The Clothes Make the Man, Woman, Etc.

"Let's play dress-up," I told myself, in words not so foppish or dandy. Home alone, I was not sure anyone was listening.

"I'm tired of nothing more fancy or formal than jeans, T-shirts (long- or short-sleeved), sweaters, casual summer shoes in winter, matching or unmatching socks, deodorant-off days, pajama bottoms off-screen from the Zoom camera, and the absence of mouthwash that would have played a supporting role in any 'normal' 3D encounter." 

Those were not my exact words. Hardly. (And what difference would it make? I was the only one here, talkin' to me is who I was talkin' to, to paraphrase Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver.") Besides, the sentence in my head was more meandering, sloppy, zig-zag, and self-referential, if you can picture that in your ears. Imagine a locution more or less halfway from the first sentence above to the second.

Why get dolled up? anyone would ask. To break up the monotonous habits of quarantine, isolation, or solitude during the coronavirus pandemic. This is not original. You hear people every day referring to "Groundhog Day," the movie. (Coincidentally, today, as I write this, it is Groundhog Day.) The Groundhog Day-ness of these days stems from the ceaseless repetition of customs and practices that no one observes or feels the effects of, except for yourself. These hamster-wheel marathons of déjà vu have become a shared code, a wordless nodding understanding, even if such recognition is only to yourself. Crazy, right? Will this sound crazier in years hence, assuming, Deo volente, that we get to the "years hence"?

So I got dressed up. I pretended I had an office to go to. Before leaving the apartment, I sprayed onto my neck an evanescent mist of Tom Ford Ombré Leather, because I like it, hope others do as well, and as a test for and a spur toward reacquiring my sense of smell post-Covid.

Again, this is not unique or singular in any way.

Is human dignity at the root of all this? I have a picture of my dad in a hospital bed, New Year's, 1958, when he nearly died of bleeding ulcers. I see shaving cream, a mirror, and the long single blade he used. Was he shaving himself, or was someone, one of his brothers, performing the kindly deed? And I see the same sort of image, with a more modern twin blade, of my dear friend Doug Sullivan in 2005. He would die a few days later. My mom, at a nursing home which she would never leave, became buoyant and brighter when the on-site hairdresser "did" Mom's hair. Whether it was cut or permed, it gave her a bounce, like a shot of espresso. The simple act of my combing her ever-matted bed-head hair, best as I could with her rake comb, yielded heart-breaking gratitude. A few days before my mother died, at 102, one of my daughters polished (painted? "did"; I don't know the technical term) her grandmother's nails. It elicited childlike pride and delight. Mom wasn't going anywhere. We knew the end was near, but uncertain as to exactly when, of course. I have a photo in my phone of her ancient, papery hand with its freshly done nails resting in my hand in her last hours.

Human dignity.

But that wasn't the primary motivation for me as I donned a blue dress shirt, a pale blue tie decorated with pink and lavender blossoms, a dark tweed sportcoat, olive-gray dress pants, and brown dress shoes (despite snow on the ground). I did not get an A+ in Proper Matching. Although the temperature was in the thirties, I wore no overcoat.

I stopped at Salt City Coffee to grab a cup to go and to visually strut and brag to Gabi, my barista-friend. She was not working.

No matter.

I swaggered back to my car as the boulevardier I have declared myself to be on my "business" card. Let's throw in "jaunty."

I carried this élan with me when I went to Spectrum to sign up with them and get a new iPhone. I kept my costume on when I went home and participated in a Zoom meeting that evening.

Outside in? Or inside out?

For me, the driving force was to "act as if." If the wearing of my uniform managed to lift me out of a rut, to raise me out of any lingering doldrums, all the better. In this unscientific experiment, I wanted to see if I could "act myself into a new way of thinking," as the saying goes. Although I won't be writing a peer-reviewed paper on my qualitative or quantitive (if that were possible) findings, I can report anecdotal evidence.

The episode planted seeds for future anecdotes that will surely be reviewed by peers, and others. Early drafts are positive.