TKOG Who gets a little devilish

NTKOG #203: The kind of bizarro fashionista whose taste in accessories swerves from Biz Cazh to something alone the lines of Ye Olde Renn Faire Satanist.

I am,: when it comes to personal appearance, moderate verging on invisible. With maybe a side order of Unkempt Hippie for good measure.

I am not: into the idea of people looking at me. Makes it much harder to get away with constantly looking at other people.

The Scene: Boston Public Library and a quick jaunt around the extremely posh Newbury Street after work last week. Newbury Street, if you’re not familiar with it, is Boston’s temperate, slightly Puritanical answer to Rodeo Drive: Armani-clad business gods flashing Black Amexes; tourists whose shopping budgets dwarf their allocated airfare funds; flippy-haired blonde trophy mamas who let their five-year-olds play dress-up with MAC eye shadow.

Oh goodness, and the accessories! Candy-color scarves! Thigh-high espadrilles! Glittering rocks in every denomination of carat and clarity! But amid all the one-of-a-kind fashion statements, I’m willing to bet no one else was rocking a headpiece like mine:

Windy day, so my hair was messy like a friggin' beast. Which is, I suppose, appropriate.

Yes, you guys! Satyr horns! Lovingly hand-crafted and fired by Skeletal Dropkick, my favorite ceramicist in the universe. I bought these at the Bay Area’s steampunk-heavy Maker Faire, and was determined to get more wear out of them, so after work, I slipped them on, then joined the thronging, un-horned masses.

As I pushed my way through the late-afternoon crowd around the Boylston station, a few people stared at the top of my head; a gentleman leaning against the library, sipping a latte, choked slightly, but refrained from a literal spit-take.

I thought nobody was going to actually comment, when I was stopped by a guy standing on the corner, holding a pithy spare-change sign.

Street Gentleman: Hey, lady! Yeah, you! Are you feeling a little–
TKOG: Dude. If the next word out of your mouth is “horny,” so help me god I will headbutt you.
SG: Is that a yes?
TKOG: Oh man, you are getting gored so hard in two seconds. It’s going to be supremely non-erotic.

Twenty minutes later, grabbing an Early Gray-infused hot chocolate, the girl behind me in line gently brushed my elbow. She was my age, with blunt-cut hair, wearing a black tank-top and — as a skirt — a ripped-up Pink Floyd shirt bound at the seams with row after row of safety pins. A neo-punk aesthetic that would have been more convincing if her face weren’t a watercolor portrait of a fairy princess.

“Whoa, you have horns!” she said. Yeah, I told her. I totally, totally do. She asked if she could touch one and, the second she did, I winced, like she’d hurt me. She jumped back two feet, instantly, then crept back and asked what they were made of. I told her about Skeletal Dropkick, name-dropped steampunk, then she gently prodded the tip of the other horn to feel whether it was sharp (it is, though only moderately.)

“So cool,” she breathed, then took her coffee and floated away. Enchanting. Literally enchanting.

The rest of the afternoon was a steady haze of writing and inspiration walks. After a little while, I stopped feeling the weight on my head, and kept having to remind myself why my usual invisibility cloak had worn off all at once.

In fact, I was so used to them that when, near library closing time, a cute but scrawny hipster grad student stopped by my table, I just stared at him blankly, unable to compute his presence in my personal space.

Manicured Facial Hair Grad Student: Is that like a role-playing thing or something?
TKOG:  Uh, dude, it’s a book. About a Canadian astronaut.
MFHGS:  No, I mean the headband.
TKOG:  I just — it’s — they’re horns. Like satyr horns.
MFHGS:  So it’s like an … environmentalist thing?
TKOG: No, it’s like I felt like putting on satyr horns and going to the library. To read a book. About a Canadian astronaut.
MFHGS: Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense.

And, you know? I think it kind of did.

The Verdict: Very often I pass on doing things that I find amusing or make me happy, lest I be judged harshly by an anonymous group of my one-time peers. But the thing is, no one else cares what you do or what you wear. Six-inch heels, an asthma-preventing surgical mask, a pair of ceramic satyr horns — you can chop up your freak flag and sew it into a pair of pantaloons for all other people care.

All in all, I’m more on-board than I thought I’d be with the absolutely bizarre wardrobe addition. Obviously there were some snickers and finger-pointing, but people who would judge harshly? They’re exactly the kind of strangers I want to stay strangers anyway.

That said, sadly, I don’t think I’ll be able to wear my satyr horns again any time soon, ’cause my stuffed elephant found ‘em and decided to take her very own trip to Tuscony…

Continuing the grand tradition of Nichka looking cuter in my accessories than I do!

Tagged as: accessories, boston public library, fashion, fashion forward (sort of), how to turn "unwanted attention" into "ignoring unwanted attention", is this post really an elaborate excuse to post a picture of nichka on her birthday? MAYBE!, newbury street, nichka, seriously you should go to skeletal dropkick's website and buy everything chris ever makes. i have three pieces by her and want a thousand more., this is why i'm not a fashion blogger