Wonder Woman and the Gold-Sequined Sneakers

The guru had invited me to his house to celebrate our new collaboration. (See the Guru-ette and The Runaway Giraffe). I needed to dress right. I went through the clothing laying beneath my tent in the closet and came across my Diane von Furstenburg Wonder Woman dress. It was a long silk gown which swished around the body with swirls of muted colors, printed on a bed of mauve.

I slipped into my gold-sequined Converse-style ankle boots and put on my black pirate’s eye patch that I had gotten from a Christmas cracker at Little Red Riding Hood’s. Then I looked in the mirror and threw a fit. Thankfully, the man from the Japanese store had packed as a present the concubine dress with a good-luck note along with my karate trousers. (See The Guru-ette and The Runaway Giraffe). So I tried it on for size. Five outfits later, I was back to my Wonder Woman dress and drove down the Pacific Coast Highway humming the TV series theme all the way. It turned out I had chosen wisely. “My litte concubine,” mused the guru, before sitting me down to read some books on becoming a Sense-I. After eating dinner, I did my best to get him drunk on Saki. Instead, I succeeded in getting him to make me a pet dog from a long white balloon, a new party trick he had learned the week before. I practiced twirls for him with my dress flying much higher than it did on the show. But he wasn’t to be moved. “My dear you must respect my discipline,” he said. ”What’s that?” I asked, the child of two flower children who had disappeared five years ago to Europe in a caravan. “It is my culture and you will learn all about it soon,” he said. And so he gave me a pat on the head, handed me my new pet dog, and escorted me outside where the neighbors had gathered around to inspect my purple electric car, which Beyonce had once used in a music video. It belonged to Little Red Riding Hood who had lent it to me for the week to drive around town with a big “For Sale” sign on it. And so I rode home a happy bunny and practiced driving through the puddles with my eye patch covering one eye. I tried to phone what I thought was Jim’s number. And this, dear reader, is where the weekend kicked into high gear. I had called an ex-boyfriend by mistake! “Oh, no,” I thought. “Oh yes,” thought he. And so at 9.37 p.m. the next night, a six foot six version of James Dean walked through my front porch, hair slicked back, a leather jacket hugging his muscled chest, and said, “Hello stranger.” “Hello,” I said sheepishly, as he admired my red angora sweater with gold stars on the chest and matching silver shoes. My hair was still standing on end from my dance class. Over a bottle of organic wine from Trader Joe’s he began sobbing, as he recalled how tragic his last five years had been selling stickers to place on snowboards. Before he left, he declared that I needed to find a real man, an everyday person who would love and appreciate my eccentricities. “What eccentricities?” I asked. A trip to the local lumbar yard was in store.