Everyone knows that the best time to make a blog is Monday morning, as the whole world gets up first thing in the morning to catch up on, and with, the Internet after a weekend of doing whatever. But bloggers do a lot of whatever on the weekends, including prep work for the Monday blogs. Saturday night was a wash, because Olivia went to the movies with her father—some artsy Japanese thing about the year in the life of a family she wasn’t interested in except for the sailor fuku the girl character wore. Olivia preferred the winter outfit with the long sleeves and white scarf to the summertime version, which carried way too much sexualized baggage thanks to dirty old men and anime boys.
That was a problem, even in Austin, Texas, which was totally liberal and friendly, with decent weather most of the time. The male of the species and its dull, if hungry, gaze. The blonde cheerleader look was still the default, and most of the other girls just dressed like ugly boys as a form of sullen rebellion. Then there were the ironic cowgirls, with cleavage! and hats! So for Monday, Olivia picked out a ridiculously oversized sweatshirt she had thrifted a while ago, and tiny shorts nobody would see because the shirt came down past her knees, a New Wave belt, and black stockings, and what she called her My So-Called Life boots. She imagined hurling herself out the window of fifth period Social Studies and flinging her arms out, the sleeves stretched like the patagium of a flying squirrel, and gliding safely to the endzone of the school’s football field. And the shirt even read DRAKE UNIVERSITY—put a bird on it! was always good advice. Look assembled, photos taken and properly cropped. Then the witchy-smelling garment.
“What the HECK is that THANG?” Olivia said, affecting a goofy hick accent for her own amusement, five minutes later. Unfolded and unfurled, the piece was over twenty feet long. It zig-zagged across the floor of Olivia’s already cluttered room. The center of it was insanely narrow, but the fabric was stretchy, like nylon. Something a boa constrictor might wear, with a huge poofy bottom and a top that was a petaled flower of shoulder pads and seemingly random spikes. And the sleeves-slash-pant-legs-slash-huh, what?? She snatched up her phone to take some pictures. There would be a Sunday night posting to fashionn00b.net. The hardcore Olivia thought of as the ladysphere was always online.
The comments flooded in, but nobody knew what the hell it was.
Bibian Bestwould guessed: Like a bicycle-built-for-two, but a garment.
Joan of Park(Place) wondered: Some sort of circus outfit? You should get some stilts and see if it fits then! But which holes are for which appendages, eh?
MsCantBeWrong tried: Snuggie Couture.
Three other bloggers announced that they were totally going to change their screen names to Snuggie Couture, and everyone had a good laugh. It was nice to have friends in every time zone, people who really understood a girl, even if nobody understood what was on the floor at Olivia’s feet. The pictures were tumblrd and tweeted around a bit. With luck, by Monday morning someone would be able to identify the piece as something other than a horrific factory error or a prank on Olivia’s part. Then, at the stroke of midnight, when Sunday turned to Monday, there was a new comment. Olivia always slept with her phone. It blazed to life, and she read:
YOUIDIOTDOTCOM: INSIDEOUT!!! On t’a bercé trop près du mur?
Olivia had a strict policy about deleting griefers and trolls, but she knew not a word of French and hoped that it would be some sort of clue, so she decided to let the comment stand till morning. Olivia took Spanish, because it was easy and the maid could help when it wasn’t, but she could ask a French teacher, or maybe a student. But what if it was something nasty, or dirty?
“Nice shirt!” a pimply fifth-year senior shouted as Olivia walked down the hall to homeroom “Planning on gaining three hundred pounds?” It was the greasy kid from the other day, Olivia realized.
She turned to him, stepped right up and said, “I’m going to give you one minute to come up with something more entertaining, all right?” She had a Swatch—1990 Robin Gj103, day-glo green and pink with little Kirbyesque superheroes decorating the band—on her left wrist and made a show of rolling up the sleeve of her sweatshirt to count down the seconds.
“Uhm . . . more like Drake Cakes University?” he tried. “Heh heh, get it?” He looked around for support, but only got a sneer from a Chinese girl on her way to the honors homeroom, and a shrug from her obedient boyfriend. The senior smiled at Olivia, and even pushed his bangs from his face. “Hey, you’re all right. I’m sorry.”
“Okay, thank you,” Olivia said. She would have left it at that, but something witchy his way stunk, and it wasn’t just his Hatebreed T-shirt. So Olivia found herself asking him, “What language are you taking?”
“Why?”
“Is it French?”
“Yeah. My mother’s French, so I took it all four years. Why?”
“Because you already have a negative opinion of me for no reason, thus I don’t care at all what you think.” She produced her phone, found the comment on her blog, and said, “Could you translate this?”
“Uhm . . . you’ve been rocked too close to the wall? Something like that. You’re in a cradle and it was rocked too close to the wall as a baby. so you kept smacking your head against the wall. It’s the French version of ‘Were you dropped on your head as a child?’ ”
“Well,” Olivia said. “Okay, thank you.” And she turned on her heel and left. The senior called after her, “My name’s Bobby!”
“Thank you, Bobby!” she said back, over her shoulder.
Class was tedious, lunch tasted like lead and felt like concrete in her stomach. What a nasty little comment, but it was definitely a cut above the average troll—they generally only managed Ugly bitch suck my balls lol and the like. Hey Titless Wonder, ever consider dressing as an ironing board for Halloween? Oh, too late! was about as clever as they got. Olivia wondered if it was her fault somehow, that a smart person had gotten so mad at her. Then came Social Studies and rather than looking out the window as she usually did, Olivia looked at the phone on her lap. One anonymous commenter wondered if the piece wasn’t a garment at all, but some sort of celebratory, or even funerary, bunting or wall-hanging made from clothing. Tatterdemalion’s Roar made a joke: “For Siamese twins that have grown apart . . . and a part!” And then, another in French, from YOUIDIOT.COM: Vous avez le corps d’un chien et le QI d’une durée de cinq ans! INSIDEOUT!!!
“Let’s hear from Ms. Higginbotham,” the teacher, Mr. Crain, said. He had his hands on his plastic belt, like always.
Olivia was appalled already. “Hmm?”
“The Nazis, Olivia,” Mr. Crain said. “Could it happen here? Could Americans all sign up and start goose stepping around in a fit of racist and anti-Semitic rage, or are we free and democratic and thus immune from such impulses. You appear to be the tie-breaking vote in the class.”
She glanced around the room, quickly trying to determine who voted for what, but everyone shared one expression—joy that the daydreamer was squirming. “I say . . . yes.” It was a risky gambit. Olivia was already on the edge. She saw her future flash before her eyes. One more Needs Improvement grade, one more “If only she applied herself” lecture at parent-teacher night and then it would be UT and not FIT in New York, and from there a generic marketing major, Texas for life, and nobody to look forward to but scrawny unsuccessful musicians in frayed and mustard-stained T-shirts. Forever and ever. She should have said no, should have said no. There was no sweatshirt large enough for her to sink into.
“And why is that?” Mr. Crain asked.
“Well,” Olivia said. She licked her lips. Then remembered something she had read on the ladysphere and decided to go for it. “Hugo Boss.”
Mr. Crain’s eyebrows crawled to the top of his forehead. “Go on.”
“I mean, Hugo Boss—very popular company, for men and women. They have casual wear, premium garments, they make bespoke suits for the wealthy. Everyone here can dress in Hugo Boss and not hurt their looks at all, if they wanted to and had the disposable income.” Olivia glanced around the room again, confirming that she had confused everyone. “But he was a Nazi—the original Hugo Boss was, I mean. All the sharp tailoring and angles people like, those are right out of the SS uniform. We don’t wear swastikas anymore, and nobody even has that dumb little Hitler mustache, but once you eliminate the iconography, people are still lining up to buy Nazi fashion from a Nazi company, and they think it’s awesome. It’s military wear, and it’s all the same except for people at the very top who can afford to be different, and we don’t even realize that it’s happening. Uhm . . . that’s why we need to do what all the bumper stickers say: Keep Austin Weird.” She was hoping for a generalized giggle, but didn’t get one.
The room was silent for a long moment. The fantasy of jumping out the window and gliding away came back to Olivia now, but feverishly. She dared not break eye contact with Mr. Crain. Then he said, “I’ll buy that. Aesthetics as politics, politics as aesthetics. But please put your phone away, Ms. Higginbotham.”