Returning to Britain post-divorce, writer GirlInterrupter began to unpack the romantic history of her wardrobe – and all that she loved, lost and learnt along the way.
I was never sorry I had the abortion. I think of my ex very rarely and when I do, I remember him as controlling and selfish. I would be shocked if he had any fond memories of me. When I think about my mother, who is 83, being gone one day, I am incapacitated with a grief I know is barely even a dress rehearsal. I am fearful, when she does pass, that I may go on a transcontinental quest to recover the missing hoop earring.
The first time he took me to his bedroom, he opened a drawer and it was full of vintage rock T-shirts. All these rock T-shirts could be yours! I had seen this gesture in Douglas Sirk’s, in which Lauren Bacall’s would-be paramour shows her a drawer of glass-beaded purses to choose from. I did a really shitty thing, which was wearing it to keep the feeling of him near even when I was with my boyfriend. As I’ve said, I was very in love with my boyfriend, but he had not or could not cede control from the mother of his child. On numerous occasions over a year and a half, I was made to wait in cars because she would not let me meet her kid. They sensed something toxic in me. I guess I thought they might not be wrong. I guess I figured if they considered me toxic, I’d be toxic.
Which led me to this affair. To have the man you love, but who won’t commit, have his hands on your breasts under the T-shirt given to you by the man who is pursuing you… It was an elixir for a 25-year-old testing their emotional volume control. I took an erotic pleasure in the marital moral code for the seven years I was with my husband. But now it’s over, I see this T-shirt and get overwhelmed with a sorrow that at first I couldn’t place. Eventually, I realised what I was mourning: I may never get to be dishonest again. The man who gave it to me wasn’t my great love, but I miss our furtiveness. Our secret language.