As a brief history of my sense of
style and shopping habits, let me describe some aspects of my acquisition of
clothes. First, I feel that, at 60 percent off retail, clothes start to become
appropriately priced. In addition, I am also drawn to the rack of misfit
clothes, left to fade into obscurity by their peculiar pattern and color
combinations.
Christa and I started dating about four
years after I graduated from college. Most of the misfit clothes that I had
acquired during the previous decade were still in my possession. I don’t
believe that she took me on as a project, per se, but I do know she has worked
on me to not make an ass of myself, at least while in her presence. For some
reason, any poor behavior and, more importantly, poor fashion reflects chiefly
on women. As the primary subscribers to fashion magazines and as the presumedly
more-refined sex, they bear sole societal responsibility for what gets let out
of the house, fashionwise.
Her fashion critiques came in the
following forms:
“Honey, you really shouldn’t.”
“It’s on sale for a reason.”
“I’m afraid you’ll be arrested for
impersonating a drug trafficker.”
Over time, we worked out the basic
arrangements of clothing acquisition for me. I can continue to apply my
60-percent rule, but she has been granted semi-universal veto power. She won a
bigger victory in reducing my donations timeline from infinite to a couple of
years. Needless to say, there will be some snazzy gentlemen hitting the soup
kitchen this year.
For the wedding, I was allowed to
find my own tux, albeit with a veto option and innumerable helpful hints. My
search began. The first store stocked their own tuxes. This allowed them to
offer rentals at a reduced rate, compared to shops ordering from what is,
apparently, a tuxedo super warehouse located somewhere in this great land. I
walked in, and it didn’t smell quite right. It seemed like a perfect environment
for an illegal bingo parlor: something old, something smoky, and something a
bit metallic. I pulled the first jacket off the mannequin and tried it on for
style. It felt like it was moving. When the older woman behind the counter
asked whether I needed help, her voice was a little worn, perhaps from a late
night of bingo calling. I asked to try on a jacket in something closer to my
size. She returned with one from the back room. This one smelled smoky, and I
think I detected a hint of roasted meat. Apparently, the storeroom backed up to
a bar, allowing the stench of its patrons and their indulgences to continually
make its way through the walls and vents and into the tuxes. I think she saw me
retching slightly and said that this one had just been returned, but everything
got laundered before it was officially issued again. I felt I was wearing a tux
that had been worn for a viewing—by the motionless, horizontal attendee no
less—and it may or may not have been laundered yet. I began weeping and ran from
the store.
My second shop was a step up,
considering it had no unusual smells upon entering. It had a more standard
setup. Mannequins displayed the various styles, and it offered a jacket in the
appropriate size to try on. Then there was the book, Jim’s Formalwear. At some point in the past, Jim apparently
acquired every rentable tuxedo in America and brought them all to some place
I’ll call Tuxedoville. He then published a book showing all the styles and
accompanying ties, shirts, shoes, etc. He sent this book to every place of
business interested in renting tuxes and a seeming monopoly was created.
Tuxedos in a couple of weeks, that’s Jim’s promise.
Our assistant in this store was
slightly competent, but far from helpful. As I was trying to figure out what
vest style I liked best, a woman in purple scrubs with a stethoscope around her
neck came in and asked if she could help me.
“With what exactly…doctor?” I said,
with an uncertain grimace on my face.
“Becky said you had some
questions.”
Something about this didn’t
compute. I was standing in a tux-rental room weighing my vest options, and
someone in scrubs with medical examination equipment was asking me if she could
help. Was she at lunch? I didn’t
specifically say what my questions were, but I felt the situation implied they
weren’t of a medicinal nature.
“It has been a while since my last
physical, and I want to make sure everything is still working as intended,” I
answered, trying to establish what her profession was.
Apparently part of the bridal shop
team, she was pushy and overbearing—and seemed to want an order placed before
she went back on duty. I may have been mistaken to assume that she was off duty
or did anything at all regarding patient care. Maybe she was a doctor of
fashion, or maybe she shopped like me, but at the uniform store sale rack. I
didn’t last long with her. I thanked her for her help and said I was going to
mull it over a bit. I asked Christa what she thought about the vest options.
She said, “I don’t care. Get what
you like.”
This was the most jarring sentence
I had ever heard. After all the work on refining my wardrobe, all the effort to
make the wedding day as special and perfect as she had dreamed, she had given
me full authority for the decision on vest style—the same vest, albeit under a
jacket most of the time, that would be photographed and recorded as a part of
our eternal wedding memories, until the end of history, as what I wore on our
wedding day. I wasn’t ready for this responsibility, even less for being given
this responsibility voluntarily. What
part of my checkered fashion past gives you the confidence to so casually bestow
upon me this momentous decision? This was a pressure cooker. All the
mannequins headlessly stared at me, waiting for me to act. I used the only safe
retreat I had.
“Let’s think it over at lunch,
shall we?”
At lunch, we solidified our
agreement that we didn’t like Dr. Fashion or her establishment. It was an
improvement over the first shop, but we still didn’t have confidence in them.
We did not lack confidence in their ability to correctly place an order, but in
their ability to care or to provide service after the sale.
Next we went to a Gentlemen’s
Clothiers, which, by title alone, conveyed the “We are not satisfied unless you are satisfied” message we were looking for. In addition, they were actually
friendly and had a seamstress on staff, in case last minute alterations were
needed. They explained upfront that everyone gets tuxes from the Tux Tyrant,
Jim, through his full-page color catalog. The prices were comparable, and the
calming assurance of their conduct sold us. I also detected no smoked meat,
parlor games, or surgical instruments in their establishment.
The last tuxedo-finding information
I will pass along comes from one of my groomsmen, who I will briefly channel to
relay the story in the first person.
(Start channel)
I went into the store to get my
measurements and made brief introductions. The gentleman said this should be
painless and drew his measuring tape, like a menacing sword of truth. A polite
female employee grabbed the clipboard, and judgment time was upon me.
He asked, “What waist-size pants do
you usually wear?”
“Thirty-six or thirty-eight,” I
replied.
He let out a disbelieving, or
perhaps disapproving, groan as he wrapped the measuring tape around my naval.
“Let’s put down forty-two.”
This was a blow. I tried to smirk
it off, but the ruler didn’t lie. But I did wear thirty-six or thirty-eight;
check the label. I guess there could be a little bit of love that hangs out
over the jeans, but I still control it. I’m too young to pull my pants over my
naval.
In the meantime, he had measured my
shoulders and announced, “Athletic build.”
“Yes. Did you hear that? An
athletically built forty-two, baby. I’m calling the wife to tell her a real man
is coming home.”
