashion school in NYC, detailing her promotions job for The Limelight, and talking about which Veejay she was refusing that week.  In turn, I would fill her in on my world.  My part of the conversation rarely took more than five minutes.  I was in hayseed awe of her world, and when she would beg me to visit her, I always demurred.  I was afraid she would take one look at me and say, “Never mind.”

But one day I got a wild hare.  I drove myself right down to the travel agency below my neighborhood and asked, “How much does it cost to go to New York City?”  Tiffany, who would book that and every trip I took up to  my honeymoon 12 years later–I’m a loyal customer if you treat me well–got me a price and got me into a good hotel.  I went home and called Isabella.  She was thrilled.  But, she said, if I was insisting on a hotel, I had to stay at the Paramount.  The Hilton was just so-so.

I called Tiffany, who got me an amazing rate, and then I called the hotel posing as my own assistant to confirm the reservation.  I told them I was tying to keep a low profile while I was there, and asked for a few provisions.  It entertained me anyway.

I spent the next six weeks putting together my wardrobe.  There was the black catsuit and cropped ivory Nehru jacket.  There was the skin tight tank dress (that a man tried to trade me for a signed Steven Sprouse t-shirt.  I should have made the trade, but I’ll tell you about that later.)  There was the black and white striped, bateau neck shirt, worn with tights and a black mini.  And a few other pieces along with the basics.  I knew I wasn’t going to be anywhere near what Isabella’s wardrobe would bring, but it was the best I could do.

My parents were furious.  My over-protective parents, without whom I had never traveled.  I was twenty-one and had never been anywhere alone.  It was time, I told them, and I was going.  They could have their fits, but it was paid for, and I was going.  And I was going to be gone a while.  If I liked it, I was staying.

I flew into Newark airport on August 23, 1992.  I will never forget seeing the Statue of Liberty as we banked over the city.  I was equal parts elated and terrified.  What if Isabella didn’t come to pick me up?  What if she hated me?  What if she took one look at my corny Texas clothes and blew me off entirely?

You see, Isabella had described herself to me in detail.  She was tall, 5’10”, frequently mistaken for Isabella Rosselini.  She had men falling all over her, and was constantly fighting off suitors.  She went to a fashion school, where she was a top student.  She worked for what was one of the hottest clubs in New York, and also had ins at Sony and Capitol.

I was 5’3″ (almost), and though I was still working in commercials, and doing runway for petite shows at Market, it was the Dallas market and I thought it was nothing special.  I was round faced and freckled, and worked a temp job while I was going to school for my degree in English.  I went out to clubs, but I wasn’t the hot girl who got asked to work at them.  I’m not the muse.  I’m the girl you tell about the muse.  And my ins at record companies consisted of going in to record stores and buying things from their labels.  (That’s not entirely true.  A Capitol exec tried to recruit me, and I said no.  I didn’t want to live in LA.)

Isabella was this looming, grand thing in my mind, and I was afraid to meet her.

I got off the plane and walked out into the waiting area.  This was pre-9-11, so I fully expected that Isabella would be waiting for me.  I scanned the thick crowd, searching above the heads of the short people.  Looking, looking, looking, worrying.  Had she seen me and split?  She had a picture of me, but I only had her self-description.

And then I heard a voice.  “Laaaaaane?!   Laaaaaaaaaaaane?!”

The voice was coming from my height.  Maybe lower.  I was confused.  Finally, I located the person calling my name.  I did a double take, literally looking behind me for anyone else who might be named Lane because that. was. not. Isabella.

To be continued.

Howling Sea Lane

Leeantha

the outside lane

My family moved to Texas from Virginia, landing in what is still my mother’s house, on November 3, 1981.  As was my wont with all of our moves, I went around to the neighbors and announced my arrival.  I was my own welcoming committee.

One neighbor opened the door and freaked me right the hell out.  She was old and gnarled, and her fingers were twisted and stained black, and when she spoke it was like she was forcing her voice up through broken glass and barbed wire.  The interior of her home was decorated like a 70s Black Angus restaurant.  I panicked, but remembered my Girl Scout manners and tried not to look horrified.  Then, I got out of there as fast as I could.

Later, I learned that Leeantha (Lee) had undergone a tracheotomy and was told she would never speak again.  She showed them–it sounded like every word hurt, but she spoke, and spoke, and spoke.  She wasn’t as old as she looked, either, only in her late 60s, and though her fingers were bent with arthritis, the ungodly hue had been caused by dye, not dead limbs as I had feared.  She turned out to be a very invested neighbor, and even babysat me for the first couple of years we lived there.  You know what I mean by invested, don’t you?  You have a neighbor like that, too.

I loved Lee as much as a kid can love anyone who wants to tear her away from MTV and force her onto a dairy farm in the middle of summer vacation.  That’s quite a lot, actually.

Lee’s family was interesting in the italicized meaning of the word, and as time went on, it fell into disrepair.  Her house was always pristine, though.  So was her yard.  She razed it of trees in the early 90s, hating leaves, and often insisted that my parents do the same.  When she thought my mother’s hand planted St. Augustine grass was too tall (it needed to be 3 inches high before getting its first mowing), she thundered over into our yard on her riding mower and tore it right out of the ground with helpful enthusiasm.

I visited my mother this weekend, and was worried to see that Lee’s yard was knee high.  I asked if Mom had heard anything.  See, Mom’s work hours and Lee’s waking hours are at odds, so she hadn’t been able to rouse her neighbor to answer the door when she would try to check on her.  Mom said she hadn’t, and she was trying to find out what was going on.  She had asked a couple of other neighbors who didn’t know anything, but who had seen her son and granddaughter coming and going.

This morning, my mother called me. 

Lee died six weeks ago.

I said that her family had fallen into disrepair.  Apparently, her son tired of her and asked the State to take over her care.  She was taken into a nursing home, where she died.

Obviously it isn’t a block party kind of neighborhood.

My mother was upset that she hadn’t known, though there wasn’t much way she could have.  We had both seen family members coming and going from the house, so other than the lawn, there was no reason to think anything was wrong with Lee.  I was always a little afraid that Lee would die in the house and no one would find her until her cats had eaten away half her face.  (Reason #342 why I will never have cats.)

“Robert had her cremated,” my mother mourned.  “She didn’t want to be cremated.”

“Mom, she’s dead.  She doesn’t know she was cremated,” I reminded gently, worried that she was going to take it the wrong way and ask me if I was going to have her cremated against her wishes.  Then I would have to tell her my plans for her demise.  My mother is going to become jewelry.  Better than worrying that her grave is being mowed, or thinking about worms.

I also reminded her that in a home, Lee was around people, getting fed, and didn’t die alone.  But I am sorry we didn’t know where she was.  We would have visited.  At the nursing home, there’s always someone there to open the door.