So every year Fang asks me, "What do you want for Christmas?" While I appreciate the ability to offer a choice, we don't actually go through a formal exchange of gifts. We never have. Sometimes the sharing of a wish list never comes to anything. Sometimes I'll buy him something that I think he could use (an ipod or a leather jacket, say) which he'll disdain at the time he opens it, but which he ultimately uses and enjoys later on.
In the last few years he's surprised me with some lovely and most unexpected gifts: A pair of two carat diamond earrings. A strand of pearls with matching diamond/pearl studs. A Bulova watch. A charm bracelet with the initials of our family members. These gifts mean a lot and I appreciate and enjoy them.
A few weeks ago he asked the same question again.
"Well, what do you want?" I ventured.
He was very precise. He cited some quality cookware and a knife sharpener. A high end knife sharpener. He is a good cook but he's a great sous chef. He loves to prep food and he despairs of a dull knife edge. OK, noted. We agree to go and shop for his high end knife sharpener and pans.
He asks me the same question.
I really need a proper briefcase. I have a shitty, ratty old bag that is serviceable but not really impressive enough for hauling in on a sales call with an important client. I'd rather have a thousand other things, but I NEED a quality briefcase.
"Okay," Fang ventures "A Mark Cross briefcase?"
Actually, I was thinking Coach. It's my gold standard.
Subject is tabled for now.
The holidays come and go. Today we went out to the movies (so I can cross that off my 2008 to-do list). Afterwards, we walked for a long time. We bought homemade bread in the open market in Lincoln Center. We picked up some odds and ends. We bought Fang's cookware and knife sharpener. And as we got near the uptown subway Fang steered me to the Coach Store.
A bubbly woman named Andrea showed us to the briefcases. I went through the collection on display, but they were awfully pedestrian. So incredibly uninteresting. It seemed a shame to me to pay $549 for a dull bit of leather (as high quality as the leather was). I mulled through them and then, oh then, my eyes lit on my vermilion beauty.
She was stationed against the wall on display, crimson and bold and golden as a 15th century Chinese empress. She radiated confidence like Cleopatra in the face of the asp. She begged to be picked up. She was gloriously constructed and gleaming. That was it--it was love. And the briefcase was suddenly miles from my mind. I had to own her.
Despite the fact that the object of my desire cost a bit more than the briefcase, Fang saw that nothing else would do. And here, he anted up the charge card and this brazen beauty was mine.
Trust me, the picture does not do it justice.
7 comments:
ooooooh, I'm drooling! That is a beautiful bag! Very very nice!!!! Fang did good!
Give him a smack on the ass from Amy, will ya? Haa haa haa!
It's so you!
Umm, as you are aware, high fashion to me is a pair of clean jeans and a hair scrunchy that matches, or is at least close enough, my shirt.
On the other hand, what kind of cookware did Fang get and which knives?
Gorgeous!!!!!!! Fang is one cool dude and you, my dear, have impeccable taste.
Beautiful. Elegant. Smells good.
Why is he named Fang?
Lovely bag. Totally out of my league.
I've wondered about the name "Fang", too. Wasn't that the name Joan Rivers gave her husband in her stand-up?
Correct, Caryl. Good memory. That is indeed the origin of the name "Fang."
There's no great mystery--he picked the name for himself. Like Diller's Fang, my Fang is elusive and stays in the background so it works in that regard.
Mary: Calaphon cookware. You can never have enough of it!!
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