QUITE THE SOCIAL ANIMAL

Adding to the increased sense of distaste and discomfort which this season gives me, as mentioned yesterday, is the need to dress up for the holiday party tomorrow.

I'm a slob.

It's a fashion-statement.

So anyhow, tweedy sports-coat, tie, clean white shirt, slacks without frayed edges. I own the first two. I cannot remember if I have the third item (clean white shirt), and I know I do NOT posses the fourth.
[Let us forget about socks and shoes for a moment - nobody looks that far down (and if they do, they'll probably be glad that I am indeed wearing them).]

The tweedy sports-coat is very professorial. But the tie? Errrmmmm...... professorial also. Or in any case, collegiate. The type of narrow old-fashioned tie that was fashionable back in the forties and fifties. Stodgy, and soup-stained from too many drunken frat-parties, late-night smokers, and bean-feeds. I was apparently quite the party animal in the decade before I was born. A rake, even, and in any case not the type of college-boy that you would let date your daughter. Cocktails, Latin drinking songs, and the Student Temperance Union Dramatic Society and their beer-fuelled rehearsals. Pickled from freshman to phd. That kind of tie.
I own over a hundred of the damn things.
[Ah, the Eisenhower years - I remember them not. Seeing as I wasn't even born then. But my ties remember them. And, in their spottiness, tell the tale. So it's time to buy another tie.]


The slacks also need buying. Which is a problem, given that short dumpy middle-aged men are not exactly the hip, spend-it-like-water demographic that the downtown clothiers are aiming for. Anorexic mid-twenties pencil-waist heroin addicts, okay. Multiple piercings, cryptic tattoos that need showing off, snake hips, okay too. Pimp-style glitzy glam-pants in synthetic chartreuse? Super cool. Dude.


This is just not my era. One clerk looked appraisingly at my waist, and said that I might fit a thirty-six - it was his largest size. He was insanely optimistic.

At another store, the clerk brightly suggested that they could take something off the length.... or I could wear it pulled up a bit. This was beyond even the insane optimism of the previous clerk, seeing as the thing was at least six inches too long, and tight in the crotch.

Fortunately I found three pairs of pants further down the road - they aren't too ugly.
[I'm not telling you where they were found, as I want to keep that information for myself. I may need to dress myself again sometime.]


The new tie was much easier to find, and it is aza stylish that I'll impress myself. Geshmak to da max.
[It cost as much as three pairs of pants.]


Shopping for clothes gives me a fever and cold-sweats. I am dizzy and I feel violated.


Holiday parties also give me cold-sweats. Both before, during, and after.


I don't have asthma, but I feel like I should.
Hives are increasingly likely, so are clammy palms all the way up to the oxters.
And a head-ache. Both before, during, and after.


'Tis the season.
Ho ho ho, bitches.