Day 197

I took the metro to Vanier this morning and noticed that two women seemed not to like how I was dressed. One woman in her 20s stared at me and looked me up and down (I was sitting). I smiled at her. She looked away.
The woman next to me also stared at me with a bit of a scowl on her face. I smiled at her. She blinked, and looked away.
I was reading the Art History exam on the metro, so maybe they didn’t like that and it had nothing to do with my new shirt and jeans. Also, my knee touched the 2nd woman’s knee when the metro left the station (twice) and I moved my leg away.

After I gave the final exam in my Art History class a student said, “Can I ask you a question? You wear a lot of animal print.”
“Yes,” I said.
“So why?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you really like it?”
“I’m doing a project in which I wear animal print every day for a year. This is day 197.”
“Oh wow! I thought it was just a Thursday thing.”

Because of the exam, I was 2 hours late to the department meeting. Once I sat down and settled, Thomas said, “Liberace called and he wants his clothes back.”
“Good one,” I said.
“You really look fantastic,” he whispered.
“What? You can’t lead with Liberace and then end with fantastic. It makes ‘fantastic’ meaningless.”
“Why not? Liberace was great.”
Thomas also told me that he has a stuffed python that he got as a young man in Zaire if I wanted to borrow it. “I know about your project and thought of you. But you can only use it if you have something specific in mind.”

After the meeting, some of us went to Justine and Terryll’s house for a few end of term drinks (Thomas did not come). I met Louise, who teaches painting, and she told me that when she saw me come into the meeting she thought to herself, “there’s someone who doesn’t care what anyone thinks- there’s someone living outside of the box.” She also wondered who I was and thought I was a friend of Cheryl’s. She did not know that I also taught in the department. She is going to Jamaica for a month to shoot a documentary.