The Night I wore Apricot Pants

Today, I wore bright apricot pants.

yes -

apricot.

Have you ever watched the Sisterhood movie? The one about the traveling pants? Well, girls, it ain't no joke: a pair of pants can, 'scuse the cheese, make or break your day.

Or, in this case, night. Sunday night. After 6 PM. After all the stores are closed and you realize you have no food left in your fridge (besides the frozen pizza that you promised yourself was for emergencies only.) This is not an emergency. I have apricot pants. Everything is fine.

I head out the door, left - it's a beautiful starry night, and the lamps are all dimly orange. Like my pants. I walk to the mall, "oh, fechar?" schucks. I head back the way I came, through the narrow, softly lit, cobbled streets, looking for one of those late-night stores I've heard about. Okay, first of all, I thought so too, and secondly, would I ever? No, this store is not that, its a really small shop that sells overpriced fruit, coffee, and pão de leite (6% leite, so you know, it's in the name.) These stores are not local, and they're there when you need them. Like my apricot pants.

The guy's standing outside, "one person", so I go in and he closes the door behind us. All right, in South Africa, that is not okay, don't ever be in that position. Here, well, it's just, different. Now, picture this: you're in this brightly lit, two-by-six 'aisle'... that is the shop in its entirety. It's fitted with shelves on each side filled with random groceries, and a small, wooden, desk thing at the end of the 'room'. One short Bangladesh man stands by the door, and another short Bangladesh man by the desk, both advising you on what to purchase. When they finally agree on the groceries "you need, you need", you head to the counter. "oh my gosh, cartão?" No such luck, not even in your apricot pants.

Now, everything is still okay for me, because, as the man behind the counter decides, the man by the door can just take me to an atm where I can draw money. Again, in South Africa, don't do this! We walk out into the night, and I follow him past glowing apartments, closed bakeries, and fast-food restaurants that smell like grease. As we wait for the red man to turn green, I think to myself: as weird as this is, it's also pretty amazing.

It's just that, I walk this same road almost everyday, alone, watching the passers-by, wondering about their stories. You know, that thing we do when we watch groups of people together, thinking, "how did they meet, are they in some sort of club, where are they going", that sort of thing. But, tonight, as we stand here on the sidewalk interchanging broken conversation in our 'group', the short Bangladesh man and myself don't have a story. We're just, here, together. It feels like we're defying some sort of constructed reality. Kinda like wearing apricot pants. It's cool.

So anyway, we walk there and then back, where I enter the shop again and make my purchase, for "big discount" apparently. I head home to cook the food that I really didn't need, but it ends up tasting really good. I mean, what wouldn't, when you're wearing apricot pants?