Casual
SKINNER, DAVID
Casual SELF-MADE MAN I haven't had much experience shopping for women's clothing. And on those rare occasions when I've trotted off to buy a pair of slippers or a wallet, say, as a gift for my...
...I said no thanks...
...And on those rare occasions when I've trotted off to buy a pair of slippers or a wallet, say, as a gift for my deserving wife, the mere fact of being in a women's clothing store has made me deeply uncomfortable...
...Yet, I wanted to buy my wife a dress this anniversary...
...I wanted to be the kind of man of taste who knows enough about style and the female form to pull off buying a dress for his woman...
...I said I'd take it...
...Peter could stand to study in a room also occupied by his wife's dress dummies...
...Everyone laughed, but the women—I noted with great satisfaction—seemed impressed...
...Afraid of looking like I knew too much about ? women's clothing, I refrained from lifting any garment off the rack and appraising it mid-air like a regular shopper...
...In college I took a literature course in which we learned about "the constructed self...
...I kept thinking about this meta-level of my little project...
...Cue the jazzy, good-time music...
...There are three major gift-giving occasions every year (anniversary, birthday, Christmas), and I've known my wife for almost seven years...
...When I read The Professor's House a few years ago, I couldn't imagine how Godfrey St...
...But finally, I settled on one...
...She also receives little necklaces and bracelets from her father, for whom jewelry has always been the gift of choice...
...At this point, her tiny jewel box is bulging...
...And they would never, ever blink...
...That guy—the one who comes home to his woman with a big wide gift box tied with one of those easy-to-remove giant ribbons only seen in the movies...
...This is a little off-topic, but I actually suffer from a fear of mannequins dating back to childhood nightmares, in which they would appear dismembered and heaped in ghoulish piles...
...She loves the dress, puts it on, it fits perfectly, and they hit the town...
...But, unsure whether the joke would confirm or undermine my cool-guy persona, I kept it to myself...
...Nice spring color, girlish without being immature, a cut and pattern that should be flattering...
...Actually, there was more to it than that...
...At a dinner party the other night, my wife excused herself from the table, and I used the opportunity to amuse our friends with a brief account of my shopping adventure...
...Total poppycock, I know, but it got me thinking about how one becomes a certain type of person...
...Finally one of them asked if I needed help...
...Okay, technically, as we're all now thoroughly aware, a woman can give a woman a dress, as a "me-woman, you-woman" thing...
...Other generations studied how authors use language to bring characters to life...
...How, if I deliberately set out to be that guy, he would eventually be, well, me...
...Not only that, but I was the only customer in the place that weekday morning, and the mannequins, frankly, scared me...
...I did, of course, but so much more than any salesgirl could provide...
...It's so "me-man, you-woman...
...Inevitably, the question arises: How much jewelry can one woman wear...
...Anyway, there I was in the store, and the salesgirls exuded uncertainty when they saw me—sensing, I suspect, that my pose as a guy who knows how to buy a dress for his wife was fraudulent...
...Besides, a dress seemed to be just the thing in this age of androgyny...
...We were asked to consider that all character—even the nonfictional you-and-me kind—is really a self-told tale of make-believe...
...Then it occurred to me to make a joke ("Hey, do you think one of these little strappy numbers would fit over my big shoulders...
...And, for that matter, a man can give a man a dress, one or both of them being cross-dressers...
...So there I was...
...Perhaps as a result, I passed up a brown one, then a pink one, without quite knowing why...
...My anniversary is still a couple of days away...
...Pretty suave, eh...
...But that's nothing to do with the particular character I was determined to construct for myself...
...Which was hard enough...
...I've neglected to mention one other reason I wanted to buy my wife a dress: simple necessity...
...I intentionally made myself a figure of fun...
...I walked up to several dresses that seemed nice and tried to picture my wife wearing them...
...DAVID SKINNER...
...There I was in the store, trying to talk myself into making the purchase—making it with the easy confidence of a man of savoir-faire who knows what his woman wants—and feeling as unnatural as an actor at a cold reading, delivering his lines for the first time...
...I must have struck a particularly stiff and awkward figure, standing before the dresses, viewing them formally like art in a museum...
Vol. 9 • April 2004 • No. 30
