Secret Obsession Revealed!

I’ve held a secret for many years now, one that I must speak about openly in order to live a normal life. I hope I can trust the readership of this flying Hindenblog to not be judged for what I must write here today. In short:

I…I Want To Live in the J. Crew World.

There, I’ve said it, and I feel good.

For so long now, I’ve been surreptitiously pocketing the J. Crew catalog at their retail stores, pretending to browse as a well-educated, wealthy young man with a daring side. But the truth is that I don’t think much of their clothing line. It’s as factory-born and bred as the Gap, Eddie Bauer or any other clothing company out there.

However, when I look through the catalog, I am transported into a fantasy realm of great longing in which I’ve been held captive for years.

I see the young men and women therein, and I want to know them. I want to be invited to their East Coast enclaves - their simple, elegant bungalows and cabins. My spirit soars from the way they stand on the decks of their boats or ancestral homes, wearing heavy wool toggle coats and rugged corduroy. How they appear to be caught up in the moment, earthy and yet impeccable in the same instant. Windblown and solid all at once, like the ancient trees that surround their lakeside acreage.

I believe that they’d have names like Rafe and Chesney, Willem and Janey. They’d know several languages, not from formal learning in school, mind you, but from traveling the globe, ordering potent coffees from side street cafes.

As for school, they would all be from small, liberal arts colleges in Vermont or Oregon. They would know all of their professors on a first-name basis, and even the names of their pets. (Which would be puns on the names of philosophers, artists and political dissidents of course.)

The final straw came in admitting this obsession when I spied this past holiday season’s catalog. On the front cover, a man in a mossy green sweater is shown as if seen from a distance, transporting a Christmas tree in a weathered rowboat across a misty lake.

Who is this person, and why isn’t he ME? I knew then that it was time to come clean, or forever be a slave to this secret pain for the rest of my days.

Do you all despise me, now, readers? For this pathetic fantasy life I so long to lead? Would you come upstate to visit me on the lake? I’m sure I’d have an old pea coat from the Winter ‘98 line to loan you, and maybe some nubby sport moccasins for you to wear at dinner. When Nina and Balou come over for a quick nosh and maybe some brandy, we could all stay up and debate something from Rousseau, maybe smoke some pot. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

Wouldn’t you?