Start with: “I remember that donkey-brown coat, bought with my first ever paycheque.”
I remember that donkey-brown coat, bought with my first ever paycheque. I was twenty and my summer of slaving at the public library was reduced to a little piece of paper burning a hole in my jacket pocket.
I was window-shopping downtown with the love of my life, Jason, a fellow university student, when we spotted the coat in the window of an elegant little boutique. I drew him inside and found the rack where the coats were displayed. He leaned against the mirrors as I found the match for the coat in the window, caressed it, studied its heavy topstitching, checked the lining and finally tried it on, cinching its belt around my 20” waist and dropping my hands into its deep pockets. All he said was, “It matches your eyes exactly.”
“Donkey-brown?” I laughed, alluding to a conversation we’d had earlier about the perfect colour of donkey’s eyes. He only shrugged and continued to watch me.
It might have been his comment, or the angle of his body in that lean, that swayed my purchase, as much as the coat itself.
I loved them both in that moment. The wool and cashmere cloth of the coat draped in graceful folds; the lines of the lapels and shoulders were elegant; the whole coat was a portal to culture and refinement. And that brown! – rich and dry at the same time, a haunting colour with limitless depth. Jason also draped gracefully not only against mirrors but over me, and over my growing sense of self. He was the portal to a world of culture, intimate conversation and sexuality.
Jason lasted in my life another eight months. In March of 1967 he decided to join the Peace Corps and we took tearful goodbyes. It probably never crossed either of our minds to try to make a long-term relationship of what we called “our good thing”.
The coat lasted me all through university and beyond that for a year or two of my subsequent career. My image of myself in it, with boots, scarf and long lustrous hair, has lasted my life.
Sadly, I can no longer picture Jason.
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3 comments:
Heather
Reads like a real love affair with both the coat and Jason. Well woven.
Gordon
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