mallorys_camera | Urban Blight and Thrifting (Reply)

Went thrifting with Lois Lane yesterday.

Lois Lane has fabulous clothes sense, playful and arch. She also has fun with makeup.

I actually like clothes and makeup, too, but they’re so much work! Compounded by the fact that I am a big girl, so stuff that’s designed to look fabulous on smaller frames does not look fabulous on me, since fashion is not one of those things that scales.

If I were a size 6, I’d have an entirely new all-designer wardrobe after yesterday’s trip!

As I am a size 12—I’m not overweight; I’m tall and big-boned—it’s easier to dress like a bag lady.

Although I did score a pair of Ralph Lauren jeans and a rather natty linen/silk Nehru jacket-type thing that’s just retro enough to be stylish. Ten bucks total at the cash register!

Afterwards, we sloshed around downtown Poughkeepsie in the grey, icy rain for a couple of hours, Lois Lane being one of those rare individuals who shares my obsession with economic geography—meaning, like me, she enjoys looking at those old, hideously rundown buildings, trying to imagine why they’re here, what they looked like when they were new and represented somebody’s dreams of progress.

Downtown Poughkeepsie—which not so very long ago was a real human town but today is a den of drug deals, shootings, and miscreance of all sorts—is just filled with buildings like that.

This building, for example, with its ornate faience trim was once pretty fucking gorgeous. What the hell happened to Poughkeepsie that turned this beautiful building into an abandoned shithole?

Lois Lane was born and raised on the east Mid-Hudson riverbank, and even she’s unclear about the etiology. “Well, IBM pulled out. So Poughkeepsie lost its middleclass base. And then, I guess, other people moved in.”

Apparently, Poughkeepsie’s downtown is about to undergo a huge urban renewal within the next year or so, so Lois Lane and I have a date to march around the city and do Art Photos of the blight before it all disappears.

###

“So. Can you see a difference?” Lois Lane asked.

She was talking about her Welbutrin and her therapy.

A couple of months ago, Lois Lane decided to take advantage of her veterans benefits—she was once a Marine!—to get healthy.

Her question, of course, was a loaded one.

When I first met Lois Lane, I thought immediately—in my beloved MaryBeth’s exact inflection—She’s a find.

So smart! So funny! So nice!

But obviously gun-shy for reasons I didn’t understand.

As I got to know her better and she opened up to me, I began to understand. I’ve known a lot of people with horrific childhoods. My own childhood was pretty Grande Guignol! But Lois Lane has all beat. It’s amazing that she survived her childhood.

“Well. It wasn’t for lack of trying to do otherwise,” she laughs.

Her adult life has been filled with the kind of interludes you honestly think people can never come back from.

That she did bounce from them is testimony to awesome reserves of psychological and spiritual strength.

“Well, you’re more accessible,” I answered cautiously. “Of course, it’s difficult to say whether that’s because we’ve known each other now for a longish time, so we’re more comfortable around each other.”