Never Walked In High Heels

Meanwhile my escort options were quickly waning.

With ten days to go I was calling every male between the ages of eighteen and forty five that I knew in between kicking myself for ever getting my hopes up about a date. I don’t know why, but the promises a young woman makes to herself are often the most deadening and unhealthy resolutions ever created. And in those moments of asking every conceivable man I knew out on a date, I promised myself that I would never again be taken in such foolishly romantic ideas of silk gowns and wonderful evenings again. It was obviously not where I belonged.

The problem was not actually me, or so I found. I would call up a friend and explain the situation and he would be eager to go. Then I would mention the dress code and everything would begin to fall apart.

“But don’t worry, the company is so eager for me to go escorted that they are willing to pay for a tuxedo rental.”

“A tux?”

“Yeah, so you get a first class dinner and you won’t have to pay a thing.”

“But I have to wear a tux?”

And thus the conversation turned into him having to check his calendar or him suddenly remembering an appointment. The seventh guy finally was openly resentful about it.

“I’ll go, but I’m wearing a suit. Don’t expect me to show up in a tux.”

“I’m going to be in an evening gown, so you’ll look absurd in a suit.”

“Doesn’t matter, I’m not wearing one of those.”

A few hours after the conversation I called him back up, leaving a firm but nerve wracking voicemail.

“Hi, its me. I’ve been thinking about it and, well, if you don’t want to wear a tux… I think I’d rather go with someone who respects me enough to wear one when it says ‘black tie only.’ I really don’t want to bring the only guy not up to dress code. So I don’t know who I’ll go with but… yeah, thanks for the offer.”

And then went in to my  tiled bathroom and collapsed, heaving until I could no longer recognize the sounds of my own cries.

I couldn’t believe it. Was I so ineligible for an evening out that I couldn’t find a single one of my male friends to eat a dinner with me which was priced above their last paycheck? Was there some sort of price to pay for spending a seemingly free evening with me? Was I just not in anyone’s league? Insecurities about me, my romantic history, and future prospects kept me nailed to the bathroom floor. Worst of all, I had just turned down the only guy willing to go out with me.

The dress hung limply in my closet like a flower bud which had never bloomed. I had chosen something which was a deep red and not at all like the pink frosting I had always found myself envisioning. This I had found in a corset shop in Spitalfields Market. When I stepped out of the dressing room a man who was there with his wife, who said “I don’t know what you are looking for, but that dress is the one.” It was a deep red.

Two days later I had managed to scrape myself off the bathroom floor and get some work done, but as soon as my roommate left I collasped into a mess. Finally I took the dress out of my closet and shoved it fiercely into the plastic bag it came in.