Church.

At my favorite thrift no one speaks English and everyone greets one another and me with a nod and a smile. After an early childhood where another language was often spoken over my head, I find great comfort in the murmur of things I don’t need to concern myself with. The occasional known word lands, untethered, and then ebbs away. Thus lulled I slide my hand over the offerings, pulling heavy denim off the overfull racks, stooping to pick up and rehang the slinky, femme blouses that my rough utilitarian preferences snag and pull off the hangers. I indulge in the privilege of being small enough to shop from the boys’ section, thick black hoodies and soft cotton undershirts. I consider the snowpants.

At my second favorite thrift, everyone is dressed to impress and filling carts with wrestling shirts for the internet. A tall woman whines to a tall man about needing to “butch up” her “slutty outfits” and a baby dyke dressed like Rayanne Graff catches my eye across the aisle and gives me a significant look. I caress a quilted flannel that takes me back to 2008. Up on the second floor the heat vents are humming steadily, blasting the farty air with nearly visible billows of dry heat that set the empty hangers clacking. I work fast, my nose drying out, my sinuses beginning to ache. I used to thrift like I was shopping for a new identity, but these days I’m steadfast, hunting down what feels like it is already mine. Still, I can’t help but pull out spectacular garments for a moment of admiration before I put them back for someone else. A plaid suit. A beautiful pair of soleless Nikes.

A few years ago I spent a tornado warning in this building. When the siren went off I couldn’t think of a single basement in a three block radius so I opted for familiarity as the next best criteria for safety, dragging my soul sister behind me while she prayed to the churning sky. Once inside we settled in among the shoes and she tried out comedy sketches on me, pulling on her stage persona and earning startled glances and suppressed laughter from the older women pairing shoes around us. I greet that memory as I leave the building, touching the doors where we placed our hands, eager to exit onto the trash strewn street. I offer thanks up to the low, grey clouds, gratitude that this woman loved me enough at 18 to still be a part of my days now. I text her a picture of the quilted flannel and she understands that I’ve seen a ghost.

Despite two washes and a night on the porch my thrifted thermals still reek, faintly. All day at work the fug of too many bodies and not enough laundry soap rises up from my chest whenever I run up the stairs or get hot with emotion. When no one is watching I pull the neckline of my shirt over my nose, breathing in the scent of shared humanity and allowing the relief of plenty to wash over me. Eventually this shirt will smell like me and I won’t be able to sniff it out, the allium and roses of my sweat and soap too familiar for perception, but for now it conjures up the train in summer, strangers pressed close in the crush of rush hour. I am briefly 18 again, dirty and happy and free in someone else’s unwashed flannel, slowly becoming mine.