Hats

A friend once told me, "Every time I look at you...you look different. I don't know what it is. It's like your face is always changing." I thought about this for a long time afterwards and still ponder it now. I think that was a really honest thing to say. It did make me ever more critical when I looked in the mirror, and made me wonder if how I appeared was based on the degree of stress I was feeling, or maybe how much I smoked that day. But I let it go and started to focus on looking better. This was when I was seventeen.

Once I got a little older and wasn't as much of a cardio junkie, I started to think that I was changing frequently again, and attempted to cover these changes with things like...hats. In the 90's I was all about little clips in my golden locks and tight shirts that were sure to expose my sculpted arms. Baggy pants with backpacks and pumas peeking prettily out their flared bottoms. There was no room for things like meds or anxiety and if there was, well, I danced it off and that was the end of it. Popped a pill, smoked a variety of shit and let it go.

Then the hats began. It's kind of how I started to sort things out by which of my many hats was capping my cranium. It's easier to talk about the past in material terms. So I remember certain things in terms of hats. At about twenty three I saw a wrinkle in my forehead that was of course a result of smiling, laughing, frowning, pondering...simply living. I was brought back to a time when shit wasn't all peachy and pink.

My grandfather was dying and my mother was driving to Jersey twice a day to take care of him. She worked her ass off and the result? He looks at her one day--critically--down his nose, and says, "Is that a furrow in your brow?" I mean you would think, "How fucking dare you say that when I'm here feeding you, cleaning you, being your parent and doormat and tolerating the vile insulting shit you spew at me" would be a plausible response. But ever accommodating to people who treated her like shit, the reply was a teary-eyed "Well all I do is worry about you and about this family; so yes I'm sure there's a furrow in my brow." Utter resignation. Later on I recall she admitted a desire to add "you friggin bastard" to that reply, but it was never said. He died a short while after.

I should mention that my mother was a beautiful woman, who went to modeling school, worked on Wall Street, was very fashion conscious and always looking in mirrors. The most mirrored quality however was her insecurity. Vanity was like a religion for her because she had no faith in the rest of herself.

Thinking back to the time when this all went on, I was around fifteen. I remember beginnings of addictions and angry words scrawled in thousands of marble composition books with blue Bic's that I thought of as weapons. I remember skateboards and spray-paint, and nobody our age had died just yet. I had a blue wool Stussy cap that I wore pulled down over my eyes as much as I could. When I wanted to get attention, I would simply don silver hoops, flip the cap around, and unzip my constant hoodie. There was even a time when I was confident...almost happy with myself.

My mother was always saying things like "Oh that's just the way it was" and "If it's meant to be, it will be" and in the meantime digging a deeper hole of debt and lies on a daily basis. At the time I just wanted to get far away from her. I hated all that she reminded me of and I hated that she was there and my father was not. I hated that she was a possibility of what my future would look like and FUCK NO that was NOT FOR ME. Ignorance and a pretty face? I'll pass. The inability to communicate--no thanks. I would always say what I felt and say it as loud as I could, because silence was a lack of ink in my blue Bic pens. Silence was the last page of a marble composition book without a backup waiting to be filled. Silence would have been the end of me.

"This is Keri she's mad cool. A little quiet but it's all good." This is how I was introduced by someone who obviously did not know me well whatsoever. I was wearing a black Powell Peralta Bones Brigade skull cap, blue Etnies and a navy hoodie. I would normally object to being intro'd as the quiet girl but my new friend followed with "Hey quiet girl spark this blunt." It was then indeed...all good. We climbed to the top of the monastery that night and sat in a bell tower looking at the stars high as we were. We could not be fucked with, and it was memorable as hell. I was sixteen and living out loud.

My first day of college I went to class with a black and yellow A-1 Meats cap, black and white shell-tops and a grey hoodie that made me feel warm when I needed protection from new things. There was so much that I would learn, but also a lot that I already knew. The part that I already knew was about loss, sadness, and numbing everything. I knew how to flip a switch and turn off all my anger and emotions that felt shitty. I knew exactly which combinations of bottles would do what I needed at the moment, who to call, where the head-shops were, and which bars wouldn't care if I had i.d. After class, I would go get comforted.

When I found out the money was gone and I couldn't stay living at my upscale college that was keeping me among smart people who would actually encourage my artistic ranting, I was wearing black and white Pumas, a grey Stussy hat, and a consistently shredding hoodie. I was wrenched from the village back to the borough with the boat and out of my element yet again. Back to the skateboards and spray paint and working shit jobs just to afford sneakers and weed.

For several years after this I kept getting hats that didn't really fit right. I was a waitress, a ticket seller, candy slinger, guest list filler, bar tender, supermarket checker, club promoter, inventory taker, kid tutor, scarf painter, resume writer, an expert blunt roller, and queen of the boardwalk. I danced in every club I could, traveled the whole East coast for raves in amusement parks, campgrounds, stadiums, warehouses, roller rinks and parties on beaches that lasted days at a time. I looked cute (damn right) in whatever hat I might be wearing, but there were so many in such a short period that I can only remember that they all had brims that I would bend around a coffee can to get just the right crimp style.

Throughout all my various uncertain occupations, I wore visors, baseball caps, painter's caps, vibrant knit pom-pommed jammies with snowflakes on em. There were some with logos and sirens, ear flaps, chin straps, some even with flashing lights. Yet all those hats just took me on a nine-year tour of all the things I would never have for very long. I bumped chests with heartbreak who later stabbed me in the Achilles and told me to fuck off. I moshed in pits with random lips I kissed and punched--had giggle fits and tons of trips, candy flipped and dove off cliffs. I may not remember all the hats I wore, but I do know my head always remained attached and I felt like I was always covered.

When I was twenty one I decided to finish school. I plunged back into my wordsmithing in a pair of black and white Vans, with a checkered Thrasher cap, baggy jeans and the constant black hoodie. I had a passion for getting done with the bullshit and out into the real world. I was driven by anger and pain and heartbreak and random but forceful components of the military that kept appearing in my surrounding life. Threatened by things like being stuck or getting married, a fire was lit under my ass that I have yet to see something comparable to. My headphones got bigger and I learned to refine my techniques. I read more and judged less, but never let the blue Bic's run out or the marble notebooks get neglected. I still bent my brims in the old familiar way.

Now I know that when I was twenty three and decided to stay and get a Master's I had just graduated wearing a purple cap and gown, and immediately traded that in for a brown wool Transworld hat, navy pumas, an ever present pint glass of Guinness, and an even deeper compulsion for trance. And I remember that the next few years varied between Adidas and Pumas and several navy caps and much vinyl spun faster than the time that slipped speedily by.

When I turned thirty and had already finished my thesis, I thought about how different my life had become. I was an editor, a thoroughly intense individual, with even bigger headphones, more to say, and stacks of marble notebooks lining my apartment. I did however, notice one thing that always makes me smile. Amongst the notebooks and amidst all my accomplishments, are all these hats. The hats I've worn have been full of indecision and insecurity. They've been stained with blood and tears and death's lingering scent. They smell like his cologne or her strawberry shampoo. The hats are both crisp with dew from mornings I woke up confused in someplace different, and rain-soaked from all the nights I stormed out on things that I loved. They are sweat spiced and sex crushed, sitting in heaps with old shoelaces that I snipped from each memorable pair whose soles were danced to pieces. And I smile at the notion of all the places my hats have been--all the times they kept me safe and had my back.

Yeah there was a lot of sadness, and I lost people that I loved. But no matter where I was, I could always adjust the brim for a better view of whatever held my fixated gaze. As log as there was a way to tweak the scene, my hats kept my head on straight, my eyes open wide, and I wouldn't have worn em any other way.