Lessons

I met James Albright in 2003. I was forty years old. I was restless. 

I was a corporate finance executive, and surprised to be so. My husband and I joked that whenever I went on vacation, I came back to a promotion. In retrospect, my job was excellent and I was lucky to have it. But I was restless.

On weekends I read the classics in beautiful leather-bound volumes that came in the mail. Looking for something…timeless. Something.

And I signed up for ballroom dancing lessons! I was restless. I was forty. I wanted to get off the sidelines. And in my mind, you couldn’t get into the game until you were good at the game. To get good at the game, you take lessons. Lessons from literature, lessons from teachers. On the sidelines taking lessons. But it was a step forward, and it introduced me to James.

My dancing program had a series of costume parties. I needed costumes. James owned a costume shop. Did I find him on the internet or did we even have the internet back then? Maybe the phone book? Imagine! Anyway, this was not your typical mass produced witch/black cat/sexy nurse costume shop. This was Los Angeles, and this was James. James had collected costumes from innumerable stage productions and movie sets. He made custom costumes. I handed him a list of the themes for the parties, and went in to be fitted for whatever he had created. 

For example, Barbie:

Carmen Miranda:

Poison Ivy:

Half man, half woman:

And, I cannot for the life of me remember why:

Cockroach (note feather antennae):

After a while I just went to the shop to see James and to try on all these wonderful clothes. The garments were often so complex I’d often put them on backwards by mistake. He handed me one dress that puzzled me entirely - did I only have half of the outfit? Only one side of the top existed. He explained that the wife of a Hollywood celebrity wore the dress to host a big party at home. The dress was designed to leave one breast exposed. I told him I found that fantastic, but I couldn’t possibly pull off such a thing. He sniffed: “Oh, and I thought you were going to be fun.”

I think that was the moment we became friends. You get in the game, I learned that day, not by taking lessons, but by taking plunges. I had just found my mentor.