I've always had lots of fashion girl crushes. I appreciate women, and just how dang hard it can be to grow up to be one ... so it's just come naturally to me to harbor deep admiration, to compliment strangers freely, to remind girls that they are beautiful and unique and everything else we refuse to tell ourselves on a daily basis. I remember so many girls who influenced me, though I doubt they realize it.
Laren was in my poetry class Sophomore year of college. I noticed her shoes before I noticed her; she wore great thick-heeled boots in a shade of chalky pale blue. Besides her boots, I admired her long, sleek black hair and whiskey eyes. She was dusky and quiet and fascinating; when she leaned over, into her textbooks, the black curtain of hair concealed a softly squared jaw and almond eyes, like some modern, Tiger Lily, Native American princess who reeked of coffee and lavender and silver rings. I was amazed.
No one could figure out what the vague poetry professor wanted out of us when she analyzed William Carlos Williams with such fervor, or how to get a genuine iambic pentameter just right. Nobody, that is, except Laren. I watched her stand up next to her desk, a bit like a Victorian girl would to recite her spelling words to the schoolteacher ... and she read her poems aloud without the slightest hesitation or question in her voice. Her legs stood straight in perfectly faded jeans, and the fluorescent classroom lights caught the dark angle of her nose, where a teensy stud cast a pinhole-sized sparkle. I figured she got an A on that poem.
And the next day, I went out and bought my own chalky blue boots.
