I Have Literally Nothing to Wear

I hardly ever go out and have fun. I would add an "anymore" at the end of that sentence, but the truth is I never really have gone out and had fun. I mean, I've had fun in limited way, but "going out" has never been a big part of my social calendar. When it's Saturday Night, my menu of options is pretty much "Watch Television," "Read a Book," "Watch Television While Reading a Book," or "Screw Around on the Internet." If something special isn't happening, I really don't consider the option of going out and whooping it up in public.

My theory is that it's my clothes. Until recently, I dressed the same whether I was at work, lounging aronud at home, or going to a party. I didn't really have levels; I just had black jeans and T-shirt which was usually also black. So even if it did cross my mind that, say, Sunday night is Fetish Night at the Vogue, I didn't really feel like I was dressed appropriately. By which I mean that hardly any of my clothes are shiny.

So my goal is to have at least three levels of clothes. And I've already started differentiating between the way I dress at work and the way I dress when I'm just lying around. Well, sometimes I just lie around while I'm at work, but you know what I mean. You wouldn't think wearing dress shirts would make that much of a difference, but at my workplace, that makes me practically the most dressed-up person around.

Now I'm trying to come up with clothes which I think look cool enough that I can go to clubs and things. And the problem is that I'm being driven by two diametrically opposed impulses. Well, the opposition might not be entirely diametric. The impulses might just be opposed in the regular manner. I don't want to overstate things here. Let's just forget about the "diametrically" part. Frankly, I'm starting to doubt whether it's even a word.

On the one hand, if I go to a club with a specific "scene", I want to, y'know, fit in. On the other hand, I don't want to wear exactly the same thing as everyone else, because I Am An Individual. So even though there's a Hot Topic less than a block from my house, I can't bring myself to just go there and buy something from Leather Ensemble A, combine it with Vinyl Emsemble B, and call it done. I bought this "Gothic Beauty" magazine, but it's pretty much all pictures of women in corsets and velvet dresses, so there's not much in the way of male outfits. However!

Digression about Gothic Beauty Magazine. Really!

This magazine is quarterly, right? And it's got album reviews. Now, I was under the impression that goths were gloomy and mopey and generally didn't like stuff. At least, the ones I know aren't always bubbling over with love for all mankind. So how do you explain these reviews? There are fifty-six albums here, which seems like a lot until you realize that they've stretched the definition of "gothic music" to include the new Iron Maiden album "Dance of Death". They gave it five out of five stars.

In fact, and this is my basic complaint, they gave five stars to twenty-seven of the fifty-six albums. That's almost half! And another nine four-and-a-half stars, and ten at a measly four stars. Doesn't that seem awfully generous? What kind of goths are these? Shouldn't they be sneering and mocking and putting albums down? These are the most generous graders I've ever seen. And they give out ratings like these every three months? That's just crazy talk.

End of digression. Anyway, I decided I wanted two basic outfits. First, a Cyberpunk look. I don't know exactly what's going to be involved in that, except that you'd think black and chrome should be involved. I've got some prescription mirrorshades being made, and those should help. The other outfit, which is even more poorly defined, will be Steampunk. I think a WWI aviator helmet may come into play, but that sounds a little weird.

In the interest of putting together an interesting outfit or two, I went to a military supply place yesterday. I was hoping to get jodhpurs, but they didn't have any. I guess that's not too surprising. I ended up getting some black BDUs (always fashionable!) and some wool BDU-looking things that I think might have been British Army at somepoint. They're interesting. After that, I went to Display & Costume, which is a huge store full of costume and crafty stuff. Around Halloween, it's a madhouse. It's also a madhouse right before Christmas, because it's got the sort of thing you need if you're going to turn your yard into a Winter Wonderland of Enchantment and Bemusement. I got some really cool pirate boots. Yeah! And they're not just costumey, either. They're not top-quality footwear either, but they're definitely higher quality than I was expecting.

So I guess that's the moral of the story. I have pirate boots! Yay!