From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel

by Alex Gilvarry

  “Congratulations. Now go make me a dress and don’t call me back until it’s absolutely perfect.”

  Marcela came in a few days a week to take appointments and assist with clients. She reminded me of Michelle in a way. They both grew up in Westchester and wore a lot of vintage DVF. This resemblance had an unfortunate effect on me. I became confused and regretful, suddenly missing the Sundays Michelle and I’d had together. Those lazy sun-filled hours spent in her handicap dorm room with alcohol emanating from our bodies, mixing with the odor of morning sex. Most of these longings about our past together resurfaced only when Marcela started showing up.

  It pains me dearly to know that Michelle has taken it upon herself to dramatize our relationship for the stage. All of these true feelings and recollections I’d had after I dumped her are suddenly tainted. But who is the real dupe, I ask? The one who has been wrongly imprisoned in this cell? Or the one who has fallen into the giant publicity trap set out by the current administration—that I am the fashion terrorist?

  One Friday night in May 2006, after a long, busy week, I met Rudy for dinner at DuMont in Brooklyn. Who do I see there but Michelle, now a college graduate, five pounds lighter and wearing a new pixie haircut. Her fantastic black eye shadow brought out a dangerous quality I had never known her to possess. Femme fatale meets Twiggy. Little did I know how prominent this dark side of her would become. She was dining across from this Chinese guy who looked like he had just gotten off work from Procter & Gamble, the human resources department. There was no avoiding them. The two were seated up front in the window, and it was obvious Michelle had spotted me the moment I popped in the door. So I worked up some courage and went over to their table.

  “Hello,” I said. I was being chirpy, which meant I was taking it badly.

  Michelle matched my chirpiness: “Boy? Hi. What are you doing here?” Then she released an apologetic glance at her date, which pissed me off royally.

  “Same as you. Dinner.” I turned to the Asian American and introduced myself: “Boy Hernandez.” Then I pivoted back to Michelle.

  “Well, I just thought I should say hello,” I said to her.

  “You thought you should say hello? So you felt obligated.”

  “Let’s not do this. How are you?”

  “I’m great. I caught your profile in W last month. You came off like I thought you would.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Like someone else entirely.”

  The waitress creeping up behind me with their dinner proved a good opportunity for an exit, just shy of making Michelle lose her appetite completely. “Well, you two enjoy your entrées. I’ll call you sometime,” I said.

  “Please don’t.”

  “Nice meeting you, guy.”

  I was incapable of enjoying a meal here while my ex devoured a half chicken on a date with a guy who had hints of Hoboken, New Jersey, wrinkled into his dress shirt. I found Rudy seated outside in the backyard garden, kissed her on both cheeks, and told her we were leaving, just as the breadbasket hit the table.

  “But why?” she said. “It’s so lovely out here.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and quickly made something up. “I’m refluxing. Let’s get Japanese.”

  “I had Japanese for lunch.”

  “Then let’s get Thai. Who gives a shit?”

  “Okay, we’ll go.”

  “Only do me a favor,” I said. “Walk with me through the front room and hold my hand.”

  “I see now, yeah?” I could always count on Rudy, even when I wasn’t being fair to her. She gave me a big kiss on the mouth, and we left, holding hands, skirting Michelle’s table. Rudy’s four-inch heels delivered superbly on their effect as we patiently walked out of the restaurant.

  That night, drunk out of my head on a bottle of cheap rosé, I sent Michelle several regrettable text messages. After reviewing the transcript of our fight that had been stored in my phone, I called her the next day to apologize. To my surprise, she accepted. I learned she was living in Brooklyn now. Her nana’s town house still hadn’t sold, so Michelle would be staying there until it was off the market. We met for coffee and had dinner. Both of us, it seemed, felt the same: incredibly alone. As our postrelationship by nature ruled out the prospect of love, we gave in to love without love. Lust. We started to see each other again but with unspoken ground rules. It was understood, I presumed, that we were having a casual affair. The sex was not loud or angry, like I had expected, but carried a certain music to it, something soft I couldn’t name. It wasn’t perfect, but it was right.

  Knowing what I know now about the play she has written about me, do I regret carrying on with her? I can’t answer that. How can we predict what others are capable of doing? How can we even suspect where we will be tomorrow, or the day after?

  Even in prison, I don’t know what will happen, because nothing is certain. Nothing has been decided yet. And nothing that has been promised to me over the past four and a half months can be relied upon. Though I trust my special agent and appreciate our talks together, he’s beginning to seem more and more powerless as time goes by. Because nothing changes about my situation. The more we discuss, the more it seems that we go nowhere. And the only certainty, I’m beginning to believe, is that tomorrow I will still be here.

  1. The play would premiere at the Eugene O’Neill Theater—on Broadway.

  2. Broadway.

  3. According to IMDb, Lou Diamond Philips will be starring as Yasser Esam Hamdi in Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, currently in production.

  4. Vivienne Cho has publicly denied this allegation.

  5. There is no evidence that a dress was ever commissioned on behalf of Michelle Obama.

  6. Organization owned by IMG that produces Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

  THE FALL OF (B)OY

  by Gil Johannessen

  From W, March 2006, Vol. 3, Issue #23

  IT’S THE END of New York Fashion Week, boys and girls, and what have we learned? That the young, budding designer has finally secured a place among the established. At least in New York, where out of the 200-plus designers who showed collections for the fall 2006 season, nearly half of them have come along within the past five years. In an industry whose survival depends on new talent (“industry,” hell, way of life), it’s been damn near impossible for the young and restless to penetrate Bryant Park canvas. It used to be that if your name wasn’t Miuccia and inscribed on Italian leather handbags, you couldn’t get a cab on Seventh Avenue, let alone a spot in the tent.

  But look up, budding designer. You now have a foothold in New York, and you don’t need a fragrance deal with LVMH. It’s called the New Designers’ Showcase. Among those unknown were the American labels Plaque, Urbane, Jeffrey Milk, and, most notably, the Brooklyn-based (B)oy, brainchild of the designer Boy Hernandez.

  I caught up with Hernandez recently at his studio in Williamsburg along the waterfront. Some buyers have already braved the L train for an appointment at the (B)oy showcase. Just so you know, Couture devotee, leaving the island of Manhattan for a showcase was entirely unheard‑of a year ago.

  A native of Manila, Hernandez came of age in fashion school with Philip Tang. Legend has it, the two designers were separated at birth. Tang transferred to Central Saint Martins in London before jumping the Atlantic for New York City, landing a job as a pattern maker for Marc Jacobs. Hernandez stayed behind with lesser ambitions, fine-tuning his craft in Makati City by dabbling in bridal wear before working up enough nerve (and pesos) to come to New York, his home since 2002.

  “I literally had one suitcase, a dress form, and a Singer when I started out in Bushwick,” he recalls. “I made a work desk out of a steel door that looked like it had been kicked in by the cops.”

  The (B)oy operation is based out of Hernandez’s large live‑in studio located in a former toothpick factory. When I arrive, Hernandez greets me in tight whitewashed jeans and a jersey A.P.C. hoodie that he’s appropriated by cutting off the sleeves, wearing it like
an open waistcoat over an old, paint-spattered T‑shirt. The spatter recalls Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm.

  Though his hyperexuberance suggests a certain towering grandeur, he is strikingly petite. He stomps around the beat‑up factory floors in a pair of all-white Nike high-tops that look certifiably orthopedic.

  (B)oy wasn’t the toast of fashion week. Diane von Furstenberg slayed all with her animal furs in fox, goat, and Mongolian lamb. Vivienne Cho, whom Hernandez has worked for in the past, took apart structured conventions and rebuilt them with her power suits for the millennium. In the New Designers’ Showcase, however, the standout was (B)oy.

  For the past two years, the label’s knitwear line has been offered out of consignment shops like INA and Tokyo 7. “Before you knew it, I was getting calls for more,” Hernandez explained. The knitwear line could also be manufactured close to home in Brooklyn, where all of (B)oy is currently made. The B in (B)oy, closed off in parentheses, stands for Brooklyn, a little-known fact.

  The label has no boutique, and to date has only been sold at boutiques and consignment shops in Williamsburg, SoHo, the Lower East Side, and Los Angeles. All of that is about to change with the recent acquisition by Barneys. Next fall women will be able to find (B)oy alongside Rag & Bone and Thakoon, as well as a most familiar name for Hernandez, Philip Tang 2.0.

  “It’s amazing, really, to be acquired by Barneys. If you were to tell me when I was in fashion school that this is where I’d be in five years, I would have asked you:

  ‘What are YOU retarded or something?’ ”

  Hernandez isn’t the most eloquent designer on the block, but he might be the most sincere. It’s a quality women seek out in their clothes, and one that can easily be derived from (B)oy. From his silhouetted evening gowns with just a splash of color to his baggy wool sweaters, comfort never seems to be lost in the mix, and neither does glamour.

  “I found every article in the (B)oy collection to be honest,” said Lena Frank, Barneys’ artistic director.

  “I’ve always thought of fashion as my gift to women, even when I was a kid,” Hernandez attests. “I wanted to do something for them in the only way that I knew how. Every designer will tell you they were first trying to win over a woman’s heart. You know, get the girl. I don’t care how gay they are now…

  It’s ALL about WOMEN.”

  When asked how the label has changed since the beginning, Hernandez explains that Williamsburg has inspired significant transformations in the (B)oy style. No longer is every article cloaked in moody black or sallow white. “That was Bushwick’s influence, initially. Like I said, I designed for the people around me. Marginal hipsters are moody. They stick to dark and neutral.

  “But I’ve become much more interested in color since really getting into the films of Wong Kar Wai. Have you ever seen Happy Together? It’s black and white, but then there are a few scenes in brilliant color. That film is also about passion. ‘How’s passion expressed?’ I asked myself. Saint Laurent was great at capturing passion in his clothes, so I looked at a lot of old YSL from the early seventies.”

  With the convergence of all of these influences, Hernandez found a niche that would prove the cornerstone of Strange Fruit, his fall collection featured in the New Designers’ Showcase.

  Strange Fruit takes its name from the song most famously performed by Billie Holiday—a song with a very political message about American racism.

  “I thought a POLITICAL MESSAGE in the collection would be appropriate since we’re LIVING IN such A POLITICAL TIME with the WAR ON TERROR and everything.

  “Sure it’s the designer’s job to predict the future a season or two ahead of time. But we also need to capture the moment, am I wrong?”

  By no means. And that’s what makes (B)oy so relevant. For his first collection in 2004, Hernandez included a black burka that was completely transparent. The model, tastefully visible underneath, wore a sequined G‑string and matching pasties. I happened to be at that first show. The patch of sequins down below shimmered like diamonds in the ruff. But at the time, no one quite knew what to think.

  Political statement or sign of the times, Hernandez was playing with the possibilities of the silhouette, subverting our image of sexy, and calling attention to those parts of the world where women lack the most basic freedoms. The see-through burka added a context to a collection that was otherwise off everyone’s map.

  “I closed the show with that burka, not to start controversy, but because a friend of mine at the time was wearing a lot of dishdashas, you know, those Muslim gowns. By putting the burka out front on the runway, I was exploring our collective fears about Islam. Although I don’t think I was as self-aware of its political impact as I would be now.”

  Boy is a designer of circumstance. He matches floral patterns with dark silhouettes. He rips passion out of thread, maintaining comfort in chic ready‑to‑wear even as he makes a bildungsroman with its style. If this is his gift to women, let us hope it’s one that will keep on giving. Season after season.

  Pieces from the (B)oy fall collection are soon to be available at Barneys.

  News to Me…

  I now have a lawyer. The lawyer I’ve been asking for since I got here. Not the measly personal representative they keep telling me about (and who I have yet to meet), but a civilian lawyer from New York. Ted Catallano, of Catallano & Catallano & Associates. Apparently Ted’s been my lawyer all along; I just didn’t know it. The letter I’ve received from him is postmarked July 23 (over three months ago) and bears the return address of 35 West Twenty-fourth Street. It goes without saying, the letter came to me already opened, with some phrases redacted. My, the censorship that goes on here! I consistently fail to see the relevance in what they choose to black out.

  I shall paraphrase the letter. My attorney informs me that he was hired by my publicist, Ben Laden, on behalf of my parents “who remain alive and well.” Ted has gone ahead and filed a writ of HABEAS CORPUS1 (and here the words have been redacted). He has petitioned that I be returned to the United States and charged with a crime or released at once. It is a short letter but very effective. Sound logic in the last bit: released at once. Since I have not committed any crime whatsoever, I remain confident that I shall be returned to America, where I plan to resume my life, the one I had before I became Detainee No. 227.

  Ted writes that he is going through procedures in order to meet with me, and that as he drafts this letter he is awaiting clearance from the Pentagon to fly to No Man’s Land. “See you soon,” he concludes. His closing salutation has been redacted.

  I strain to understand what crime Ted imagines I’ll be charged with. Knowing? Maybe that was my only crime. But knowing what? I’m a patsy, have I made that clear? A flunky, a pawn. Pawns are always the first ones to go. Soon, when you look up “patsy” in any reputable encyclopedia you’ll have your picture of Oswald holding his rifle and me, Boy Hernandez, cross-referenced with “fashion terrorist,” “world-class lackey,” and “failure.” Oh, the shame I’ve brought upon my family! I can only imagine their reactions to the headlines. COUTERROR PLOT THWARTED! BOY HERNANDEZ, FASHION TERRORIST! If my father’s dementia hasn’t completely taken over (he was very sick last we spoke), then hopefully his idea of his only son hasn’t changed. Papa, believe that I am a patsy in all this; believe that, like you always thought, I’m too dim-witted to have pulled off whatever CLASSIFIED offense they’re saying I’ve committed.

  Papa, mahal mo pa ba ako? Do you still love me? Even after the shame I’ve brought on our name?

  Don’t buy into the term they’ve created for my current state (“detained”). I am within the walls of a prison that sits on the gulf of nowhere behind rows and rows of concertina wire. Mines, left over from a faded conflict with the communistas, litter the grounds outside the prison. Even in the bay, I’m told, there are mines. There is no way in or out of here but to be taken into custody, escorted to and fro, as far as I know. So if it is true that I am a prisoner here, then I mus
t have been arrested! Otherwise, how did I get here? Even prisoners of war must be placed under arrest. And if my captors will not admit to my arrest, then I shall increase my charge against them to, simply put, kidnapping! And kidnapping, even where I’m from, is no small offense.

  Sure, it began with the knock on the door in the middle of the night, but a kidnapping is a kidnapping is a kidnapping.

  I am willing to give my captors the benefit of the doubt—they’re Americans, after all, they deserve it. Let’s say that I have been arrested and that the crucial parts that come after the arrest (arraignment, trial by jury, etc.) were mistakenly skipped because of some loophole in the system.2 They must have their reasons, we have to assume.

  Just as I must continue to assume that my reservations with Special Agent Spyro exist simply to determine what I know about Ahmed Qureshi, aka Punjab Ami, alleged arms dealer and broker of my dreams.

  And what do I know?

  I know that the small operation in Sunset Park that had put together all of our samples for the Strange Fruit collection would never have been able to handle the Barneys order. And that the manufacturing costs on Fashion Avenue were too expensive to be covered by the advance, generous as it was.

  To further complicate matters, in April Ben got word that Neiman Marcus was now interested in acquiring my collection. They had passed on me during fashion week, but because of my profile in W, things were suddenly spinning out of control.

  Ahmed, once again, was nowhere to be found.

  “I’m not cut out for this shit on my own,” I told Ben.

  “You’re right. You have to hire more people.”

  “I just got an intern.”

  “So get three more. Will you listen to yourself? If Neiman Marcus wants a taste, that means Bergdorf Goodman too. We’re gonna make una milione! Just keep your head out of the oven.”

  Sound advice.

  By then I had begun popping Xanax by the fistful to fend off spells of anxiety. Now that I was a known designer, the little purple pills were the only things that could get me through a day.