Twice a year I clean out of my closets—shuffling seasonal clothing between my apartment and storage lockers in my building’s basement—and twice a year I have a mini-meltdown. I dread these times of the year. When the weather starts to barely change and most people aren’t even thinking about switching out their wardrobes, I’m busily looking at my calendar, blocking out an entire weekend in red ink for the old presto-chango. I can’t go out on the town the night beforehand, as going through my closet with a hangover, forcing myself to throw out clothing I haven’t worn in ages, always results in tears. I’ve learned the hard way: I still pine for that ‘70’s shearling coat I got from a consignment shop in Pittsburgh which I donated to the Salvation Army during a past cleanse. My head was throbbing from the happy hour the night before, and the coat’s fur was making me nauseated just by looking at it--it was, after all, taking up a lot of room in my closet. But still….
I am the product of my mother. She would approach our closets in our family’s home like an auditor. Each closet had its own set of numbered giant boxes (some plastic, some cardboard), beginning at “1.” Spiral notebooks were then dedicated for each closet with detailed descriptions for each of the boxes: “Craig’s Closet/Box 3/Spring Wardrobe/Shorts” or “Basement Hallway Closet/Box 10/Christmas/Living Room/Mantle.” We acted like librarians, archiving our own possessions so when we had to switch out clothes, it was as painless as possible.
Although I don’t have the luxury of multiple closets in my apartment here in New York, I am lucky enough to have those storage lockers where I stow away my own collections of clothing, books, and Christmas ornaments. My partner Geoff is like my mother as he also uses thick oversized clear plastic bins for storage: my extensive clothing and books sit alongside his 20+ years of collecting comic books, gathering brown dust over time. Geoff usually wipes off boxes’ dust while we’re in the storage room and cracks jokes about cage fighting before pulling the boxes from these lockers. When we move these boxes to and from our apartment, we use one of our building’s carts that look like one of those old-fashioned hotel luggage carriers. Somehow we always pick the one with the bum wheel which causes the tower of boxes to sway—our own version of Jenga, and we bit our lower lips until we make the trip from the basement to the seventh floor to our apartment without any accidents.
Before I start to reorganize the closets, I go through my clothing to pull out things that I didn’t wear the past season or are out of style. These bags of clothing (usually totaling about four to six per season) are donated to the Salvation Army on Atlantic Avenue by my building in Brooklyn. The Goodwill in downtown Brooklyn is closer to me, but my father did some work years ago as an architect for the Army back home, and while I don’t agree with their conservative views, I donate there exclusively out of habit. Besides, there is a great ice cream parlor beside it, and I usually reward myself with a butter pecan cone afterward.
Going through the motions of pulling clothing from my closet is, however, shattering for me. Donating is easy, but deciding what to donate is painful. I look at my blue jeans and wonder if I should keep the dark ones with the narrow legs that I bought twenty pounds ago. Yes, yes I should. I don’t wear them, but I may someday. I end up putting five pairs of old jeans on a pile of swimsuits and shorts that I’ve either outgrown (read: gained weight) or got tired of (read: gained a lot of weight). Geoff reiterates our mission to make the closets as accessible and streamlined as possible. He holds up a pair of Dolce & Gabanna green patent leather oxfords in one hand, a pair of red pointy shoes with tassels I got at a Prada sample sale in the other and forces me to make a choice. I can’t—I feel like I’m in a gay version of “Sophie’s Choice” so instead of choosing just one, I let both of them fall into the donation pile. I turn away from Geoff for a second because I can’t bear the cold reality.
After a few hours of this--and a few raised eyebrows from Geoff when I tried to reason why I needed to keep a pair of 31-inch waist Helmut Lang pants I had in college (they may be a collector’s item and are a shimmery plum-color which is, let’s face it, just cool)--I throw a bunch of sweaters on top of the bag and assess the situation with him. We decide that we’ve done a great job, that we’ve successfully cleaned out the closets and are prepared and ready for fall—or, in other words, I’m ready to purchase more stuff to replace what I’m giving away.
We walk to the Salvation Army, each of us holding a swollen black garbage bag, filled with my rejects. I walk in relative silence, not answering his inquiries on where to eat dinner that night, but instead questioning myself—the candy-striped cashmere sweater on the top of my bag is giving me major second-thoughts, and I wonder if I can possibly slip it out and hide it on the way back. I don’t really like how the sweater looks on me, but I enjoy how the striped sweater looks folded on my shelf.
Before I can concrete my plan, a homeless woman plants herself in front of me, her eyes like saucers, asking for a sweater. I know this woman. She’s tiny and Asian and wears a green parka, even in the summer. She hangs out on the sidewalk on Dean Street and Atlantic Avenue, right beside a deli underneath the apartment the singer Joan Osborne lives in. I used to live around the corner from this intersection, and she would often ask me for a bite of my toasted poppy seed bagel that I got Saturday mornings from the deli. I never did give her a bite, and I never did give her any spare change that I might have had in my pockets.
What I did give her last year, however, was a very expensive brown sweater that I was on my way to donate. The scene played the same this year as last: Geoff and I walking with bags of donations down Atlantic Avenue, me having second thoughts on the sweater on the top of the bag, and she asking for said sweater. Only last year, Geoff didn’t flinch and instinctively grabbed the sweater in my bag and gave it to her. She didn’t thank me (not that I was expecting one) and put on the sweater and walked away. I stood there, my mouth open because I never saw $300 of my money literally turn the corner and go out of sight.
When the woman recognized me this year (or at least I bragged to Geoff later that evening that she did, claiming that her eyes lit up at the sight of me), I had to chuckle because she was holding half of a messy hoagie in her hand, and she asked me for a sweater with a mouth full of, I assume, bologna and mustard. I looked at Geoff who didn’t say anything, but the wink in his eye said volumes.
I nodded and grabbed the candy-colored sweater, placing it in the non-hoagie hand of the woman. She grunted (which I assume meant she liked it) and threw the rest of her sandwich in the trash bin—I don’t blame her as deli meats always give me the creeps for some reason. Like the previous year, she immediately put it on, only this year she didn’t bother to put her coat back on when she was done. She walked away towards Dean Street, and I looked at Geoff who smiled and asked me if I felt good. I admitted that I did feel good about helping her out for the second year in a row—a little charity tradition of my own, right here in Brooklyn. As she turned the corner, a smile grew on my face--partly because I think the bright sweater cheered her up a bit in the cold autumn air, but mainly because I’m thrilled that I’m not the only person on the block that can’t pull off horizontal stripes, no matter how expensive the sweater.
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