A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

Stephen Crane

Saturday, February 20, 2010

A polka dot shirt, and man, oh man . . .

This happened a little over thirty years ago. It was the early mid-Seventies, when disco was not yet a joke, or at least not an over-whelmingly embarrassing one.  The Seventies, as a decade, have so much to answer for—from elephant bell-bottoms, to afros on Midwestern farm kids of obviously Germanic ancestry, to lime green leisure suits—that disco sometimes seems to be the least of its sins. At any rate, I was working at the time as an optician, and managed an optical shop in the largest mall in the area. I think the mall has fallen on some hard times recently, but at that time it was the place to shop for three or four counties.


The store was just off the center courtyard-like area, and unlike many of its neighbors, had no rear access to the service corridors. This meant that every morning I walked about two blocks through the mall from an end entrance to the front gate of my store.  Most mornings I would see the same people as they all made their way to their respective jobs. Sometimes the place we would pass each other would shift a bit because they had changed jobs. This was especially true of the younger men and women who worked in the clothing stores.

There was one young lady in particular—isn't there always—who seemed to have worked in at least four or five stores by the time the incident I'm working up to occurred. She was physically very attractive, and depending which employer she had at the time her look had varied from the round-heeled girl next door, to disco queen in CFM shoes, to stylish hooker with a heart of ice. She always had a warm, almost eager, greeting for any of the men she passed as she made her way to her current job. Except me. Me she passed not only without a smile or greeting, but with not even the slightest acknowledgment I existed.

I'm pretty sure it was not because of something I had said, because aside from an occasional "hello" or "good morning" the first few weeks I worked there, I had never spoken to her in either of our lives. I would almost be willing to believe it was my looks, but I think the evidence was actually slightly in my favor:  I showered daily, my clothes were clean and well pressed, and while I had never impressed anyone with my rugged good looks, they had never caused anyone to run screaming into the night either. On the other hand, some of the males she did greet with unabashed enthusiasm were obviously the kind of guys who had been voted most likely to spread VD in prison by their high school class, so it didn't seem to be my life-style, or sense of style, that was the cause of this shunning.

I was nonplussed, not to mention puzzled. I was as comfortable as one can get with the idea that sometimes people just don't like you, but my ego demanded a cause. Now my ego has accepted, with reservations, the concept that many things happen it will not like for no knowable reason; but I was young then and if you were going to reject my existence with that kind of totality, my ego demanded a reason.

Anyway, enough, as they say, with the prologue.

I had bought a new suit. Now most of my suits at that time tended toward the conservatively stylish end of the spectrum. My wardrobe contained, among other things, the usual pale blue leisure suit, and tan, dark brown, medium blue, and gray business suits of a somewhat conservative cut. Man made fibers were featured more prominently in the weaves than I was comfortable with, but the less expensive cloth actually fit into my budget. One very seldom got much beyond the bargain racks on an optician's salary.

There came a time, however, when I bought this suit. It was an off-white that I think the maker called vanilla. Please keep in mind that this was the Seventies. We had not yet started snickering at the scene where John Travolta is walking that walk up the street in his white suit pants and vest, paint can securely held in each hand. My suit was made of a very soft wool with an extremely subtle herringbone weave that kept it from looking like flannel. I secretly imagined it gave me something of a Tom Wolfe look, and I bought two shirts to wear with it. One was rust orange, and the other was a deep, chocolate brown.

The tie that went with the orange shirt had a lime green background, and bubble-like things of various colors. It actually placed in the top two or three of a Land's End ugly tie contest several years ago. It was not a good decade for neckties. Not only were they wide enough to qualify as bibs, they were, for the most part, a thick, stiff polyester, which could not be tied in a knot smaller than a pineapple. As an added bonus the patterns were often a bit busy in much the same way a Liberace arpeggio was. As I remember it, the tie that went with the brown shirt was a complicated pattern of tans and browns that seemed to say they had been going for a striped design when they happened to stumble on this totally hideous variation.

Now, the truly depraved part of all this is that we all thought we looked good. We were hot. Women, for reasons that have never been adequately explained, actually approved of men dressed that way. The point is, despite our revisionist attitudes, that at that time my suit, shirt and tie were exactly right.

One Monday morning, he said finally getting around to his story, I put on my new suit to wear to work for the first time. I decided that morning to wear the brown shirt. After getting dressed and putting the final touches on my hair and beard, I looked in the bathroom mirror. I looked marvelous. I was so far beyond cool Swanson could have used me to store TV dinners.

When I got to the mall I walked into the mall with a bit more bravado than was normal and held my head up smiling at one and all. I looked good, and felt as good as I looked. People smiled at me from across the courtyard, and a couple pointed me out to a companion. To top it off, that girl actually had a big smile for me as we passed. It was amazing.

I let myself into the store, and saw that not only was my zipper open (I know you saw that coming), but the tail of my shirt was hanging out of my fly looking for all the world like a horse's—well, like a horse that may or may not have been excited. I spent the rest of the day in the spare exam room.

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