Drugs of choice

Legal but ill-advised

If things are bleak geopolitically as well as sort of draining personally, sometimes, if in pretty everyday ways, you might find yourself turning to pick-me-ups, or emotion-dullers of some kind. I sometimes think it would be nice to have a glass of wine in the evening, but am such a committed drinker that I never think to buy any, yet somehow did recently think to pick up a Shiseido lipstick in “Sakura” as much because it’s a nice shade (it is) as because I liked the name. (Yes, I know it means cherry blossom, that’s the point.)

Here is what I find helpful:

-Poshmark.

I can spend a full post-bedtime stretch browsing that used-clothing site. I try not to (post-bedtime is for the work left over from a workday that stops at 4:30pm because kids) but if I’m too tired to, for example, write a paragraph that improves, rather than detracts from, the straight-women book, off I go to what is, I think, the only actually compelling online shopping experience. You can go and look at a list of every brand available and maybe this doesn’t excite you but let me explain:

For me, it is a tour of different periods of my life, different places I’ve lived or visited, or clothes I remember once aspiring to own and that I now could own if I were to bid half or more of the suggested price.

Petit Bateau, Agnes B., A.P.C., you are in France. A.P.C. jeans were a big deal in French grad school, and while I did technically once own a pair, they were $5 from a thrift store (Housing Works on Chambers Street) and worn-out enough that they soonish developed one of those holes that makes jeans unwearable. I have not bought any of this on Poshmark but I like knowing it could be done and can lose an hour to seeing which new-without-tags t-shirts can be had and speculating on why someone even has these to begin with. (Is something shady afoot or did they just overpurchase or is the seller just a… store?)

Tripp N.Y.C., Betsey Johnson, these are 1994 distilled. Last spring I purchased—and this fall, ought to wear—the burgundy crushed velvet Betsey Johnson dress, one I think I probably did own at one point.

Or forget brands, there can just be specific items you wish you’d bought and didn’t and then there they are, in this everything-selling shop. In 2008 (?) I had desperately wanted a camel wool cape from Uniqlo but it seemed unjustifiable at that particular moment in grad school so I didn’t get it. Then I found a similar Muji one on Poshmark. It’s not often cape weather in Toronto but when it is…

By complete chance, I happened upon the Hyacinth Bucket but modern dress I had once seen in the mall in Yorkville circa 2018. I was sort of thrilled to see it, despite not having any particular interest in owning or wearing it myself. A sort of, I never thought we’d meet again.

So that’s Poshmark. Highly recommended. I still prefer irl for actually buying clothes (particularly vintage), because nothing ever looks right that you order online, but as a distraction-website, good stuff.

-As Time Goes By.

It’s the most sedating of all the Britcoms. In 2007, the Guardian described it as a “slow-paced sitcom with Geoffrey Palmer and Dame Judi Dench,” which overstates the pace. If you stop and think about the show, it’s actually kind of weird. What’s up with the Judi Dench’s character’s daughter marrying the man she has a near-fling with in the early episodes? Why does Sandi (Sandie? Sandy?), their employee/co-worker, move in with them? How does that giant house have only the one bathroom? Why did they name the daughter character Judy when Judi Dench plays her mother, wasn’t this confusing for them on set? Didn’t Dench’s late husband, who played her love interest in precursor sitcom A Fine Romance look like Ron DeSantis?

And before you know it, you’re asleep, hopefully dreaming of how you could probably, on Poshmark, get a version of the pink sweater Alistair somewhat inexplicably buys Sandi in that one episode.