DRESSING THE PART

This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon...never his mind on where he was, what he was doing. -- Yoda

Today is Columbus Day, a holiday for government drudges like myself. Until recently, I would have slept in, lounged around my apartment drinking coffee and pottering around the internet until restlessness and caffeine forced me into some form of exercise, bathed, and then returned to lounging, probably dressed in a sophomoric T-shirt and jeans, or even sweats, and worn-out sneakers. At some point I'd have ordered Chinese food, or gotten a take-out pizza, and bought a six pack of beer as well. Anyone encountering me on the street would have seen an unshaven, slightly out of shape middle-aged man dressed like a college student or working-class drone, who was slicking back his diminishing wisps over his bald spot in a vain attempt to look younger. Someone easy to dismiss, or to ignore. Not a loser per se, but certainly a mediocrity. Whatever my inward level of intelligence and confidence, whatever my past accomplishments or present goals, the image I projected was unimpressive, faded, ordinary.

My ordinary circumstances have, however, changed. Today, the first thing I did was go hiking, drinking my coffee as I trampled the still, silent woods with a gallon jug of water strapped to my back. When I came home, I allowed myself a small amount of food, mostly protein, and then took a shower, shaved, and donned a fitted sweater, a suede blazer, jeans, casual dress shoes, my flashiest watch, a silver link bracelt and a silver ring with a great amber stone. I walked to the coffee shop with Fitzgerald's Tales of the Jazz Age and read for two hours over a mocha. I was not trying to look cool, whatever cool looks like, or pick up a woman. Nope. I was simply allowing my outward appearance to match my accomplishments, my ambitions...and my age.

Like most writers, I have been a Bohemian for most of my life. I have always dressed the way I pleased and not according to fashion trends -- when I conformed to a trend (good or bad) it was because it corresponded to my own existing aesthetic, not because it was "now." I have always been impulsive, irresponsible, disorganized, impractical, hot-tempered, creative, apathetic, easily bored, and alternated between periods of furious, almost manic activity and utter, sloth-like apathy and laziness. Financially I have alternated between disaster and mediocrity. In relationships I have always struggled with commitment and therefore, longevity. The future? Making plans for todayexhausted me and left me with faint feelings of resentment, even if the plans were entirely in my own best interests.

Recently, however, I began to understand that a small, tectonic shift had occurred within my mind, or perhaps my soul. A sea change had taken place almost without me realizing it. I desired, actively, to increase my value. I do not merely mean my income; I mean my value. I wanted to raise the level, the frequency, upon which I operate on a daily basis. This included my income, but it also included a whole slew of other life aspects, including my weight, my fitness, my craft, my productivity, and my appearance. It is on this last point I wish mostly to expound, because I have come to understand why appearance is important to those who wish to change for the better.

In my life, I have always equated the "need" for expensive clothing, watches, shoes, etc. with vanity and shallowness and materialism. The men I knew, even in college, who dressed more sharply and "adultly," always struck me as either comical or pompous. I have always wanted to look good, but only for the purpose of attracting women, which of course is a form of shallowness in itself: and because like most Bohemians I have a Peter Pan complex, and because I prize masculinity and toughness, I always favored either a collegiate or a "street" style: leather jackets, t-shirts, jeans, sneakers or work-type boots. And just at the time I might have taken a different course, when I was 34 years old, I moved to California, where t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops are normal wear for all ages, and "dressing up" means a polo shirt and khakis, maybe a blazer if you're at some reallyspecial event. I found validation in an adopted culture, took refuge from incipient middle age by living in the land of the Endless Summer.

There is, however, some old Army wisdom which goes, "Know your job and know the job of your immediate superior, because you may be called upon to do that job at any moment." In civilian-speak this translates as "Dress for the job you have," or, even more broadly, "Dress for the life you want." And as I entered my 40s, and then my mid-40s, I increasingly began to despair that the life I wanted would ever materialize. The last few years I spent in California were endlessly difficult and bitter. The older I got, the more it seemed as if I had failed, missed the mark, fiddled while Rome burned and was now doomed to live among its ashes. I was experiencing torschlusspanik, the fear that the gates have shut and I was on the wrong side of them when the lock clanked into place. The truth was that I had allowed myself to become infantilized: I was living the life of a surf bum (minus most of the surf) and amazed that, well, this was yielding a surf-bum's results. Women didn't take me seriously. Employers didn't take me seriously. Perspective agents, publishers, partners, and executives didn't take me seriously. And like Gordon Comstock, the hilariously self-defeating protagonist of George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying, I adapted to my failure by making failure a virtue. I was not a loser: I was holding on to my integrity. I was the classic starving artist who, from his dirty, depressing garret on the Left Bank, feebly shouted, "You're all a bunch of sell-outs!" to everyone with more money than himself.

The equation of failure, or at least poverty and rejection of societal norms, to success and integrity, is something I first noticed in the punk movement in the late 70s/early 80s when I was growing up. I was never a punk myself, but I was friendly with them and perhaps their outlook rubbed off on me a bit: I think it more likely that I was merely in sympathy with it by virtue of my own nature. In any event, this was a time when I and many others also equated bodybuilding specifically and athleticism generally with stupidity: you were either a hulking beast with huge biceps but no brain, or a scrawny Poindexter with Coke-bottle glasses and a 4.2 grade point average: There was no in-between, and the idea of the Renaissance man was taken as more of a joke than as something to aspire to. I mention this because it shows how easy it is to buy into syllogistic, either/or thinking: either you're a financial success or you have personal and creative integrity. Either you're fit or you're smart. Either you're this or you're that. No in-betweens, no gray areas. And a large part of me accepted this simplistic thinking, or at least never bothered to challenge it with my actions.

A man can evolve unconsciously, however, or rather semi-consciously. When I moved back East in 2020, I did so with the stated purpose of wanting a more fully human life and a more consequential job than Hollywood could afford. Put more simply, I wanted to feel like a grown man: I wanted to put on a suit and tie and carry a briefcase and deal with important matters. And doing this every day did wonders for my self-esteem, and consequentially but not expectedly, for my creativity. But it is only in the last year that I have discovered that I want more even than this. It is no longer enough for me to simply work an important job and to dress my age between 8 and 430, Monday to Friday. I want to act my age at all times, and in the best possible way: I want to abandon the Bohemian rake image in favor of something more refined, more elegant, more stylish. I want to organize my time better. I want to manage my weight and fitness more actively and precisely. I want to calibrate my finances and act upon those calibrations. And this is exactly what I'm doing: building the ideal version of myself and giving him to the world. One brick at a time.

It isn't always easy. When you've lived life like a fratboy (which I am, as it happens), grown up life can be daunting and bewildering. Financial responsibility alone is a brutal struggle. However, I just purchased U.S. Treasury bonds, the first forward-thinking act upon those lines I have ever undertaken: what's more, I have set up a schedule to purchase fifty more over the next fifteen months. I am shortly going to buy some notes and securities and set up an IRA to supplement my 401K, too. I just fielded a second book proposal offer and am in talks with a major agent about the first one: potentially big sources of fresh income. And I intend to publicize and if possible, to monetize my trip to Miami in November, when I will accept the Reader's Digest Gold Medal: at the very least I want to do some serious networking. In short, I am trying, with some difficulty and with many minor setbacks (mostly but not entirely self-inflicted), to increase my value in the materialistic, professional and various other senses of the word. I realize that I am very long in the fang and gray in the muzzle to begin such a quest, but we all learn at different speeds, and I truly believe my tae kwon do master's adage that "when the student is ready, the master will appear."

I don't suppose I will ever entirely reconcile myself to the demands of a world that places so much import on appearance, and on materialism generally, but I am continually reminded of the words of an older fraternity brother of mine who joined the NYPD when I was still in college. He said that, while he disagreed, philosophically, with judging books by their covers, he nevertheless did it on the job, because he had to play the percentages: the guy in the business suit and briefcase was, in his experience, less likely than the punk with the spiked pink hair and jangling chains to want to take a swing at him over a traffic ticket. When I meet with an agent, or attend a convention or an expo, or even go down the street to have coffee and read Tales from the Jazz Age, I want to be consistent throughout myself, from the inner core of my thoughts and feelings, to my outward appearance, and not have the two in a self-defeating, self-limiting conflict. I want to embrace the total man, the fullness of my potentiality. I know it will be a journey fraught with every form of obstacle and that many of those obstacles will be found inside myself: we are all our own worst enemies, after all. But we are also our own best friends, our own wisest counselors, our own mentors and saviours. And for me, anyway, it's time to start savin'. I opened this essay with a quote from Yoda, who as you will remember, criticized Luke for never paying attention to the moment but rather dreaming of the future. And with all respect to the old master, I think he was only half right. It is possible to be in the moment and still keep an eye on the horizon: because the horizon, over the horizon, where we ultimately wish to be.