Purple socks

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In Graham Greene’s novel “Monsignor Quixote,” we meet an elderly innocent Spanish Catholic priest, who learns that he’s been promoted to Monsignor. He is very excited about this, because he now gets to wear purple socks.

You know I love purple. I have a couple of purple shirts, ranging in color from Concord grape to light lavender, with several shades in between. A long time ago I bought a lavender enamel star to wear on my lapel, and I told people it was a symbol for gay rights (this was before we had any kind of established symbols, so you could tell people anything and they’d believe you).

But never before did I have a pair of purple socks (see above). They’re pale lilac, with little nubs. Naturally they’re Italian.

Story: there’s a nice little men’s-clothing shop in our neighborhood called Milan. The clothes are beautiful, but they are far too highly-priced for my dollar-store lifestyle. Though their window I could see a lovely display of socks: lemon-yellow, pale lime-green, pale lilac. I have admired them out loud to Partner many times.

The other night Partner surprised me with a pair of lovely purple socks. He pretended that our little stuffed dog Blot Malloy bought them for me. This is Blot:

I ask you, does he look like he has the money to buy Italian socks?

Partner finally confessed that he’d bought them for me. I asked them how much they cost, and he wouldn’t tell me. “I’ll admit,” he said, “that they were more expensive than any socks I ever bought before.”

I wore them to work the very next day, in combination with black pants and a pale-lavender shirt. I showed them to a number of people, and they were dazzled. One even said: “And look! You’re wearing a purple shirt too!”

To which I replied: “Did you think that was a coincidence?”

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Purple

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When I started at my current place of work, way back in 1987, I decided early on that I would use a red pen whenever possible. “Red for danger,” I thought.  Also, I remembered all my teachers who’d used red pen to correct, and comment, and chastise. It was my turn to see what it felt like.

Well, it is now almost twenty-five years later, and I keep a whole spectrum of colors of pen at my desk. Red is still my favorite: it stands out, and it’s hard to ignore, and sometimes (as when I’m correcting or amending an employee data document) it is absolutely essential.

But I bought some Flair pens on a whim some time back, and I am now completely enamored with purple.

Purple is rich and royal.  It’s also gay sometimes, depending on whom you ask. (Did you know that the creator of the modern pride flag, Gilbert Baker, assigned meanings to each of the colors? Purple is “spirit.” I like it.) “Lavender” has for a long time been a code word for the gay community.  (For a long time I wore a lavender star on my lapel, and told people it was the symbol for gay rights. One of my gay friends told me that I shouldn’t wear it because it might get people riled up. I laughed. “No one even knows what it means,” I said, and I was right, because – let’s face it – I’d made the meaning up.)

I need to buy some more purple Flair pens. They take me back to my childhood, when Flair pens were new. 

And I can tell people it’s a political statement, and they actually believe me!

People: purple is a color, for god’s sake!

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