Flight Gear and Dressing Like a Grown Man

OK, this has to stop.

I can’t fly on airlines anymore.

Do you remember where you were on 9/11? I do. It was a damned tragedy, first in terms of the loss of human life. There were other ramifications, though.

The changes in travel over the next few weeks were drastic, to say the least. A former corporate traveler, I knew things were going to get a lot tighter, to say the least. Luckily, I switched careers at that time.

That career move and those damned terrorists turned me into a slob.

I began my career with a British firm. Casual dress was considered a jacket and tie with khakis as opposed to a suit, and the former outfit was one you’d better wear on Friday only. Upper management was mainly in their early 30s, from Britain, and they believed (and often repeated) that in order to be successful, you had to dress successful. I learned the difference between a seven fold tie and the knockoffs at Filene’s basement, and came to appreciate, especially as a big guy, British tailoring.

Terrorists ruined that. My granny used to fly a lot in the 1950s and 60s, and she always told me stories about how well dressed people were when they flew. Women wore hats and gloves and men wore suits and ties. Part of this, I guess, was the fact that not just anyone could afford to fly back in the day, but I enjoyed walking through airports in smart suits and nice ties, lugging my Zero Halliburton aluminum briefcase, really thinking I was somebody. In my mid twenties, I was far from the youngest business traveler in the airport. Man, we were gonna take over.

Then the terrorists hit, and shortly thereafter, some nut job tried to detonate a bomb in his shoe while on a flight. No more Coach lace ups. Americans had been practicing the art of bummy for a minute, and I had prided myself on being a notch or two above. Now I, too was wearing flip flops to the airport, regardless of weather, like so many other sloppy gen-exers. Ugh.

My next gig had a decidedly less strict dress code. Decidedly. This became obvious when I showed up for the interview in a nice black wool suit and was told to “next time, wear shorts.” OK. It was downhill from there.

When I went to work at an alternative school shortly thereafter, I was still wearing my Fred Sanford airplane “easy check me I’m bomb free” gear. I wore a nice gray worsted to my interview, and a black cashmere blazer and some gray flannels to my follow up. It was then I was told to wear bummy clothes to work, and the student population sometimes got quite rough. Man. I must have worn the same warm up jacket seven months in a row. I later replaced it with two golf pullovers that got slightly more rotation with some dad jeans and running shoes. Ugh.

When I started working part time at my hotel, I was issued a cheesy pullover and told to pair it with khakis. This wasn’t much of an upgrade from previous work clothes, which were so bad that when I’d flown, TSA agents never mistook me for a terrorist, just some homeless guy who wandered in to get warm. They were so ugly they weren’t even comfortable. I overheard one baggage clerk comment the airlines needed to implement a guest dress code. I shuffled off, my flip flops sticking to my sweaty feet, my jeans frayed at the bottom, my shirttails hanging out. I carried a book bag that when I first brought it home, three year old J thought I’d bought it for him.

I told my then manager that I wanted to wear a tie to work. She hit the roof and told me to just be happy working the desk and that only management could work out of uniform. Oooo-kay. I resolved then I would be a manager. I could care less about the work. I just wanted to wear a doggone tie. That polo was quite unflattering.
Plus, I noticed that when I wore a jacket, slacks and a dress shirt, man. I got more respect. Them Brits were right. I walked into a bank once in my Gen X gear with ten thousand dollars in my pocket and was wrestled to the floor before I made my deposit. Two weeks later I walked in dressed like a grown ass man and the bank president walked over, shook my hand, gave me a cigar and wouldn’t let me leave until I promised to take some of the new hundred dollar bills they just unpacked.
I went to my son’s school to pick up report cards and they sent me to the room where interviewees for the open principal position were cooling their heels.

I made the mistake of coming to a parent meeting for his ball team and got instantly nominated to head up the fundraising committee. Gotta take the good with the bad, I guess.

I walked into the federal building carrying my Zero and was grabbed by two guys similarly attired who threw me into a room and wanted to know if I had the new strategy to find the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They were gonna let me help water board some schmuck in the next room, but I told them I had to meet M and the Prime Minister later that day. They agreed to give me a rain check and wished me well.

My ex wife passed me in a store while shopping with her guy friend. She left him in electronics and came back to introduce herself before she realized it was me. She ran her hands down my lapel slowly and asked what I was doing later. I told her to meet me. Come alone, I said. I gave her the address to the room in the Federal Building where my new friends were having their fun.

This old new fun has its dampers, though. I prefer to wear black every day. Cashmere or wool sport coat, black slacks, dress shirt. People on Chicago’s Southside see me outside in front of buildings and come, hand wringing, telling me about insurance woes and burial plots. Once I was leaning on a building casually and a long caddy pulled up slowly, windows down. I hit the ground before the first burble from the machine gun.

I stand outside of Catholic churches and old folks walk up and say, “Bless me father for I have sinned…” Middle aged Black women outside of the same pinch my cheeks and say “We gon’ get some CHANGES now.”

The only problem is that I cannot leave the continent. Airline travel, thanks to militias, terrorists and the TSA, necessitates that I dress like an overgrown newsboy in order to travel, and I won’t do that.

So until I can fly on a private jet (taking donations, ya’ll), and a former inamorata has made it clear I am so broke I am barely above homelessness and other destitution, I’m screwed.

I need some suggestions here, ya’ll. I’m trying to go back overseas, but I cannot revert back to my old, sloppy ways.

Anybody got a Gulfstream I can borrow? It’s hard marketing a book just in the continental US. Hell. Not just that, I’m ready to get out and start living again, and the US, Canada and Mexico ain't gonna get it.