You Can Leave Your Hat On

I am rebellious by nature. I learn about an anthology collection, and rather than dive into the stated theme, I try my best only to dip in my pinkie toe. Or to barely brush my lips across it. Sometimes this works. Sometimes I flame out.

But Sex & Fashion, I chose myself. And yet, as soon as I began to consider the topic, my mind strayed from dressing up to stripping down. (This is a theme close to my heart, as well. Check out my collection: Naked Erotica.)

Here is my dilemma: I love getting dolled up. My closet brims with dresses and blouses and boots and heels. My underwear drawer is an explosion of color, lace, silks, and satin. I remember what I wore on all sorts of important days and dates. Copper-colored panties on a first date with a movie star. Gold mini dress and white fringed go-go boots when I worked in casting. My “magic dress” — tight and black, with sterling buttons down the front, on many, many occasions. (Tacky now. Sexy then.) I contemplate my clothes the way a costume designer would, choosing my outfits with extreme care.

Oh, Cinderella
They aren’t sluts like you
Beautiful garbage beautiful dresses
—Courtney Love

On my very first date, when I was 12, I wore a turquoise t-shirt, pegged jeans, and my father’s forest green flannel overshirt. My eyeliner matched the tee- and I had on candy-colored lipgloss that tasted as good as it looked.

When I met Brock four years later, I was in jeans and an oversized football jacket covered with rhinestone pins. I’d purchased the jacket at a thrift store in the Haight (Aaardvark’s Odd Ark, to be precise) for $7.00. Completing the outfit, I wore a man’s navy ring on a watch-fob chain around my neck, and a thin blue bowling shirt with the name Dominic embroidered over the pocket. I had on three different silver ID bracelets (Tom, Dick, and Harry) and so much purple eye makeup my dad said I looked like a raccoon.

Just like fashion it's a passion for the with it and hip...
—Smash Mouth

But I’m with a man now who can’t wait to get my clothes off me. The fancier my attire, the quicker his libido rises. Am I off to meet an important editor, dressed to the nines in some spiffy suit? Perfect. He’s going to take me down a notch first, make me all rumpled with a quick, pre-meeting fuck, so that my makeup is smeared and my shirt is wrinkled, and I have the taste of cock on my lips.

A night out with the girls? Wearing my favorite shimmery frock and bright blue fishnet stockings? Lovely. Just let him rip a hole down the side of the hose, so that they ladder further and further throughout the evening, creating that trashy slut look he’s after.

Fashion – Turn to the left
Fashion - Turn to the right
—Bowie

So that’s sex and fashion in our twisted world…. I become fashionable. He wants to have sex.

But Sam’s not the first who fully confounded my sense of style. Kelly, he of the midnight shift at the grocery store. He of the barren cave apartment with no books. He...well, he didn’t have use for me in the slightest when I showed up in my best dress-for-success outfits: crisp white blouses, pencil skirts, high stacked heels. Trying to look older than 18 to impress the writers on the newspaper where I worked. It wasn’t until I came in at a quarter to midnight, in cut-offs and a tight t-shirt, fully drenched in sky blue paint that he took notice.

I needed to be demolished, before he could see me. Really see me.

I'm too sexy for my shirt
Too sexy for my shirt
So sexy it hurts
—Right Said Fred

I had to be slightly mussed around the edges before he wanted to fuck me. If I was clean, he made me dirty. If I started out dirty, he made me filthier still.

I wish she'd take off all her clothes
No Doubt

Throughout the years, only one of my men was truly interested in fashion—consumed with putting on my clothes as opposed to taking them off. Hunter was my editor on the newspaper, my Pygmalion. He changed my entire sense of style, turning me from goth girl to girl Friday. He was why I had those pencil skirts and white blouses, why I wore my hair the way I did, wore my make-up in the style of his choosing. He is featured in "Edit Me,” and there are certain items in my wardrobe that I can’t wear without getting wet from memories of him. Of the way he’d tilt his head and take in my whole look, before making some minor persnickety adjustment. It was as important to him what went on my body as what he ultimately took off.

I want a girl with a short skirt,
And a long, long jacket
—Cake

Sex and fashion, is the theme I pitched.
Sex and fashion, is the topic I chose.
When all along, what I really wanted to talk about was undressing and standing naked, once more, before you.

Baby, take off your dress.
Yes, yes, yes.
—Randy Newman

XXX,
Alison

P.S. Now you…your most delicious outfit. Your most decadent example of how you put it on, or how you took it off. We’re giving away a copy of Naked Erotica to one lucky poser… I mean poster.

P.P.S. When I lived in L.A., I had a shirt that said something like: It doesn’t matter who you are, it’s what you wear, because when it all comes down to it, nobody cares who you are…. I wore that shirt until it fucking distinegrated.

Note: The picture above is "Bis" by Pamela Hanson and is available here.