As I walk down the street in the potato sack I call a shirt and my mother calls a disgrace, I cannot help but beam with self-confidence and a genuine zeal for life, boasting the knowledge that I don’t care what my mother thinks anymore.
I used to be what they call a
fashionista—hot on haute couture, sharp on all that was chic. But after a full year of devoted subscriptions to Esquire and GQ, I had something of a nervous breakdown, tearing up all of my shirts, eating my ties and throwing my tied-together shoes over the telephone lines of slum neighbourhoods. Now, as I walk down Lower Jarvis in my unsightly but undeniably comfortable torso sack and plastic bags tied around my ankles with rubber bands, I can’t help but grin as passersby yell at me to get a job.
To start at the beginning: in the autumn of my 19th year, to celebrate my finally hitting puberty, I decided to get a job. I quickly scored an interview at a nearby Zara clothing outlet; during the interview the manager asked if I would be willing to spend a minimum of $500 on a new wardrobe, as the checkered pants I was wearing would be unsuitable for the workplace, though he liked “the cut of my jib”. I agreed, ignoring his obscure and presumably Jewish expression, and he hired me on the spot.
And so I began dressing better. I held a bonfire in my backyard for my old faux-argyle pocket-tees from Old Navy, and the next day began jaunting in gentle woven shirts and sauntering in dark-wash boot-cut jeans. All of a sudden, my life started to improve—girls began sweating near me in a good way, for a change, and my mother stopped threatening to disown me.
“My life started to improve—girls began
sweating near me in a good way, for a change, and my mother stopped threatening
to disown me”
“So this is self-esteem!” I exclaimed to the first dressing-room mirror to see me in my new skin.
My first day of work was a dream—I loped in with proud epaulettes on my shoulders and a bourgeois spirit in my heart. I helped lost souls find fitting shirts and blouses, and as they walked out of the store, dejectedly looking at their receipts, I seriously felt I was doing some good.
I continued like this for a number of weeks before I first noticed the man howling into a megaphone on an upturned milk crate outside the store. Standing in a plaid collared shirt with cheap chinos and sandals, he was shouting things at passersby on the street like an unfashionable Harvey Milk, if one could consider Milk fashionable to begin with.
He began by shouting catchy slogans like “The Fashion God is dead!”, “Stop the fascist fashionistas!” and “Zara’s clothes always struck me as inconveniently overpriced and sometimes kind of silly-looking!”
As it happens—I would read a few days later in the
Globe—the man was rallying against Zara because he felt he had been unjustly fired from the company after citing nihilism as a medical condition justifying his three months of sick leave. They decided to let him go, and he threatened to sue, but eventually just gave up, saying, “But what’s the point, anyway?”
Thus he began protesting Zara’s unfair policies and overpriced jeans, which is right around when I started needing to dodge tomatoes to get to work every morning.
“I have a dream,” the man exclaimed,
“that we can live in a society where a
man is judged not by the colour of
his socks, but by the integrity of his
seams!”
“I have a dream,” the man exclaimed, “that we can live in a society where a man is judged not by the colour of his socks, but by the integrity of his seams!”
A hearty cheer rose up from the crowd, and he continued:
“I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former retail workers and the sons of former customers will be able to shop together at the mall of brotherhood, and for once the customers will not feel like they’re always being judged by the salespeople just for wearing polo shirts from Sears!”
Cheers again rose from the crowd—except from one African American man who just looked very confused.
“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of posh and flair!
“I have a dream today!”
I stood in awe of this man’s dignity in spite of his sandals and real, not artificially intentional bedhead. How could he stand up against the fashion gods looking like that?
I dodged the usual fruit storm to get in through the front door, but my manager told me the bad news: that they were closing the branch until all this blew over. He then walked outside, dejected, and got hit in the face with a watermelon.
“This fight is bigger than both of our pants put together. Nobody is closer to you than your clothes.”
I re-emerged from the store to find the crowd dissipating, and decided to engage the urban rebel about his philosophy. His name was Tobias Stoddard, and he told me words that I usually forget but currently remember: “My friend, this fight is bigger than both of our pants put together. Nobody is closer to you than your clothes. Until you respect your clothes as you respect yourself, you will be cursed with the disregard you show them every day.”
Confused, I asked, “Did you just lay a curse on me?”
But with that, he vaporized, a cloud of pinkish dust remaining in his place. I contemplated his words—was it true that I did not respect my clothes? Was I lacking a personal relationship between fabric and man that ought to exist between every soul and its coverings? His words echoed through my head for the better part of the following five minutes, after which I promptly went home and, wet from a panic-stricken sweat, collapsed unconscious lying parallel to my floor atop a large rectangular box as I do every night.
The following morning I awoke with confused anxiety, and decided to immediately get dressed. I opened my closet and threw on my usual work clothes—black pants, a striped shirt and a skinny black tie, but they felt tighter than usual. I heard a distinct snicker choke out from my trousers. All of a sudden, my shirt started to undo itself! I tried to get it off but my tie had me by the throat. My other clothes began tormenting me, too—my belt tightened around my gut, t-shirts were flying off the shelves, and I heard a some very snide racial slurs coming from a particularly stiff pea coat.
I began to feel so self-conscious and neurotic that I tore my clothes off like an ancient Israelite in mourning, screamed and ran out of my house.
I never did see Tobias again, nor did I ever return to work. The entire experience left me jaded and put off of fashion forever. And so, I reflect, Tobias taught me a valuable lesson that day—that no matter who you’re trying to impress, you should always wear a potato sack; partly because it’s easier, partly to avoid pea coats making anti-Semitic remarks when you’re not looking.
