It’s too warm yet to wear purple suede go-go boots with any semblance of dignity. It just looks so desperate to wear fall clothing before it’s actually cold. But it’s only a little too warm. Fall is definitely dropping hints. I’ve seen renegade leaves here and there crumpled and brown at my feet on my walk to the bakery in the morning.
Look, even though it’s practically autumn, I haven’t forgotten you. Even though it’s absolutely easy and natural for things to become irrelevant once the season changes—like you might know someone in summer, say, but then as soon as you stop wearing your two-piece bathing suit with gold rings and a striped sailing motif next to him tanned and tattooed in his underwear that he uses for swimming, black when its wet but then blue when it dries, for example, as soon as you get back to New York, or some other place that people, in general, return to, say, the whole thing just might not make sense anymore.Which is why I’ve begun trying to imagine you in fall wear. Because I would prefer to keep you in mind a bit longer—no big deal.
It was pretty lucky then, that you offered me your navy blue 100 percent wool sweater—DO NOT MACHINE WASH, dry clean only or hand wash in cold water— when I got chilled for a few seconds that af ternoon at your house this summer, because it figures prominently into the autumnal scene in which I am forced, if I am not to forget you, to begin to imagine you. So fall, as goes my side of things, is taken care of— you’re welcome. It’s likely now that I won’t forget you at least until the start of winter, when our wardrobes change again and anything could happen.
Your forgetting me, however, is another story.You haven’t any idea of what I might look like in cooler temperatures.Thus, I am enclosing a picture of my new purple suede go-go boots, which I got in the mail today instead of your package, so that you have some material to work with should you choose to keep me in your thoughts as the weather cools.These aren’t the kinds of shoes I go around wearing every day, mind you. I usually wear simple penny loafers or else I stay in my apartment perfectly barefoot with my feet up. But one must begin somewhere, so I’ve enclosed the photo. (I ran out of color ink in my printer, so I had to color in the boots with a crayon—is there no end to my trials!) Anyway, it’s just something to start with. And further, how do I know? Perhaps your blue sweater is not entirely typical of your autumnal tastes either. Perhaps you normally wear burgundy silks, cobalt blue flannels and gold lame leggings when you fix your morning cocoa, which is perfectly OK, I suppose.Who am I to judge?
In any case, winter, still, is up in the air. I could very well forget you completely, absolutely, entirely.To stop that from happening, you’ll either have to visit or send some idea of your cold-weather accoutrements. A swatch of fabric from your cuff, or a cut of rubber from your rain boots would do in a pinch, though really, why would I want either of those things? Perhaps some powdered chocolate you drink in the morning so that I can taste what you taste, or else a sock, red or Prussian blue. If you’re feeling romantic and don’t mind parting with the right or left one, you can send me a package in which you suggest that you’ll wear one over there, where you are, and I’ll wear the other one over here, where I am, and then we can synchronize our clocks and wiggle our toes at precisely the same time and dream of each other doing peculiar things across great blue distances.
Of course, if you suggested that, I might think you a bit too strange for my taste, creepy is the word I’d probably use, and I’d wonder as to whether you had a single decent thought going around in your head at all and would have no way of knowing, really, since we didn’t actually spend that much time together before I left and got started on this whole business of trying not to forget you. I might begin to question if I even wanted to remember you at all anymore, and then kicking around my apartment and feeling sorry for myself the way I did before I tried on my new purple suede go-go boots and saw how cute they look with their flashy zippers, I’d start to wonder why it’s my lousy lot to get half a pair of socks in the mail while other women are receiving love letters and samples of youth restorative potions from fancy European cosmetics manufacturers as a free gift with the online purchase of a new handbag. It’s just not fair, is all I’m saying.
Anyway, the point is that fall has arrived. October already, can you believe it?
And I’ve written you, thus, with the singularly noble intention of keeping you abreast of the local weather conditions and expected meteorological fluctuations over the course of the next weeks, should you be interested: Partly cloudy with temperatures hovering in the mid to lower 60s, and a 30 percent chance of rain—any time.
Iris Smyles’ stories, essays and cartoons have appeared in publications such as BOMB, Nerve, Guernica, Splice Today, OR: A Literary Tabloid, as well as a variety of anthologies.
