Baring Threads

 

Take no thought . . . for the body, what ye shall put on.                     

Luke 12:22

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.                              

Henry David Thoreau

Know first who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.         

Epictetus

 

I walked into the kitchen and said to my wife Kathy, “Look at this.”  I held up a sweater I had found in the bottom of the bottom drawer of my chest of drawers.  My mother had sent it to me some 15 years earlier.  “A perfectly good sweater; why haven’t I worn it?”

“That’s easy,” Kathy said.  “It was new.”

“Well, that’s ridicu—“ I began, until, with a kick-drum thud, I remembered I had yet to wear the T-shirt, fiery red with a stylized blue and white scene of sailboats on the bay, I’d bought in San Francisco in 1987.  Or the six years’ worth of T-shirts from the 10K Bellin Run in Wausau, Wisconsin, back in the 1980s.  Or the three Graceland University T-shirts I received for three Julys, 2002-2004, I’d spent manning the academic table during Iowa Private College week.  Or the Eddie Bauer slippers I’d received in 2009, or several pairs of slacks, at least three sweaters, probably half a dozen dress shirts, three neckties, one belt, one University of Iowa hooded sweatshirt, a Green Bay Packer windbreaker, a leather overcoat, one package of ankle socks, and a Titleist golf cap.  As usual, Kathy was right.

The fear of clothing is called “vestiphobia.”  The fear of the new is termed “neophobia.”  Could it be I suffer from “neovestiphobia?”  Is it possible I’ve been Cotton Mathered to the point of renouncing new clothes, fearing an apostate capitulation to “the creature,” the things of the world, not wanting to take my eye off the ball of more redemptive pursuits?  Am I simply indulging in a self-delusion, flattering myself on my frugality and wise clothes management?

I can safely say that my reticence to wearing new clothes is not the result of being deprived of them when I was a child.  I think I’m on firm ground affirming that my superego is not laying  siege to my ego, or that I haven’t erected a defense against repressed impulses—at least I think the ground is firm, though, really, when it comes to the uncontinented ocean of the Freudian unconscious, how would I know?  I will admit that I tend toward sameness and routine. I will concede that I do not like to draw attention to myself—I should probably add scopophobia, the fear of being stared at, to my list of fears—and would be basketed by anxiety that, in displaying myself in new clothes, I would appear a vain, exhibitionistic poser trying desperately to pull off some look.  I’ll cop to being unduly influenced by an article I read in AARP: The Magazine that advised always and everywhere to dress age appropriately, which, I take it, means staid, muted, and absolutely no skinny jeans.  And I’ll concede to being haunted by the 37-year-old memory of donning a brand-spanking new pair of burgundy double-knit trousers only to have the pet cat leap onto one leg, clinging by its claws and rendering the slacks unwearably pilled. 

For whatever reason, I have this idea that I should wear out the old, threadbare it, consume it until it fades, tatters, and becomes rag-bag ready, before putting on the new.  Giving myself over to the seduction of something new while the old retains its use value strikes me as being a moral kneecapping.  It’s imprudent, it’s impudent, it’s prodigal, it’s profligate.  I simply cannot bring myself to slip into those Bauer slippers, for instance, until the demise of my current slippers, which, calculating by age, condition, and use, should occur on or around mid-March, 2015.  Alternatively, I’ll tell myself that I’m reserving the new for a suitable occasion.  Strangely, however, that occasion never seems to arise.

Mostly, though, I suspect my reluctance to wear the new lies precisely in its newness.  The new is magical; it lies in a crucible of suspended time and pluralled possibility.  It is crisp, unwrinkled, frankincensed.  The new loiters in the bright morning of conceivability, of the unencumbered perhaps.  It is unfallen.  But newness doesn’t last.  Nothing new ever does.  Something can be new only once and only in one way; used, it tocks and ticks, frays and     tuckers, becomes way-worn and, finally, laid away.

How, you may wonder, did I manage to accumulate so many new clothes?  My life has been blessed with generous women who possess what I conspicuously lack: a keen eye for fashion.  They have taken it upon themselves to do what I cannot: dress me, and in a manner that at least shares the same zipcode with the stylish.  The process usually happens like this: on some present-giving occasion, when they ask what I’d like, I reply “I don’t know; there’s nothing I really need or want,” and by default they give me clothing. 

Obviously, I need to provide a more specific response to their query.  If I don’t, it’s likely that by this time next year I’ll be adding G. H. Bass loafers, a Ferragamo military-style jacket, and ck one jeans to the list of the unworn.