Julia Reed | 06/25/2008 12:40 pm

Julia Reed: I Keep All My Exes in My Closet

In response to: What piece of clothing do you own that is not in style, doesn't fit, that you do not wear, but you keep?

Editor’s Note: Julia Reed’s new book, The House on First Street, is now available! Click here to check it out.

I have a whole rack in my closet full of clothes I do not wear — mostly they serve as reproaches because I can no longer fit into them. One pair of Anne Klein (yes! Anne Klein from the Donna Karan/Louis Dell’Olio days) cognac silk pants I haven’t put on my body since I was maybe 22, but I keep thinking, "one day …"

But there are a few I simply can’t part with: First, a thin, thin cotton floral-print Cacharel dress with a tight bodice, a back cut to the waist and a mid-calf knife-pleated skirt. It is still so chic I can’t stand it. I bought it when I was 13 and working at Hafter’s department store in downtown Greenville, MS, sweeping the floor in the "receiving room," recording all the clothes "in the book" as they came in and then putting the price tags on them. (I never answered the question about the best job I ever had, but this was unquestionably it.) The most stylish woman I have ever known ran the place — her name was Lib and she was tall and angular and she wore Detchema as her scent and shoes from the great old Henri Bendel shoe department and Cartier brooches on her lapel and she smoked Tareytons from a tortoiseshell holder. Anyway, I was going to the wedding of a man on whom I had a mad crush (I was 12 when crush came over me and he was 22) and I really wanted to make him sorry and Lib advised me to buy this dress. So I spent my entire summer’s wages and then she helped me get some Charles Jourdan snakeskin sandals (sent on the bus from her shoe man at Neiman Marcus in Dallas) and I’m pretty sure the man in question didn’t notice me, but I heard grown women admiring my getup and I am pretty sure I haven’t looked that good since. So the dress hangs as a shrine of sorts.

I'm pretty sure the man in question didn't notice me, but I heard grown women admiring my getup ... I haven't looked that good since.

So does a blue and pale yellow madras shirt that belonged to the first man I actually fell in love with (as opposed to having a crush on). I was 16 and he was almost twice as old (this is why I hope my mother doesn’t read these answers) and drove a yellow Volkswagen bus and had lived in Jamaica and that shirt still reminds me so palpably of him that I can see him in it like he’s actually standing in front of me, which might well be dangerous.

There is also a Bill Blass coat made of a Brunschwig and Fils cotton leopard-print upholstery fabric that I wore every day for a year over black leggings and a black cashmere sweater. The shoulders are too wide now and it looks as worn as it was, but it reminds me of Bill and how much I adored him. The last time I saw Pat Buckley before she died, we both talked about how much we loved that coat.

Read more about: Fashion, Relationships, Style

23 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

Well I’ve got a few skeletons I’d like to dispose of right quick..That outta clean out the old closet right nicely. :-)

By Frank Peterson on 06/25/2008 11:41 am

I have a small album that’s “all about me”, my life on the D-List (D for divorce, that is). My husband and I divorced several years ago and reunited in July 2003. As for skeletons………I’m not aware of any; but that doesn’t mean I’ll be running for public office any time soon!

By Linda Clark on 06/25/2008 12:44 pm

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Julia, Yes, like you I have several “reproaches” in my closet. Every so often I give one to one of my nieces and they love the ‘vintage’ aspect of it. To me those dresses are not vintage, they are alive with memories. I’d forgotten about them the first time I posted on this subject. They are way in the back of the closet, colorful and feminine and so much of my best free and untethered me, that I remember.

By Frannie Em on 06/25/2008 1:04 pm

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I kept the expensive stuff and ditched the “night-ware”.

By Linda Clark on 06/25/2008 1:11 pm

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Frannie—once their in the closet—so to speak I’ll be damned if I let them out to haunt me—trouble is they have a tendency to escape and wake me up at 3 in the AM along with some young soldiers and Annie—and everything else and there goes sleep and in comes heart-ache. But I survive :-)

By Frank Peterson on 06/25/2008 2:57 pm

Does one just jump in on the shortest thread? Really didn’t like waking up to the thread or N.O.T…not on thread controversy….I love Ms. Reed’s memoir about her dad…I also loved Hamilton Jordan’s memorial service on C-Span..with all the sunflowers ….so maybe there’s no really appropriate place to put one’s comments…. Here’s all I know how to do about this : put your comment anywhere you want..even if it’s three weeks or three months back….Clique on me…I’m Cliquing on you and reading what you had to say all along….No matter your “demographic”…..nothing if not small d ..democratic…. I just try to flip through all the hihowareya and the LOL stuff…Because I’m still new to it , and I’m trying to learn the language, I thought that ROFLMAO was a guy named Ralph leMayo…. Threat and a promise: as soon as I regain control of this keyboard that has been pre-empted by darling children with Disney lust, I’ll just post the comments as separate “issues”…. Was this about clothes we can’t get rid of? Of which we can’t get rid? Flat fell seams on a handmade cotton shirt from Mallorca…. Well while I’m at it, how would you/one define a pseudo/intellectual? I’m thinking that it might be hard to have a drink after work with a REAL intellectual…..unless, of course, you find that boredom is in the mind of the bordee….. Still cliqueing on you…and I just really think that’s how I have to inform myself…..I’ll see your 1400 comments and I’ll raise you 12…and I don’t even play poker……. Well, next tiny space is the cartoon comments…..she’s bound to have a history with PeterArno and George Price, Charles Adams and (wowowow) Mary Petty……. All I wan’t to say to y’all is that I admire your careful choice of words and your graceful turn of phrase (now there’s girl you want to have a drink with after work….Grace F. Turnerfraze)…. also Page Turner….but we haven’t heard from her exactly yet…..and then there’s that great designer, Hannah Mia Downes…..say it out loud…..and go to the thrift shop…. And in the pet department : I am babysitting an Irish water spaniel until my best friend’s.. …. . pool closes for the summer……me with the Ohio in my backyard….if dogs look like their owners, and we think sometimes they do, I just got a perm and all the grooming this dog requires is occasional swimming….fluff up….I’m afraid if I put him in the river, he’ll end up in Paducah…..re: Ms. Peabody and the dulcimers…..are tou one of the Trevathans from Paducah? You know the actress Susan Trevathan?Tou is French for you….or tu…… has there been any feedback from BuzzUp….? haven’t seen a whole lot of imagined trash talking….. and is this a contest about who gets comment of the week? why is this not like blackballing cheerleader tryouts or sorority hoorah… Still seems a little competitive to me….. How many of “us” are there? Talk about N.O.T………… This is for Frank: roll out of the biggest stash and click on the shortest….60’s wisdom….and the book is “How to Wrap Five Eggs”…that’s if we’re going to package 5 or 12 cocoanuts or limes(be still my heart) ..and get them to your side of the island…….The other horror of the day was waking up to “bad hair day in Barcelona and I was an Aquarius” and I had to sign in…..Just kind of wished it were all true….Rather have been on the night boat to Barcelona from Mallorca but I didn’t like the Aquarius part…….

By georgia fatwood on 06/26/2008 1:36 am

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Frank What we have in the closet won’t always stay in the closet. There are sad and regretful memories in all of our ‘closets’. There will come a time when you realize that there is nothing you can do about those young soldiers. Sometimes it takes a willingness to recognize the loss, accept it was a loss and give up trying to turn it into a win, that only increases the sense of failure and powerlessness over the situation. All the “if only I would have….” or “why didn’t I……?” just increases the pain and creates a sense of failure. If it could have been done differently it would have been. We cannot go back and change the situation and make it into a win. It is impossible and when we try, we end up stuck there. See the loss, accept the loss and then cut the loss. Send it out to the endless infinity of love like ashes in the wind. It takes an active effort to cut it until it is gone. Send it on the love that you have for Annie like a current in the ocean sense the movement of it and let it go. You deserve your freedom.

By Frannie Em on 06/26/2008 10:43 am

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Frannie——In The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien writes of the equipment and other things that soldiers carried with then into the field: the weapons and ammo, chewing gum, the cigarettes, comic books, cigarettes, doobies, letters, writing paper, lucky charms and the rest—many different things, depending on the needs and the wishes and superstitions of the boy who carried them; He also writes most movingly of the other things they carried, the intangibles: the frustrations, the loves, the hatreds, fear and cares that all of us carried and his writing inspired me. Here is some of what we, the boys in my platoon carried with us: We called it humping the boonies, the things we carried: I’ve changed the names, of course, except for one: LT Jason Anderson carried his love for his wife and child and humping that worried him greatly as did the concern he felt for the men in his platoon; Big Ed Donaldson humped the M-60 with three long ammo belts as he was the biggest man in the platoon and also his worry about his kid brother who was at Ft Leonard Wood training in AIT (advance infantry training); Jonny Kellogg, who along with Ed was my closest friend, carried the scars of childhood beatings from his alcoholic father; and his fears for his young sister, Frances; Slick Patten carried all the tunnels he had been in and the thought of all the ones to come and his childhood in Bed-Stuy section of Brooklyn; Frankie Dee before he was killed humped pictures of his girl friend in New Jersey and her letters which became few and far between as his tour in the Nam went on and he worried that another guy might be seeing her and his child; Bobby Lanier in Graves Reg carried all the dead with him that he tended; Donal Parnell humped all his dad’s Irish boozing and his mother’s sorrow for her daughter who married a Protestant—she drives me nuts, Doc, with all the letters pissing about Lucy and her husband; Ray Ray Jackson carried the Bible his grandfather had carried in World War Two; Sargeant Evans humped his second tour and the feeling of uselessness he began to see in “this f*****g war”; and we all humped the Nam and its dirt and mud and its smells and its dead and its living, We all carried the young Vietnamese girl we found on the dike between two paddies that day long ago who was killed by a misplaced arty round and the grief of her mother. And I humped all the dead I couldn’t help as I’ve carried them all these years. Carrying all of that in the Nam was a heavier load than the usual loads we all carried. But we carried it as we have for all these years. those of us who survived. After Anne died I carry her with me always; she was of my soul and in it. Not a heavy load to carry at all. So you see Frannie, my dear, It’s not a heavy load at all to carry and it’s a sort of freedom in an odd sort of way for me to carry all of it as I have all these years and will carry until the day I die.

By Frank Peterson on 06/26/2008 1:09 pm

Frank Are you sure?

By Frannie Em on 06/26/2008 2:11 pm

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Am I sure about what? all that I wrote—yes I am and it will always be that way—not by choice or temperament but by my caring and the love I have for all of them. Let me quote a poem please: If you are able, save them a place inside of you and save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go. Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may or may not have always. Take what they have left and what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own. And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind. Major Michael Davis O’Donnell 1 January 1970 Dak To, Vietnam, MIA It’s the love that counts Frannie and that is in my soul and why would i want to let all that go. If they come to me in the night: exhausted, so very young then I will keep them with me for I was with them and have never left them. And I never will.

By Frank Peterson on 06/26/2008 2:26 pm

Like I said before: Frannie, not a heavy load to carry at all.

By Frank Peterson on 06/26/2008 2:27 pm

Frank, That is not what I am talking about. When you cut the loss then what is left is the love, yet it is different and free and forever, but on a different level. Not haunting or depressive, or maybe sad is a better word. When you cut the loss then they are finally free. It is not out of anything but love, and it takes love to do it. It is a choice, and personal. I am not suggesting that you should do it, but if you want peace about it then letting it go is an act of grace. If it is an old familiar weight that you are afraid to give up, then that is different. I love the poem, it is clear and sad and beautiful

By Frannie Em on 06/27/2008 12:55 am

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Frannie, I’m not afraid to let go—you see I can’t—I promised them all those years ago when I lay in that Evac hospital after damn near losing my life that I would never forget them and I haven’t—they meant too much to me and yes I loved them as I still do, just as the poem says. They were so young, Frannie, and frightened, didn’t want to die, but they did, some in terrible ways and there was nothing I could do to stop the dying. But I won’t while I live let them be a name on a cold cold wall in DC. No I won’t. They, and Anne, were too special.

By Frank Peterson on 06/27/2008 1:04 am

Frank Your feelings are right. Who you are and what you feel about it are perfectly right. Our feelings are what are real about us. It is not for me to say, and I don’t mean to press. What I am talking about, and it doesn’t necessarily apply to your situation if you don’t want it to, but you don’t let them go if you don’t want to. My suggestion has to do with if you are “back there” trying to turn a loss into a win. For instance, I had many scholarships - I was very fortunate, I was used to getting them. At one point I had a deadline to accept a scholarship and I procrastinated and didn’t pay attention, and I lost it. Turns out later, I really wanted to go to that school. I beat myself up over that for a long long time - “why didn’t I do this? or that? What if I write them? blah blah blah. I spent a long time in my head wishing I could go back and do it differently. It was a loss. I was trying to figure out over and over how I could “restore” myself, so to speak, or the situation. The more I sweat over that, I created a negative concept about myself, and it made me feel like a failure or not good enough. In reality, there was nothing I could do. It was a loss. In our society we are told we have to push forward and you are kind of stupid if you can’t succeed. Well, the minute I could cut my losses on it, forgive myself - the negativity of the situation just vanished. Am I making sense? I don’t in any way want you to be any different man than who you are.

By Frannie Em on 06/27/2008 1:19 am

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Frannie, yes, you make a great deal of sense—and thank you for trying to understand me: Those boys and Anne made me what I am today—took me a while to find that out—I had to cut through the trauma, the loss of those boys who were my brothers, who never had a chance to grow into the men I know now they would have become, who would for the most part would be fine good men for the suffering we all went through. And Anne—she is the one who brought all of it into fruition, into perspective for me because she was there, she saw so much of all of it too; she had a compassion and loving-kindness in her that is rare in my eyes. So the restoring you speak of makes sense in what she taught me because that was restoring too. She understood me as no other ever has and that is why her loss has been so devastating. But I’m past the initial grief, like I passed that of the grief for my brothers there whom I lost. Now it is hard to explain what it has become; it surely has transcended anything that I ever thought it would be. Call a resonance that I feel in me, if that makes any sense. I really for all my words can’t explain it any better than that. Thank you again Frances.

By Frank Peterson on 06/27/2008 1:35 am