What is “Cool”?
You're Invited to My Birthday Party (Cont'd)
Welcome to gangletown’s “Monday Edition,” where each week you’ll receive original essays, scripts, pieces of fiction, poetry, or cultural commentary written by David Kimple. If that is good for your vybe and you’d like access to everything gangletown has to offer, check out subscription options here.
Today’s Gangletown is a continuation of last week’s Monday Edition: “You’re Invited to My Birthday Party.”
Looking for reason in the face of rejection, one might assume that I would have taken the shunning from my peers personally, but I didn’t. Thank god for the blind confidence of childhood. I didn’t blame it on my personality or distrusting my own talents and athleticism. My pure young soul didn’t think for a minute that my natural state of being was causing this ostracization. Hell no, I was still rad. Looking around my class, though, I knew there must be something keeping me on the outside. The only difference I could find was clothing, so I decided that was my problem. As a living Libra stereotype, I blamed it on my shoes. And my hair. And my shirts. And my pants.
(Another early expression of young queerness; I blamed my problems on fashion…Yes, I still do this.)
If I was ever going to crack the code and get in with the Tammys of my class, I needed to upgrade my wardrobe. I didn’t know much about fashion or the most popular brands, though, so I based all of my desires on what I saw on MTV, VH1, and commercials. (How else did 10-year-olds in the mid-late ’90s learn about things?) There was one thing I needed the most: Airwalk shoes.
Before school started up again after that Christmas, I begged my Mom to go shopping for back-to-school clothes. I am lucky to have always had parents willing to indulge my wishes and try to bring them to life if they could, so Mom took me to our usual shoe depot: Payless. Searching through the aisles with laser focus, I couldn’t find the pair of Airwalks I coveted. I asked the salesperson, and she said, “we don’t have brand names here.”
It was very “…you can try Sears” but...in reverse.
Naturally, Mom suggested that I try on a Payless pair in the Airwalk-style instead. I picked up a black and white set, turned them over in my hands, and tried them on. I looked at the reflection of my skinny ankles in the floor-level mirror attached to the end-cap bench, and a burning ribbon of defeat wrapped itself around my heart. Tammy would know these weren’t the real thing.
At that moment, I grew up a little bit. Instead of being a kid, I think I became a “pre-teen,” full of judgment, fear, and opinions. With sickness in my throat, I thought, “Payless doesn’t even have brand names.” If I couldn’t get into fuckin’ Tammy’s birthday party before, I sure as shit wasn’t going to get myself on the list in fifth grade by continuing with the same off-brand stuff I’d grown up in. I asked Mom if we could keep looking. We went to TJMaxx. Airwalks? No Airwalks. Wal-Mart. Airwalks? No Airwalks. It wasn’t until we finally went to the Rack Room Shoes at the mall that we found the name-brand, skate-style low-tops I coveted so deeply. They were black and brown suede with a black circular Airwalk symbol embedded on the outside panel. Checking out, I saw the price of the shoes - $39.99 - and felt guilty because that seemed really expensive. More important than the price, though, was that everyone would know these were the real deal, and I would be cool.
Satisfied that I had finally found the Airwalks, Mom was ready to go home. Unfortunately for her, I decided that I also needed new jeans. More specifically, JNCOs.
For those unaware, these were jeans that were just...fucking massive. They were mythic. The bell of each pant leg was at least twenty inches? Thirty inches? I don’t know, but they were stupid large. Again, this was the ‘90s, so you can assume the worst. They were big pants, they did not fit, and I had to have them.
Fortunately, the journey was short. We stayed in the mall and found them at JcPenny. They cost $53.00 flat because we got them during the tax-free back-to-school shopping sale. Especially after dropping serious coin on the shoes, $53.00 for one pair of jeans was not an insignificant amount of money. Sandy Kimple is an icon and a diamond of a parent, though, and could see my desperation. I got the JNCOs. I also got a Men’s size XL baby blue t-shirt with the word “Boss” on it.
Finally, the look was complete. I was ready to be cool.
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