bustrkeatn:

Yesterday I went downtown to find some antique shops. And I did. And I realized that I get so depressed every time I enter one of those damn places.

I want to be the one wearing the 1930s silk floral-print, hand-beaded gown. I want to buy the black wool scoop hat with the veil. There was this gorgeous dress, I think it had been a peach color, but time had turned it gray, on a dirty old mannequin that looked like it would just fall apart at any second. It was probably as old as the dress, but it was a little worse for wear. No pun intended.

Anyway, the dress was rayon, a little below knee length, with a silvery beaded tie around the waist. And then there were beaded decals that snaked their way all around the bodice.

It was gorgeous. I could never fit into it, but it took all my willpower not to rip it from the rotting mannequin and take it home. I ALSO tried my best not to buy a hat. I didn’t, but the next paycheck I get, I’m driving back and coming home with the oldest, smelliest (cheapest) Joan Crawford hat I can find.

I like antique shops because it’s like stepping back into time. I can find a brand new unopened jar of Woodbury Cold Cream from 1913. I can open an old wardrobe and find fur coats and flapper dresses and clothes I imagine on Carole Lombard or Barbara Stanwyck. I can buy a freaking malt or a float with root beer on tap. They even have vintage windows I imagine people looked out of and saw horse-drawn buggies and Tin Lizzies, and the parade of time passing by.

But to be perfectly honest, while I love what I can find in an antique shop, it also makes me depressed as hell. And wait for it, because I think I’m having a Woody Allen moment, I’m nostalgic for a past I never knew. I want it to be real so bad it hurts. And I know that, yes yes yes, it was exactly like now, whateverwhatever, okay. Not to me. I want to see silent movies in the THEATER. With a REAL orchestra. I want to mow my lawn with a cylinder mower and I want to smoke non-filter cigarettes until my lungs turn black and I cough them up.

I want to dress up to go to the grocery store, and I want to have to wear a hat and gloves for church. I want to sit by the radio and listen to soap operas and I want to remember the day Jesse Owens smoked the mother-fucking shit out of everyone at the Olympics. I still want to meet Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead and Norma Shearer and have sordid gossipy affairs with Gary Cooper and Buster Keaton and Robert Montgomery and Jimmy Cagney and… yeah. You get it. But they’re all gone. Gonegonegone. And it blows. IT BLOWS.

So I’m reduced to sitting at my computer and obsessing over a bygone time. I suppose the good thing is that in Tumblr I’ve found a community of people who all think the same thing. It’s sort of like being in a cult that thinks they were abducted by aliens and they’re waiting for the aliens to come back for them. “That’s where we belong! With you!” So I’m waiting for William Powell to show up in a 1932 Bugatti Type 55 and take me away.

I’m here. I’ll be here.