Fur

When I was a little girl, I had a fur cap. I bought it for 25 cents at a garage sale.  It was nasty and old, and it smelled like eight kinds of death, and I'm pretty sure it was made of beaver fur - but I loved it intensely for a whole week.  It mad me feel elegant and classy, like Cruella DeVille or Veruca Salt.  In it, I was a sophisticated young lady...whose head smelled like a decaying wet dog corpse.  

Of course, as I grew older I realized my error, but I never completely changed my mind.  You see...I love fur.

I know.  Believe me, I know.  I absolutely hate cruelty to animals, and killing a small, furry creature just so you can wear its skin is horrific, evil and ghoulish.  It is wrong.  Wrong.

But so pretty.

Recently, I was shopping at Saks and found an absolutely gorgeous mink coat.  I knew it was wrong - so very, very wrong - but I ran my hands over it and goggled at it.  It was a thing of beauty.  I looked at the price tag - $8000.  I sighed.  Dammit.  I tried to take it from its hanger to try it on, but it couldn't be moved - I guess they didn't want people stealing it or whatever.  Fine.

So instead, I let my imagination do the work.  I picture myself strolling along the streets of Paris, in my mink coat, with a matching cap.  I'm wearing bright red lipstick and I'm smoking, even though I'm not a smoker, but you smoke when you're walking down the streets of Paris in a fuck-you-you-can't-judge-me-because-I'm-fucking-fantastic-mink-coat.  I catch a glimpse of myself in a cafe window and I raise an eyebrow at myself in approval.  I sit down at a table in the cafe and order a single glass of chilled white wine, and I sip it while reading some pretentious exiistentialist garbage.  I look pensively out of windows.  I am admired by everyone.  I am the girl in the mink coat.   Perhaps I'll eat a single chocolate truffle and then stroll back to my tiny white apartment and change into a peignoir and congratulate myself for being so thin.  

I am perfectly aware that fur is immoral. I am perfectly aware that there is no cause for owning a fur coat in Southern California, where it never, ever snows, or even gets that cold.  But dammit, I want one all the same.