Miriam wandered into the bedroom. It was time to get ready for the party. She didn’t feel like it. The situation was a perfect example of how “you can’t choose your relatives”. She hadn’t chosen her cousin, no matter how strongly she wished she could have. She would just have to deal with whatever her aunt had brought into this world.
Alice was five years older and for a long time had evoked a slight feeling of jealousy in Miriam, with her glamorous fashion and the ease with which she was able to attract boys; at least that’s what she used to believe. The fascination lasted only till Miriam reached the age of dressing up and finding boys herself; then she realized that her dear cousin was just a common slut with bad taste. Nonetheless, she was a close relative and even showed a decent amount of interest in her little cousin’s life - Miriam felt obliged to go to the stupid party and converse with her boring friends. Or stupid friends and boring party; either way it was going to be torture.
She stood with her feet buried in the green fluff of the carpet in front of the open closet doors. “Oh heavens,” sighed Miriam, observing its contents. How could somebody allow people with a closet like hers to teach in primary school?
The horizontal aluminum pole held a row of her hangers. They looked like ribs, hanging there bare and naked. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have any dresses or jackets to hang on them. All of those and various other articles of clothing formed a neat, colorful pile directly underneath the bony hangers.
She couldn’t decide what to wear for such an occasion. She didn’t like very elaborate or fancy clothing but was sure Alice would be offended if she dressed up casually for her birthday. Miriam made a couple of steps back, eyeing the pile from the distance as if it would put things into better perspective and help her make the right choice. She took a ginger cookie from the blue plastic box on the table beside her and put it in her mouth whole. The box promised genuine Swiss flavour. Miriam pushed the wood-dry piece of dough down her throat, sighed one more time and wiped the oily crumbs from her thumb and index finger against her thigh. “Disgusting” she said, and put one more cookie in her mouth.
“Take your fiancé with you, and tell him to bring some handsome friend with him,” were Alice’s orders on the phone. “He is not my fiancé, not even a boyfriend,” Miriam told her for the tenth time that week, but Alice insisted on calling all men you slept with a fiancé. She was constantly desperate to meet more men in the hope that one would finally turn into a real fiancé someday. To Miriam, it seemed a cycle with no end.
She invited Patrick - her so called “fuck-buddy”. This significantly limited her choice of outfits. She didn’t want to wear anything too sexy and open because she was determined to avoid any intimacy with him that night. “And for all nights for the rest of my life,” she thought to herself. She wanted to break up with him, not only because she believed it was in bad taste for a primary grade teacher to have a fuck-buddy, but because she didn’t enjoy the key element of their relationship. And the worst thing was - he had no clue. She sometimes wished that she could be that confident in her abilities. Ignorance is indeed bliss.
She examined the guts of the closet. The any-occasion-little-black-dress, she thought, was comfortable for her and celebratory enough for Alice, but the cleavage was too deep - Patrick would start harassing her from the very beginning. Maybe favourite jeans and one-shoulder disco shirt? No, Alice would think she wanted to offend her on purpose. Pen-skirt? Too tight around the hips - bad with Patrick. The flowery dress? Too naïve for a glamorous night club. There was no chance she could satisfy all of them. She had to take a risk. It meant wearing something that would put her in danger of looking sexy. Nevertheless, it was her cousin’s special day, and she couldn’t l
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