How is it possible that I am a 48-year-old woman still struggling with how to carry a purse? This seems like something I should have figured out when old age is sneaking up on me like a Ninja with increasingly fragile knees. In my time on earth, I have learned how to walk, talk, use a spoon, and call a taxi. Filling in the knowledge gaps are such arcane skills as knowing how to cut a mango properly and the ability to differentiate between their, there and they’re. Purse carrying was just never on my to-do list, and now in my advancing age, it’s becoming more and more troubling. The days when I will need to carry a purse to seniors luncheons to hide extra dinner rolls to take home are almost upon me, so I had best figure this out.
Purses confound me. From my very first one when I was 14 – a red, cloth bag with rope straps and decorative 80’s mesh on the sides – I have been a confused, novice carrier. My friend at the time, however, was a seasoned purse carrier. Her leather bag hung heavy with tassels and buttons from 80’s metal bands, had been at her side for at least a year by the time I ventured into my first bag. Perhaps I had missed the crucial teen training window which would forever hinder my ability to bond with my bag.
On an adventure in the big city one weekend, she took me and my virgin bag into a head shop for some immediate adult learning. At 14, we were not the ideal customers looking for bongs or glass pipes. 14 was different then than it is now. This shop was where she came to browse through racks of buttons, posters and T-shirts from her favourite bands. Whitesnake, Motley Crue, and Ratt, among others. Music which I was not used to outside of our friendship, as I was a born and raised John Denver girl, with a budding Depeche Mode curiosity. This was not the store for me. Until I saw him.
Him, the man behind the counter was a lanky older guy, probably 25 with lovely gentle eyes and either a moustache or food on his upper lip that made him look mysterious. I fumbled and stuttered my response to “can I help you ladies find anything?”
He called us ladies. Must be the purses.
I paused to answer back something smart and sassy, but the images of John Denver that swam in my mind pushed any coherent clever answer out of the way and I threw up “I like Led Zeppelin?” right in front of him instead.
What the hell was that? You hate Led Zeppelin! The only reason you know that name is because your stoner brother has that album on all the time when he and his buddies take hits from a Pepsi can bong in the basement!
“Led Zeppelin” I said while hooking my thumb into the red rope strap of my adult purse in the hopes of appearing more adult. My friend peeked at me from behind the stacks of back issued Heavy Metal magazines where she was looking for a certain Vince Neil image for her wall. One eyebrow cocked up in a questioning arch over her heavy blue eye-shadowed lids and she mouthed WHAT? to me.
“I’ve got a bunch of stuff right here in the display case,” he said as he swept his McDonald’s lunch garbage off the glass counter in front of him and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Now standing only 2 feet away from him across the counter, I could see that his diluted moustache was really going to be something amazing one day. Just not today.
The Led Zeppelin goods were mostly stored under glass at the cash register because they were such a popular item to steal, I imagined. I knew of one album only so I could not imagine how they were THAT popular.
He propped himself on one arm on the glass counter, his other hand running through his feathered middle-parted hair. His immediate presence released a scent in front of me, not unlike what one might assume a head shop would smell of; tobacco mingled with musky pot, yesterday’s shower, and orange Tic Tacs.
I felt out of my league with the display of Zeppelin and the man before me and felt my face flush with embarrassment and confusion. From behind me, my friend shoved her head between the man and me, scoping out a button she thought I would recognize and asked to see it. He picked the button from its glasshouse and placed it before me on the counter. It spun and teetered on the slick surface, making it difficult to read the album name.
When it came to rest, a small field of naked women’s asses shone above the title, Houses of the Holy. I smiled and nodded, my friend squealed and grinned like a buffoon, and the man nodded in stale approval.
“Classic” he drawled as he slid the glass case shut from behind.
“That’ll be a dollar eighty”
I fumbled with unhooking my thumb from my purse strap to dig into the depths of my red bag for my wallet. Along with my wallet, my purse contained a bottle of orange-tinted Avon foundation, three sugary beverage flavoured lip balms, a ring-pop out of its package and dusted in loose tobacco from the cigarette I had taken from my mom’s pack this morning, the loose cigarette in question (now snapped in half) wrapped in a paper towel, and an aerosol spray of Designer Imposter’s version of Georgio called Primo. As my purse was shaped like a giant, shapeless croissant, everything pooled to the middle, making my wallet somewhat elusive. After another unsuccessful swish through the murky waters of the contents, I was finally able to grab onto my wallet and pull it out. A maxi pad, adhesive exposed and lightly dusted with tobacco, had piggybacked itself onto my navy blue Avon wallet that I had received for free with my last orange-tinted makeup purchase.
With my wallet wrapped in the worst, yet most absorbent wrapping paper ever, I felt my face flush again, this time with anxiety and horror. My friend exploded in laughter with her signature sound – a helium stoked pelican choking on a crouton – drawing even more attention to the ridiculousness of the scene.
Ripping the strip of padding from the leatherette surface of my wallet made the adhesive used for maxi pads sound like it was military-grade tape. Don’t let the sound deceive you, ladies. Pads in the ’80s used a product likely made by 3M, illustrated by how easily they would slip out of adhesion and onto your inner thigh, where the finest of leg hairs would finally ensure the secure hold you had been hoping for.
My one hand, now stuck to a boxing glove of absorbency, dove back into the red garbage bag purse and hid while my other hand did the work of opening my wallet and pulling out a two-dollar bill. I didn’t care to wait for change, but my friend had already started trying to attach my new button to my red cauldron of humiliation, so I was stuck there. I stood, staring at the man as he dropped my change into my hand, trying to smile through the shame. I dropped my wallet and change back into the howling chamber of despair, while my other hand remained inside the bag like it was waiting to debut some kind of terrible puppet show.
With my commemorative Led Zeppelin pin and a fistful of feminine hygiene, we left the store. I would never return to that store, yet somehow without my yearly two-dollar purchase it is still in business. I wonder about it sometimes as I drive by if the man, his facial hair now fully formed as he would be well into his 50’s is still there. Perhaps there was a deeper lesson in that head shop in 1984. Maybe this man was my Ground Zero for choosing the wrong men. Or at least men who had not quite reached their potential. Or maybe men for whom this was their full potential.
My red purse is long gone, having been replaced by an endless series of similar trainer purses meant to inspire me to learn to be at ease with them. I don’t imagine that day will ever come, based on the present contents of one of my purses. A plastic spoon, four packs of gum each containing only one piece, a spool of beige thread and a ring pop, still wrapped, but tobacco-free since 2013.
