our first expedition

went, a few nights ago,

undercover.

(not for the first time. i mean if you want to get collegiate about it, let's deconstruct the systems surrounding the concept and word of undercover. i mean. aren't we all, like, wearing uniforms, all the time? masks? all of that stuff.)

i was inspired by skinny jeans worn for the first time, by someone i've known for a long time, who has decidedly not worn skinny pants since our eighth grade play. (those pants were black and pleather and i'm never going to let him forget it, unfortunately for him.) the skinny jeans were mine, purchased to my surprise in the men's half of a levi's store during time killed in soho. (to my surprise they even, in soho, have a whole store dedicated to blue jeans. not counting high school sweatshirts sold by parents at those cold autumn soccer games, there is nowhere to buy clothes in my hometown.) (from this you can infer i'm from the north. and from a small town.)
the sweatshirt he wore was purple, a gift from my interner this summer to agent z. and to top it he wore a scarf.

agent n! we're going to a concert dressed as hipsters, agent z said. she was wearing glasses that she didn't actually need. and i was so inspired i decided my paper could wait another hour. (i had spent the last hour playing solitaire, anyway, and decided a concert could be in no way as mind numbing. perhaps it would even perk up my spirits. give me a boost. help me write about feminismS (this last s is exceedingly important, i've learned this semester. it has to do with the very important task of doing our best NOT to create monoliths).

so i shoved my friend into the pants i'd been wearing (the tighter the better. it's part of the disguise). and i yanked on a pair of black tights. white boots i'd stolen from that same middle school play that involved the black pleather pants. (i'd played the heartsick villainess upstaged by the dogooder heroine.) a sweater i'd bought used, by the pound, all synthetic and argyle and i put it on backward, the v plunging down my back rather than towards my breasts. (i'd been inspired by seeing such a strategy employed by someone at the campus grocery store.)

i increased the drama of my part and so we went, stumbling in our dark glasses at night.

blah blah blah we chortled down the street as we pretended to be blase. not something that comes easily to a trio used to giggling and singing songs into the night. but tonight we were trying to be cool. or at least pretending that we were trying to be cool. trying to be cool by pretending we were trying to be cool. (whatever. though at this point i've realized that college is actually not such a distant relative to high school as it maintains.)

we arrived.

i like to enter, all cool and magestic and 6 feet 1 inch with my heels. i like the feeling of trying to own a room.

we danced like hipsters. our skinny jeaned friend was not a failure exactly, but years of dancing and learning to move his hips to swing and salsa and contra were not helping him try to do the herky jerky back and forth, pumping fist and banging knee and head movement so characteristic of so many "instincts" held by students listening to this particular music.

i thought myself an ass for a brief moment, surrounded by people who danced with more sincerity than i.

hello, jazz boy, i said to a freshman year hallmate, after the concert.

agent n? i didn't recognize you with that sweater.

?

jazz boy. i saw on facebook that it's your birthday. (a few years ago, imagining a world where this is not creepy, was impossible.)

yeah. well. we're having a party now. do you want to come? you should hang out.... downstairs?

he was hitting on me. because my part was dramatic and my sweater was unrecognizably me.

well sorry have fun, i said. i have to go finish my paper.

we extracted ourselves. and giggled on the way home. and i, eventually, did finish my paper.

and that's my story.

i wonder what agent z has to say on the subject.

-agent n