Fairbanks Finery

The dressing room at Big Ray’s in Fairbanks doesn’t have a mirror. Don’t people up here want to know if they look cute in stuff before they buy it? That amazes me. That people could be so completely focused on the functional. But looking around, I can see the freedom that affords folks.

I had to go to Big Ray’s because my size 10 black Levi’s which I brought to Alaska to be my second pair of pants, having one of my ‘I want to travel super light’ moments, well, those Levi’s had become life-threateningly tight.

What has happened to my size 10 self? Two months of upset eating, entitlement drinking, handfuls of nuts. Handfuls like a big fat man would grab. And cake. I ate slices of my friend’s rum cake, the edges dripping with butter and liquor, standing at the kitchen sink, furtive like I was shooting crack in my dim kitchen while the dishwasher hummed. It’s not been a healthy time.

Big Ray’s sells Carhartt’s. That’s the kind of store it is. Serious, functional clothes. Clothes you could wear to sleep in the snow with your dog. Big fucker clothes. Alaskan clothes. But amazingly in the very small stack of women’s jeans I found a pair of black size 12, mid-rise, skinny jeans and went to find the dressing room. A man with a set of keys led me to what looked like a closet, knocked hard on the door to make sure no one was lingering there, and then used the key to let me in. It was a drywall phone booth basically with no mirror. I tried to take a picture but could only capture part of the ambiance.

So the black jeans fit and so I bought them without knowing whether they make me look cute. When in Rome, right? I can do functional. I’m not some snowflake. I am one tough badass chick who can buy black jeans blind. That’s how badass I am. That’s what Alaska has done for me already.