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Inside: Cultural Sausage. ~ Ludic Lists. ~ Skullbucket. Outside: Hey! You! Do you live in
Philadelphia? Do you live somewhere that isn't unreasonably far
from Philadelphia? Then why not come hear me and a bunch of
other, more famous, people read at the 215 Festival? Do it!
I implore you.
"Ric Flair costumes" "Rouge the Bat nude" "pictures of Joey Heatherton" "dufus word origin" "speeches for eighteenth birthday" "Muzzies" "ass reamers" "teeth plaque conspiracy Metallica" |
09.22.2004
My wife, in particular, does not
like the overcoat. My co-worker Stephen (and do I complain that he goes by 'Stephen' rather than 'Steve', even though I think of it as a pompous affectation? I certainly do not), who also does not like the overcoat, does not even believe that it's an overcoat. He says that an overcoat is something that goes over a men's suit and that is made out of an entirely different material and with a different cut than what I wear. What you have there, he will often say, is a raincoat, or possibly a trenchcoat, but definitely not an overcoat. I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that. I don't think it's his prerogative to tell me what is and isn't an overcoat. Besides, he is one to talk, with that ridiculous satin baseball jacket he wears sometimes. It is my wife, though, who does not like it most of all. She is well aware of how much I enjoy the overcoat so she always attempts to couch her disdain in language that suggests she is really trying to help me out: "You don't want to wear your nice overcoat to the party, do you?", she will say. "You're sure to spill something on it and ruin it." Or she will say that I must spend a fortune on dry cleaning it. Her favorite tactic is to ask if I am hot. Aren't you hot?, she asks, and I readily admit I bring this on myself because I wear the overcoat even in the summer. I don't think she really cares if I am hot. She wants me to take off the overcoat and that's that. But it's hard to come up with a response to this because quite honestly, the overcoat does get a bit hot in August for example. I never have anything to say to this other than that I sweat a lot when I wear it and isn't she always telling me it would be healthy if I lose some weight? And if she says so what I say, sweating makes you lose weight. She just says, there are better ways to lose weight. I know that. I know there are better ways. My friend Carl, too, does not like the overcoat. Or maybe this is unfair: when you get down to cases I'm sure that he doesn't really care about it one way or the other, but he is one of those people who thinks if you are a man you have to always ride your man friends. I don't understand this personally and I think you have to be an especial hard-ass to give your friends so much trouble. Anyway, Carl has this whole thing about how I am getting a reputation. What kind of a reputation, is what I want to know. I ask him this and he says, well, you know, what kind of a person wears the same item of clothing every day? A flake, is what kind. When your whole identity gets wrapped up in one article of clothing, that's a sign of neurosis. It's warped. To this I usually respond with something like oh, so you're saying Lincoln must have been a really big flake, for wearing that stovepipe hat. He just fixes me with this pained look. "You're not Lincoln," he says. Sometimes he will expand on this and point out that besides, Lincoln didn't really wear that hat all the time anyway. Do you think he wore that thing in Cabinet meetings, that every time he went anywhere he was wearing that stupid hat? It's just what he's wearing in cartoons and drawings of him, Carl says, it's just a sort of visual shorthand meaning 'Lincoln' and I bet he probably hardly ever wore it at all. This sounds stupid to me and I say so, and I point out that if he never wore the hat then how come everybody and his brother draws him wearing it? It's around then that the whole thing goes off onto a tangent which I am grateful for because quite frankly I'm sick of hearing about it. There have been a few times with Carl that I have wanted to shout "Fuck Lincoln!" But as we live in Illinois this is probably not a good idea. If I were honest with myself I would have to say that I have had my doubts about the overcoat as well. I think it's very stylish. It has that little gold link chain across the back which I like and the plain inset thing, and the cut of it fits me perfectly. Usually coats have sleeves that are too short for my long arms but this one, it seems like it was made especially for me. And there's just something about the way it looks, I don't know. But, okay, I wear it all the time, with anything, and maybe that's excessive although who makes the rules for things like that? And more than that the person who I argue with the most about the overcoat is me. I have carried on a running battle in my head over it for nearly a year now. I am almost convinced that I don't so much like the overcoat as I like the idea of the overcoat, or to be more precise, the idea of myself in the overcoat. I don't want to say that it's an attempt to be charmingly eccentric or anything but the fact remains that I am wound up in the idea of what the overcoat does that has little or nothing to do with the garment itself. No one is winning this debate anytime soon, though. I once mentioned this situation to my shrink, how I am the only one who really seems to like the overcoat and even I have my doubts. He asked me what I would do if my wife just asked me to stop wearing it altogether. I said I didn't think she would ever do such a thing. But just for the sake of the argument, he said, in a tone of voice that struck me as more than a little impatient. Let's say that she made you choose between her wishes and your overcoat. You wouldn't let something as meaningless as an old coat jeopardize your marriage, would you? I suppose in retrospect he was attempting to construct a metaphor but if so, it was a terribly inept one, I think. Wait a minute, I said, what kind of person is she, then? She's doing the same thing by making me choose, isn't she? She's letting an old coat jeopardize our marriage. He said something about the spirit of shared compromise or sacrifice or something, but I had stopped listening by then. What kind of a shrink is he, anyway? I was wondering. Who would ask a question like that? Someday I will wake up and the overcoat will be gone. I'm sure of it. I am not suggesting that my wife would do something like sell it or throw it out or donate it to the Goodwill without my consent, but I honestly believe that it will disappear someday and I will have no control over it. I wonder what I will do then. I wonder if I should be ready, and if, being ready, I will already have made it go away. |
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| TODAY'S DRIFTWOOD: "You must not thing that feeling is everything...art is nothing without form." (Gustave Flaubert) |