What I Wore When
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.I never made the best-dressed list. Not yet, anyway. I never thought about clothes, assuming it was a vanity and I had loftier concerns in mind all my life. I drove my mother crazy. Once she gave me money for shoes I came home with Wellingtons. I know it took ten years off her life. I must have looked like a Nazi to her. It never changed. Years later Barbara saw me walking towards her when we met at the beach and she just up and dumped me. Temporarily thank god! My postal job was the best I ever had for one good reason. They supplied uniforms. My closet filled up with blue shirts, navy pants, three kinds of hats. I just put on what was clean, nothing else to consider. In 1979 I had to show up in court. I won't explain why right now but suffice to say I wasn't a criminal or being tried as a Nazi because of the boots. It was a civil matter but my lawyer advised me to wear a suit. So I went to Mark James, a classy shop on Broadway, and said, "Mark, I need a suit. It's the only one I'm ever going to get so make it classic and conservative (court!) good enough to last my lifetime and appropriate for any occasion requiring a suit including my own funeral." I got a dark blue three-piece, a white shirt, and a tie. As you know, about once a decade (although it hasn't happened in the last thirty years) I succumb to the notion that I ought to become a normal person - like the time I showed up at the government employment office having decided I should have a job of some sort and wound up selling my counsellor drugs. So one day about a year after buying my suit I decided to dress better generally and went to see Mark James again. "Mark, I want to dress better but I haven't got a clue about fashion or what I should look like." He sat me down in one of his great overstuffed easychairs, brought me a cappuccino, an ashtray, and a stack of incredibly expensive Italian men's fashion magazines. "Relax, have a coffee, look through these and find a look that appeals to you." Ten minutes later all I could remember seeing were gorgeous Italian homosexuals in jeans and army surplus jackets. It was the look that year I think because Jimmy Carter wore that outfit a few times, trying to look like just a regular guy I guess. It was also the look every year for me. That's exactly what I'd been wearing since about 1950. I thanked Mark, explaining on my way out that fashion was insane. I wore my suit exactly three more times. Once, as a lark, on a dinner date with Patricia when I thought it would be fun to pretend to be sophisticates. The meal was priced accordingly and I never tried that trick again. About a year later at Ken Pickering's wedding, and then again in 1989. My neice was getting married and I decided to defy my own principles by wearing my suit for no reason but to please my mother. When I showed up at her apartment in Montreal she asked, "Do you have a suit?" Yes, mom. "Let's see it." Later, mom. She didn't trust me and I don't blame her. She probably imagined that if I did indeed have a suit I probably got it at a Nazi surplus store. She kept asking to see it and for some reason I stalled. I was in denial about even owning a suit, I guess. Sunday morning, wedding day, she insisted. So I got it out of my suitcase. "Are you sure it fits? Let me see it on you." Of course it fits. I stopped growing at age twelve for godsakes. "Please. I brought you into the world - the least you could do is try on the suit." Guess what? I stopped growing taller at twelve but I started getting fatter at forty-five. I found a seamstress two blocks away. Her day off, I begged her to save me. She did. It was still a tight squeeze but I made it. I was the laughingstock of the wedding until I assured everyone that Vancouver was always in the vanguard of fashion - "It's the west coast, you know. Same coast as California. Really. Bell-bottoms are back!" |