Hoist with my own petard

A fitting irony for someone who always bitches about the unfortunate wardrobe malfunctions of others: Just half an hour after Cass and I saw a woman of the night walk by us in the ever deepening twilight, clad in her best little nothings, I tripped and toppled going up the subway stairs at my stop.

Upon seeing our peddler of flesh, Cass asked, "Was that a hooker we just saw?" Really, these days, I, Tiresias can't tell an earnest and serious-minded sex worker from someone wearing a Forever 21 outfit without proper undergarments.

I answered immediately, in all confidence sure of the authority behind my answer: "I have no idea, but yeah, I think that was a hooker. Gee, I can't really tell these days. It seems that a lot of people wear hooker-ish shit. I mean, golly, I've seen sketchy getups that were just one scrap of lace short of showing the vulva, you know?"

I was glib, sure of my great powers of observation, proud of having tossed off a vulgar thought with such careless ease, and so I laughed, absolute confident of my very entitlement and authority on the matter, as I was commenting from on high, the last word on office casual, starched collars, perfect pleats, tastefully wrinkled linen, slightly scuffed loafers. Yeah, that kind of shit. Boring but in no danger of displaying unnecessary swatches of cottage-cheese flesh.

Thirty minutes after I made fun of the current slut brigade that fashion has made all too common, I trudged up the stairs, wondering how much daylight I had and how long I could romp through the park before the high school hoodlums came and draped their loud obnoxious semi-threatening corpulent selves all over the benches. Then my heel caught on the last step and I pitched forward, nearly losing my grip on The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, which I had been reading on the train and had marked with my finger in an attempt to bookmark the page until I found something more proper and permanent to hold my place. I always get on the car that stops right at the exit, so I can move seamlessly out the turnstile and up the stairs. These are the kinds of shortcuts I've learned to make life seem less stressful. It also makes me one of the first people out the gate, so there was a considerable crowd that witnessed my slight blunder, which was, though slight, a bit of a vulgar moment, as my body pitched forward and my skirt did everything but, lifted up and probably displayed a rump swathed in underwear that I hoped and hoped was anything but the one riddled with holes that I kept throwing back into the wash and discovering that it had nickel-sized holes long after I had ventured into public.

Thank god it was the generic hole-less black ones, the ones that make me look less like a hobo and more like a rumpy wrestler, without the tights.

Which then makes me wonder what colors I would wear if I were a pro wrestler. Black underpants, of course. But what color would be my tights? And would I wear a spandex unitard? And what would the ski mask be? I think I would want it to look comical, like I'm smiling, and I would always want fresh flowers in my hair.

Hmm. I think I wrote all this when I was falling asleep. But really. I really can't tell if I'm seeing a sex worker or an after school special these days. It's not like those days long ago when you saw them lined up all along Peachtree. And, well, for those of you not advertising your fleshly wares, keep your skirt on, and whatever you do, don't wear purple or blue eyeshadow. Someone will invariably ask you to sucky sucky two dollar.