The Right Look

Here’s a stupid idea: Post a survey online so your friends can tell you what they think of you, anonymously.

Can you imagine?

Only someone desperate for validation would try that.

Have we met?

The survey idea came to me after a tennis lesson, when I’d mentioned to my coach that I was headed to a disco-themed costume party. I told her that I found a silk shirt with a wide collar, green bell bottoms, and a white belt from a vintage store. I had spent weeks searching for the right look.

My coach smiled and said, “You seem like someone who’d love that.”

I laughed, and we finished the lesson. But I wondered: Why would she say that? Do I look like someone who enjoys costumes? Is there a tell?

I know my mom likes to wear costumes. She did a great Cruella DeVille last Halloween, and years before that, while my father was still alive, she dolled up as a glamorous Miss Piggy. She dressed my father as Kermit that night, which he would never have done on his own. He just wasn’t that kind of guy.

In fact, he hardly ever chose his own clothes, costume or otherwise. In his twenties, the U.S. Army told him what to wear. After that, my mother did. She laid out his clothes during the work week and helped choose what he wore on the weekends.

I didn’t like that about him. It felt like he was giving up his identity. I’m more particular. I enjoy shopping for clothes and choosing my own look.

When I asked my friends in the survey if they thought I was a “costume guy,” some said yes, because I liked to dress up and look my best, but most said no, because “Mark needs to be in control.”

The nerve.

I wanted to call them up and tell them I couldn’t care less about being in control. Fortunately, I caught the irony before I picked up the phone.

For seemingly not caring about what he wore, my dad did teach me one important lesson about clothes. One morning during high school I walked into the kitchen wearing a vintage Budweiser t-shirt.

He asked, “How much is Bud paying you to advertise for them?”

I rolled my eyes. But I’ve avoided logos and branded clothing ever since. My dad might not have had a sense of style, but he had sense.

One winter evening when I was a kid, he told me that a bunch of dads were meeting at a neighborhood park to fill an ice-skating rink. As the two of us trudged down the street to the park, he said, out of the blue, that sometimes he wished he was an Orthodox Jew. My dad was Jewish, but even at that age I knew he wasn’t religious, so I was confused.

“Why?” I asked.

“You get to study and debate all day. And life is more prescribed. Simpler. You don’t have to make so many damned choices.” That didn’t make any sense to my early adolescent ears. I thought that choice meant freedom. I didn’t know what to say, so I changed the subject and said, “Should I go back home and get my skates?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “You think the water is going to come out frozen?”

I didn’t know it then, but he’d recently been diagnosed with colon cancer. I think about that walk differently now. I suspect he’d just found out how little control he had in life and didn’t want to spend what little energy he had deciding what tie to wear.

I can’t say I internalized that one. When I found out I needed emergency open heart surgery, I wanted to plan every detail. The day before surgery, I went to Nordstrom’s to buy the perfect pajamas to wear around the hospital so I wouldn’t look like a patient. I ended up buying some expensive resort-style cabana pajamas. The salesperson checking me out asked, “Going somewhere fun?”

“Absolutely,” I lied.

The damn things still have the price tag on them. Looking like a patient turned out to be the least of my worries. I didn’t remotely have the energy to put them on.

These days, years since my father died and long after my heart surgery, I’ll still spend twenty minutes standing in front of a mirror deciding between two sports jackets, as if it mattered.

My dad would have been long out the door.

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What’s one small thing you try to control when the big things feel out of your hands?