Julia found herself readying for the band, The Cult of Orpheus which was to play tonight at the local hall just off the cricket field. She sat at the edge of her bed and fiddled with her laces and checked her hair, which she had brushed into complacency over the course of what felt like two hours, again. She had these large shoes and comfortable wool leggings which she wore under her skirt cut above her ankles. The outfit was reasonably the same as the one she had worn when she saw the boy(whom she sometimes refused to name, and sometimes forgot to refuse) last, and not so distinct that he might not recognise her if they did meet. Octavia stood by the door, checking her own lipstick in the mirror and wearing a thing that left nothing of her stomach to the imagination. In response, Julia flattened her own dress a little, inadvertently comparing her own natural shape, to the taut and sculpted figure of her friend, and only in ways in which she came up short, mind you. Her sleeves were down to her knuckles, and overall she wore her usual mismatch of colours.
‘Well you can’t go out like that,’ Kat said, entering the room with a large leather jacket falling just below her hips. Kat was new to Julia’s inner sanctum, and pretty radical by Julia’s standards. She was one of those in the WAGM (Women against Genital Mutilation) who believed in women’s freedom to express themselves however they liked. Julia sometimes wished she could be so comfortable in her own skin as Kat was in hers. She found herself picking at her chewed nails in Kat’s presence, but strangely unable to pull herself away. Kat made her nervous and self critical, but in a kind of exciting way, if you’ve ever been in a shopping trolley while your friend has pushed you down a slope, and you kind of wish they’d hit the breaks just a little, but they don’t and yet it all turns out alright anyway, then you know the feeling of being near Kat.
‘I was just going to wear this,’ Julia replied, eyeing herself in the mirror. That one spot on her chin stuck out like a sore thumb, but that was okay, if he couldn’t manage with a few pimples here and there, then this Cory wasn’t worth her time to begin with, and aside from that, she had a similar pimple when they’d met in the first place. She pulled at her sleeve and smiled.
‘You’ve very girl next door, but you know he’s already avoided you once, you ought to either go in there to kill, or at the very least make jealous. If you can’t have him, then have his friend.’ Kat stood her up and began suggesting things from her wardrobe that she ought to wear instead, meanwhile Octavia swigged a glass of wine in sips. ‘Don’t do that. Don’t be that girl. If he’s not interested, he’s not interested and there’s nothing you can do.’ A small dispute broke out between the two, and Julia stood holding her knuckle in wait, like a child keeping quiet during a parental dispute. The freedom to act, versus the power to be, squabbling in dispute over what Julia ought to wear. Kat suggested something which was usually an over-thing, only to be worn on its own. Hard refusal. Simply put, Julia had not the wont nor the confidence to show that much skin, particularly when she would be next to two of the most statuesque women in England. Kat herself was the very visage of Venus, with curves enough for a chariot race along her thighs, and Octavia had a Athenian poise to her, one could imagine her guiding Heracles with spear in hand, or battling Achilles along the river Scamander—and at six foot with some change, perhaps she might have won. Both could have been the subject of a renaissance fresco. Julia on the other hand, was just Julia, and that was okay.
‘It isn’t exactly… Me,’ she said, and that was the end of it. Soon the fiasco was done, and some headway had been made. Julia’s naval was exposed, and the wool leggings dumped, and the blocky black shoes swapped out for something a bit more movable, and her sleeves were shorter, but nothing so far as either of the other two. Julia thought of those statues again, how clothed they all seemed. Then again, perhaps it could be empowering to free your skin, if you had a body like Kat, at least. She checked herself in the mirror, unsure quite how to feel about herself, or the borrowing of Octavia’s things, but they girls assured her that it was a good look. A little pouch pinched in at her hips with the waist which made her dreadfully self-conscious, but when she stood up straight it mostly went away, she would have to remember that all night long. Perhaps to some it could be empowering, nudity, but to her it felt a chore, could she not be empowered from her own bed, reading a book? Catullus could make her laugh all night long, and Virgil could remind her the joys of the countryside in Eclogues, and, and, and nothing, she would have to go. Apart from anything else, getting over her anxiety would be a big milestone for her, she knew it consciously, and knew also that she could not remain in her comfort zone forever if she wished to develop. Furthermore, she might never get to see The Cult of Orpheus play live ever again, the odds of their playing so close to her after all this time seemed astronomically minute, she took it as a good omen, as she had once taken their name as a similar fortune all those years ago. Perhaps she might meet Orpheus and say how much she adored him, but perhaps not. Perhaps also that she might run into that boy, Cory, and she might give him a piece of her mind for standing her up so many times, but perhaps not. Perhaps he would apologise profusely, and have a reason which seemed both plausible and charming and would endear them to one another even further, and if that were the case, then who knows what else might happen.