I'm a Brooks Brotha

I like Brooks Brothers.

I do.  I really, really do.

I own three Brooks Brothers shirts.  Two, I bought from thrift stores for a grand total of $22, and one was purchased for me, at full price, by my in-laws.  It has an eyelet collar (that's a hole through each collar, through which a solid gold tie-bar (they also bought that for me) goes through and fastens behind your necktie's knot.  I can't even imagine how much that shirt cost.  I don't want to imagine it, but I sometimes find myself imagining about it.

Against my will, of course.

According to Facebook, which is never wrong about anything except that one thing someone I didn't go to middle school with said once about Tina Fey that time, Brooks Brothers is "the official men's clothier for The Great Gatsby".

What the fuck does this mean? I genteelly asked myself, in that Great Gatsbian way of mine.  Google, which is also never wrong about anything except for that one time someone Googled "donkey porn electrified cum twin badgers" and got to My Masonic Apron, informed me that Brooks Brothers teamed up with costume designer Catherine Martin to design over 500 costume pieces for Baz Luhrman's film interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby", starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby and Toby Maguire as that other asshole whose name doesn't matter.  I'm guessing that ready-to-wear versions of these costume pieces will be/are available for wealthier-than-average Republican motorcar aficionados and parlour games enthusiasts at nationwide Brooks Brothers retail establishments.

I don't recall much literature I read in high school for required reading.  I don't remember much of the literature I read in high school for the other kind of reading either-- what was it called?  Where the student gets to pick the book?  Voluntary?  Secessionist?  I forget.  It's far easier for me to remember middle school.  There was a story in the obligatory Houghton Mifflin Reader about an Eskimo dog whose heart explodes while he's doing something heroic.  Or something.  I remember distinctly reading about an explorer who, along with his crew, froze to death while searching in vain for the Northwest Passage, and I didn't sleep for two months thereafter.  I remember in 6th grade, I chose to read "Death Be Not Proud", which was sitting there on the shelf (right where it had no business being) and its morbid back cover synopsis, the tale of a young boy in the 1940s being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and dies at 17, of course called out to morbidly-obsessed 12-year-old me seductively.

I remember reading Graham Chapman's "A Liar's Autobiography" the following year, in 7th grade.  Actually, I didn't read it, I listened to it on several tape cassettes, because the book was out-of-print.  How I managed to score the tapes, who knows?  I recall being fascinated by Chapman's vivid and frank discussions of his alcoholism and his homosexuality, and the moment he realized he was gay.  He was in medical school and was having sex with a nurse, or a nursing student, I forget.  He said that he had the epiphany that he was attracted to men "as I came between her breasts for the third time".

I did a long book report on "A Liar's Autobiography" and Miss Stein, a newly-minted year-long substitute, gave me an A, and couldn't look me in the eye when she passed the graded report back to me.  There were no comments and, fortunately, no phone calls home.

In high school, I know I read "The Crucible", and I appeared in it onstage, too.  That was a mistake.  So was the time I appeared in it in college.  I hope to not make that mistake a third time.  I read "Major Molineux" which, apparently, is actually called "My Kinsman, Major Molineux", but who cares?  I also read "The Scarlet Letter" which is by Hawthorne, too, and it was hot-- much hotter than Major Molineux.  I read a short story by James Joyce in eleventh grade, but I couldn't tell you what it was called.  There was "The Grapes of Wrath" and "The Great Gatsby", too.  But I didn't find either very wrathful or great.

Maybe that's because I'm a phony bastard.

I fell in love with "The Catcher in the Rye" the same way every depressed, repressed, neurotic, sardonic scowling and howling boy of sixteen or whatever does, and I'm embarrassed to be such an ardent cliche, but then, I'm also a Jew with a big nose, too, so what can you do?  I could sit here and write all day about it, but then you'd probably start to get worried about me.  But then, maybe you wouldn't even notice.  People never notice anything.

I'm kind of surprised Brooks Brothers didn't release a line of clothing inspired by late 19th century garb after the movie "Lincoln" was released.  Throwbacks.  Vintage.  Silk top-hats with grosgrain ribbons for everyone.  I learned yesterday listening to a radio interview with Julian Fellows, the creator of "Downton Abbey" that, in the 1950s, they briefly brought back the corseted, crinoline clothes of the 1880s, only to abruptly halt making them, because even rich people in the 1950s didn't have valets or maids to help them button seven thousand buttons the side of a baby's pinkie fingernail.  People have to get dressed themselves now, like big boys and girls.  I put on a pair of spats for a gig last month, and I almost broke my ankle, my wrist, and fell off the bed.  I was just pretending.  When I wear my Brooks Brothers shirts, especially the one with the eyelet collar, I'm just pretending.  I'm a marvelous pretender.

I guess what I really want to say about all of this is I'm very jealous of people who get to shop at Brooks Brothers, you know, regularly.  Like, when I say I'm going to "the store to get some clothes", I'm talking about a thrift store, typically, or Kohls.  I know there are people out there who say they're going "the store to get some clothes" and they're talking about Brooks Brothers, and I hate people who say that.  I hate people who say they loved "The Great Gatsby", because they didn't.  They'll sure like wearing the clothes, though.

I know they will.    

Dance With Me

My wife has observed that I have this tendency to utilize the literary device (gestalt? I forget what it’s called) where you start out talking about one thing and then meander off in another direction only to circuitously wend your weary way back to your original idea. It probably won’t surprise you to know that this isn’t intentional, or purposeful, or my intelligently and deftly applying skills honed in any number of creative writing classes and workshops I could have, and should have taken. It’s just the haphazard, comfort-seeking way in which my brain works.

Or, rather, doesn’t.

That said, I will confess I had an idea for what I was going to blog about before I sat down at the computer, but I made the mistake of sitting down at the computer with an ice-cold can of Diet Coke and a bowlful of peanut butter M&Ms and I thought to myself, “Holy shit, if I don’t immediately write on my blog about how fucking fantastic peanut butter M&Ms and chilled Diet Coke are, well, then goddamn me to Hell.” And so, I’ve just got to devote a few lines to my snack, even though it has nothing it all to do with what I wanted to blog about for today, and I doubt very much that I’ll be able to gestalt this shit back around at the end. But who cares?

You can’t find peanut butter M&Ms everywhere, and that’s just as well because, if you could, well, they wouldn’t be as special as they are—would they? When we spot that orange bag, we go for it. Now, our house, being basically an eighty-two-year-old furnace with a quaint hole in the kitchen ceiling, keeps pantry food at a comfortable, slightly-toasted temperature. This propensity is especially preferred when it comes to two bad-for-you snacks:

Cadbury mini-eggs, and, you guessed it, Harvard Gal: peanut butter M&Ms.

Your dubiously-aligned teeth pierce the candy shell and just absolutely sink into the pre-warmed mookie goodness and instantly pleasure splinters go shooting through the windmills of your mind. There is a Hebrew phrase that my father taught me that sums up this sensation perfectly. You are supposed to say it after an especially good, satisfying, heavenly meal, and, in English transliteration it looks something like this: “Chhhat-tsee-tsee-un.”

Translation: Half-a-fuck.

Yes, children, consuming warm, mookitty peanut M&Ms is, for most intents and purposes, equivalent to half-a-fuck.

There’s nothing more I can say, though, about the merits of Diet Coke. In caffeinated or CFDC variety it is, without qualm or question, the perfect libation. Definitely ‘nuff said on that score.

‘Kay? Thanks. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

-------------

So, anyway, on Sunday morning, my wife and I woke up, as we fortunately always seem to do, and she turned to me and asked me if I went to any dances in middle school. I laughed, because that’s a nice thing to do when your wife asks you a question.

“Yes, I went to one, when I was in seventh grade.”

“Did you like it?” she asked me.

Sad to admit it, but I laughed again. When I was done, I replied,

“No.”

As she asked me more similar questions, I realized that I had attended exactly one dance in middle school, one in high school, and one in college. And people say I never give things a fair chance. Fucking people— always talking smack.

I don’t remember much about the middle school dance. Clearly, I didn’t actually dance with anybody. I mean, that’s kind of a given. I do remember that I, along with three other awkward gimps, got in trouble for sitting on a rolled up gym mat. There was no sign on it that said, “NO AWKWARD GIMPS MAY SIT HERE,” at least, not that I recall, but I suppose it was just one of those unwritten, unspoken rules that you and your three other awkward gimp compatriots were just supposed to know. Well, we didn’t, and we got sent to the assistant-principal, Dr. A. Dr. A was a severe--looking, skinny, dour woman whose face was contorted in such a way that it always looked like she had just swallowed a cup of Halite. She walked with a cane and I can recall being very afraid that, if I said the wrong thing in her presence, she would break it against my neck.

I mean, really-- why do they even have dances for middle school students? Is it just for the teachers and the adult chaperones to have something to laugh at so they can feel better about themselves? We're all so fucking terrible looking-- gawky, mawky, mawpish, mopish, and just awful. We barely know the opposing gender exists, so why does this painful ritual exist? Isn't it just an attempt at prematurely sexualizing us? I'm surprised FOX News hasn't jumped on this idea yet.

"JUST LET OUR KIDS BE KIDS!!!!!"

Hahaha. Shut the fuck up, FOX News.

In high school, I was convinced by some friends (yes, I had a few back then) to attend a Halloween dance.

“You’ll get to wear a costume,” one of them said. This was enough to make the sale. I came in an Army officer’s dress uniform that I had picked up for twenty bucks at a thrift shop. The pants were large enough to clothe five of me at the same time, and my mother did a hack-job on the waistband so that they would stay up through the evening’s festivities. The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” army policy was just beginning to take hold that year, and I wore a name tag that said, “Hi, My Name Is Ham-Pies” and I spent the evening dancing the tango and other absurd dances with my gay friend, who was wearing a yellow polyester leisure suit. I wonder why I wasn’t asked out by a girl that year.

The college dance I attended, though, was quite special. It was the formal ball hosted by the theatre association. I mean, “formal”? “Ball”? How bad could this be, I reasoned with myself. I was dating a girl at the time who had been begging me to go to the dance, and I was very much against it. But the words “formal” and “ball” kept swirling around in my brain. I had conjured up images of my classmates in enormous hoop-skirts, massive mounds of cleavage pouring out of Victorian-era dresses, hair in ringlets, and the budding men in gleaming black patent leather shoes, white gloves, long coats.

If you’ve ever doubted the brain’s capacity for fantasy, doubt no more.

I ended up renting a tux for an absurd amount of money at “After Six Menswear.” Not only did you have to pay to attend the ball, too, but I plunked down $189 on a hotel room. I can remember, very, very vividly getting dressed in that ridiculous tuxedo in front of the full-length mirror in our hotel room and, as I affixed the bullshit fake bowtie, my girlfriend came up behind me, sat down on the bed and looked at me with a smile, but with her brow furrowed and said,

“You’re going to be so handsome when you can buy clothes that actually fit you.”

She was so sweet—- but not quite as sweet as a peanut butter M&M.

BOO-YA!!!!!!!