My Own Shoes

Owning Up To Being Female

“There probably won’t be any guys there,” I told my brother, when explaining the live event I’d be playing a few songs at last weekend. That idea—no men — felt kind of strange, since I’ve lived my life surrounded by them. But Everything Is Fine is a podcast For Women Over Forty so it made sense. I was looking forward to it, having enjoyed listening to Kim France and Jenn Romolini’s show for the last two years. I was delighted to be a guest on the show some months back and now we were all meeting up with listeners on Easter Sunday in a venue in Manhattan.

I love men, too much probably, but EIF podcast is a femme space where I laugh and argue in my head with Kim and Jenn: mascaras, fillers, family; to drink or not: heels, art and ambition, fave shows and profanity. I usually listen when I’m making dinner or cleaning the kitchen.

I’ve always thought my songs would connect with female-identifying listeners but it can be hard to find them, as hard as it is to find the actual occurrences of Ladies Together hijinks I see in movies and shows: Yellowjackets, Sex and the City all the way back through Mary McCarthy’s The Group to Lysistrata. I just enjoyed listening to JoJo Moyes’ new book Someone Else’s Shoes, where women from all different social strata join forces in London to take a bad man down. I like to think I could garner my female friend forces if the need ever arose—I feel lucky to still be great pals with my college roommates, and to keep in touch with female bandmates and musician friends from over the years. Work and music pals who I text with or meet for coffee. But those wine-fueled getaway gal pal weekends you see in movies—I just don’t know if any of us will ever have time to actually get one of those together.

So the Everything Is Fine live event seemed like that getaway concept condensed into a manageable two hour timeframe, with the added bonus that I’d get to play a few songs for a group of  female peers. Of course I wondered what to wear but in the end I just went easy on myself: green silk blouse, jeans. I thought of wearing these cute sneakers I got but their trajectory has been kind of fraught and maybe I wasn’t quite ready to put them down on NYC asphalt.

Those shoes —see this is where I need my female cohort, I just don’t know if most men could understand the indecision and angst that enters into my relationship with shoes. The male world of footwear is blessedly limited unless you get very into all the sneaker permutations and that’s a bit niche; hiking boots same. The pressure on a pair of shoes to hold up various attempts at a new personality is something I don’t see most men engaging with.

I’d ordered this pair of sneakers from TheRealReal, a great clothing resale site I learned about from Kim of course. They really were just so perfect for me— striped white and navy high tops, never or very gently worn - and actually fit which is not a given as I’ve gone from a size 9 to a 10 (or UK 7 to 8) over the last few decades. So why, when I’d felt such joy seeing and fitting into them in person did I take them off, leave the room, come back and gaze at them on the floor wondering if they were really me?

Because I still at the age of 64 am never exactly sure who that is! Regular readers might remember the overalls of 2020, the sunglasses of summer `21. The shirtdress of 2014, haircolor conundrums, eyelash battles. I am starting to understand that I will always be a work in progress. When I finally settle on who I am, I will be dead, hopefully embalmed in a diorama wearing the perfect outfit, hair and boots it took me a lifetime to achieve, but my sense of purpose to find all those things will have gone too. Sure, I think, if I could settle on my forever uniform, I could use all that spare time and energy to devote to actual real problems in the world, or even to just practicing guitar. But that would be an acceptance of myself as a static being and it’s the sense of possibility that I chase and will likely do so til they put me in that glass case.

I actually went so far as to send the striped sneakers BACK. After trying them on numerous times I decided they were just a little too “I’m a kooky older lady who still knows how to rock” and I wasn’t sure I was quite ready to declare that to the world. Back they went and my money was refunded and sat in my PayPal account. Until…

Every time I went to get dressed, I wished I had those sneakers. Everything else was just too predictable, too staid, too no nonsense. Those shoes had been fun, and they’d fit perfectly. Sheepishly, I went back on TheRealReal, reordered the shoes, kicking myself (didn’t have shoes on so that was fairly painless) imagining these very stylishly dressed ladies who pack and ship the orders in New Jersey laughing at me - “wait, she said they DIDN’T FIT - yet she’s ordered them again and fool had to pay shipping TWICE” (another thing I hope to do til I die is imagine the real people involved in even the most generic and far-removed enterprise noticing and judging me every step of the way).

So the sneakers came back and I hugged them, happy to be reunited. We really did seem destined for each other. BUT when it came time to go to the city for Kim and Jenn’s podcast, it was a cold day and I actually felt like I needed the solid base of a pair of boots instead of my jaunty sneakers. Spring is like that.

I scored a parking place easily just around the corner from the Lower East Side venue, which I remembered as soon as I descended the staircase to the basement space — I’d read from my book for an event there with Tish and Snooky, Andy Schwartz and Guy Story back before the pandemic. So many events from that heady 2018-2019 period seem to have been wiped from my memory, only revived upon contact with one of the elements involved.

Downstairs at Caveat Kim and Jenn were getting set up, I did a quick soundcheck and then found a seat in the audience next to a nice woman April who was there solo. The room filled up mostly with women though there were a few guys and I felt bad I hadn’t invited my brother along but I knew he had other plans that afternoon so it was fine. There were a lot of laughs, and tears too, through the hosts’ rapport and their guests which included Kim’s mom who was wonderfully inspiring. And me—I got up last to turn a little weepy thanking our hosts and to sing two songs and then we were done. I popped my guitar in the trunk of my car and moved it to another street so no one could see that I’d stored a guitar in there, and then walked way downtown to a bar everyone was meeting at for drinks.  Many many blocks downtown…I wished I’d worn those damn, adorable sneakers. But I knew they’d be waiting for me back home.

I had such a lovely time watching the show, then playing for its audience—being part of this “for women over forty” thing myself. Forty feels a long time ago and I’m fine with that! I even had a cocktail in a bar with some new female friends. I think if someone would’ve been walking down Clinton Street and seen us through the window, they would’ve thought wow those ladies are having a blast! Where can I find a group of friends like that?

And as I drove back upstate I thought “hmm `kooky older lady who still knows how to rock’ - is that really such a bad thing to be?”

I have gigs coming up!

• Fri Apr 28 Pop Conference /NYU Brooklyn NY panel on Tier 3, 11 AM Free

• Fri May 5 Rosie’s Cafe house concert Belmar NJ sold out

• Sat May 6 Packing House Willington CT TICKETS

• Sun May 7 Argyle Brewing at Cambridge Depot Cambridge NY TICKETS

• Fri Jun 16 Avalon Lounge Catskill NY TICKETS

• Sat Jun 17 One Roof Concert for the Homeless: Northampton MA TICKETS

• Mon Jun 19 Loft at City Winery New York NY (w/Mary Lee’s Corvette) TIX