Holy
crap in a Bundt pan...
Due to the
recent well-publicized shortage of
amateur websites produced by assholes who consider themselves to be
clever, I
have been called into action. My name is Jeff Kay, and I’m an
Ugly American living
on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, near Scranton, PA. And I’m here to
serve, baby.
The
State of My Fat Ass A journal of
sorts, updated every once in a while.
--I went out to buy a suit this afternoon.I’ve never owned one, I don’t think, since my mother dressed
me up like a miniaturized Fast Freddie used car salesman when I was
five, in a so-called “Easter outfit.”
That thing was white with multi-colored stripes, and featured a full-on
bowtie.I looked like I should be
talking up the attributes of a Plymouth Scamp, and conveniently leaving
out the part about it spending time at the bottom of a lake in Indiana.
In all of my adult life I’ve never really had a reason to own a suit.Whenever I was required to dress-up, which was rare indeed, I’d
put on some Dockers, a shirt and tie, and some kind of sports jacket.I’d just cobble something together from my closet, and always
got by.
And for the last seventeen years (actually longer than that) I’ve
worked in the entertainment industry, where you could wear a grass skirt
to work if you wanted.They were
all into free-expression, and not harshing your vibe, man.So I was 44 years old, making decent money, and wearing an
untucked flannel shirt and jeans to work every day.It was great.
But it’s all over now, and starting next week I’ll be going on job
interviews, and that sort of thing.So
Toney and I went in search of an honest-to-goodness suit of clothes
today.For reasons I can’t put
my finger on, I was extremely nervous.
In Allentownthey
told us we should wear black, dark gray, or dark blue suits only, with a
red or blue tie.They’re
supposed to remember you, not
your clothes, they said.When
they’re sitting around after the interviews are done, trying to decide
on a candidate, they shouldn’t be referring to you with a nickname;
they shouldn’t be saying, “Well, what about ol’ FantasyIsland?”
I don’t know anything about that, but I appreciate them narrowing down
the choices and easing the pain a tiny bit.
We started at the mall.
There are three big anchor stores there, Macy’s, Sears, and JCPenney,
and we hit every one of them.We
started at JCP, because it was the first one we happened upon, and it
looked like we were going to have luck right out of the gate.I found a really nice charcoal gray suit on sale for less than
$200, and they had a jacket large enough to house my substantial torso.
I was ready to get the horribleness behind me, and just go with it.The thing looked good, it was a brand I recognized (can’t
remember it now), and the price was right.What’s not to love?
Then some old gay man sashayed over to “help,” and everything went
straight down the crap funnel.He
clucked his tongue a couple of times and told me I needed to go up one
size on the jacket.Then he went
over and retrieved an even more gigantic one from a rack marked
PORTLY (which I’d been trying to avoid).
I'm not sure about this, but I think it was from the Junior Samples
Collection.
Then Toney said I should try on the pants, which made me groan.I hate going back in those little rooms and hopping around on one
foot and seeing some other guy’s jeans fall to the floor beneath the
partition and reading the sign that says something about wearing
“undergarments” while trying on bathing suits and trousers.The whole thing is to be avoided, if possible.
But I’m glad I did as I was told today, because the slacks that came
with that suit looked like Hammer Pants.I
don’t know what was going on, but they were incredibly wide and blousy
at the top.I stood in front of
that three-way mirror and just busted out laughing.I looked like a court jester who’d let himself go.
Dr. Smith said the problem was the pleats, and that he’d be right
back, before spinning on his heel and gliding
onto the sales floor.
But it was not to be.The
“flat-fronted trouser” required a different jacket, and they
didn’t have any in my size.And
everything came crashing down at JCPenney.
We went to Sears, where they had about three different suits to choose
from, all petroleum-based and shiny, and none in the desired size.Then we hoofed it roughly two miles to Macy’s where everything
was wittle itsy bitsy tiny, and cost, like, $10,000.Funk dat.We were done with
the mall.
Next stop:Men’s Wearhouse.As we drove I told Toney we should call a store in BurbankI
used to visit, called It’s
A Wrap.They sell clothes
there from the sets of TV shows and movies.Maybe they have some old Cannon suits still hanging around?
But, of course, there’s not enough time for that sort of thing, and we
ventured on.
I don’t think I’d ever been inside a Men’s Wearhouse.And before I knew what was happening a bald man who looked like
Mr. Carlson on WKRP had a tape
measure around my gut, and scratching his chin with concern.
He led me to a rack of jackets, and started handing them to me, one
after the other.As far as I could
tell, they were all the same.I
finally asked how much one of them cost, and he said $349.
Shit!I told him I was hoping to
stay closer to two hundred, and that’s when the relationship started
to break down.He half-heartedly
hooked me up with a dark gray suit that looked perfectly fine, and was
priced at $219.But the pants were
apparently made for a morbidly obese former NBA star.The waist was like a hula hoop of fabric, and the legs just kept on going.
Toney urged me to try them anyway.“Maybe
they just look big,” she said, hopefully.Clearly she was eager for it to end.
But they didn’t just look big, they were
big.In fact, I’ve never
encountered a person who could wear such laughable pants; I don’t
believe there’s anyone in the world shaped like that.They literally didn’t touch me around the waist, and I was
forced to hold them up.And my
feet stopped around the knee section of the legs; there seemed to be
yards of extra fabric piled up at the bottom.
I took them off, without needing to unbutton or unzip; I just let go and
they fell like a curtain.Mr.
Carlson was waiting for me as I exited the fitting room, and I told him
I’d never be able to wear such hilarious pants.
And what happened next blew my mind.The
guy walked off without saying a word, and asked someone else if they
needed help.No suggestions for
me, no sales pitch, nothing.The
man literally turned his back on us.I
couldn’t believe it.
We went to Kohl’s from there and found nothing, then Toney suggested
Burlington Coat Factory.I hate
that place, but it’s roughly the size of my hometown so I figured it
was worth a shot.
And that’s where I ended up buying my first suit in 39 years.It cost something like $225, and looks like every other suit we
saw today.And it fits, and
doesn’t feature Hammer Pants or something Manute Bol’s
mayonnaise-loving brother could wear.
