I am ready for the big time. Sales of Away Happens (www.upne.com) are brisk, among the top ten this month at University Press of New England, and I am readying myself for fame, notoriety and wealth. I presented this rosy forecast to my wife, to whom the appeal of elevated notoriety is (I keep forgetting) not as strong. Ever supportive, however, she was eager to demonstrate that if things do not work out quite as I imagined it will not be for lack of encouragement on her part. Observing that my tattered and stained jeans adorned with hammer holster and Leatherman might not be the ideal foundation around which we might fashion an ensemble suitable for my moments (book signings, etc.) in the sun, and finding the prospect of shopping irresistible, she suggested we go to the mainland and look for clothing for me. We set a date a week hence.
Finding myself alone on the mainland the very next day, though, the memory of an earlier shopping trip surfaced and gave pause to my plans to share the experience again with my sweetheart. During the remembered excursion, she, after having coupled me with a pair of slacks she approved of, installed me close to the shop window, where the light was better. There I engaged obediently in a robotic exercise wherein I held various shirts to my torso for her assessment. Other shoppers, passersby, strangers all and women, joined in as naturally as if their opinions had been sought and together comprised a chorus of blunt observation.
“The mustard goes great with his eyes but calls attention to his skin, not a good thing.”
“I love the olive green but only from his nose up. Don’t you hate how that color just screams flaccid, like those wrinkly places around his neck?”
“Forget about color; just be sure you don’t put him in anything form fitting.”
“Put the bright colors away for Gawd’s sake. He looks like something’ you been keepin’ in the cellar. Do dark, the darker the better.”
It was not a profitable exercise for an ego like mine and the memory gave me courage to call home. “Hi dear, it’s me. I’m over here in Rockland and finished up my errands so I have a little time to kill and thought I might…”
“Don’t even think about shopping for yourself by yourself. It’s like opening a conduit to Goodwill. You come home in stuff badly cut, ill-fitting and in colors that clash so badly one wonders if you suffer from the schizophrenic equivalent of synaesthesia.”
I am my own man and, undeterred, I pushed open the swinging door at J. C. Penny with John Wayne’s cocky regard for those assembled therein. I headed purposefully for the men’s section and as I did, I couldn’t help notice, folks got out of my way, cleared a path in fact. I was a man on a mission and they all knew it. In less time that my wife would have taken to tell me diplomatically that I might be more comfortable in ‘relaxed fit’ jeans, I snagged a pair of 34-inch Levi classic cut and headed for the changing room.
Both changing rooms were locked, occupied I figured, and while I waited I imagined her surprise when I returned home looking fit and youthful, sexy even, instead of “comfortable” in the “relaxed” 36’s she’d have had me in. After a while I considered alerting the staff that something was wrong, that the occupants were worrisomely quiet, when an attendant approached, asked if I’d like to use the changing room and unlocked the door. I stepped in, kicked off my shoes and took off my jeans and, as I pulled on the new pair, I discovered a big knob, shaped like a toy top, attached to the pants right where its fabric met the small of my back. This obstacle made it very difficult to pull up the pants, already snug at 34, and impossible to button and zip. I grew more and more agitated and finally, suffering a modest pique, I just ripped the wedgie thing off. My reward was an eruption of blood colored inky stuff, a dye, it turns out, the purpose of which is to deter shoplifters. Wiping my hands on the ruined jeans but in fact only getting it all over me, I pulled them off, got my own back on and gave the doorknob a turn. It was broken; would turn but did not engage its latching mechanism. I banged on the door a little and hollered a couple of times but to no avail. Gradually at first, as I pondered, and then with a rush, the lessons learned from being stuck in a similar cage during military survival training 40 years ago (don’t ask unless you have a need to know) came flooding back. I executed a brief but circumspect re-con of my environment: tiny enclosure, a space under the door too small to squeeze through, no ceiling, three clothing hooks at eye level, the doorknob down lower. Who knew how much time I had left? Acting quickly, I reached up, grabbed the top wall edges, put my right foot on the doorknob and put my weight on it. It held. I pushed myself up until I could get my other foot on a coat hook. It held too and, using my purchase on the knob and hook, I heaved myself up till I was sitting atop the wall. I conducted a second quick re-con and identified several of the enemy over near the jewelry case, two at the checkout counter and one wandering aimlessly, but coincidentally, in my direction. “Halt,” I commanded, pointing my spent wedgie at her. Seeing me up there, apparently bloodied, she could only guess at the magnitude of disagreement over clothing that could have come to this.
Like my old self, I sprang from the wall. Painfully, though, I landed very much like my present incarnation and, gathering my composure if not my dignity, I headed for the door. As I passed the immobile sales lady I recognized her concern about the condition of whoever might still be in the changing room so I seized the opportunity to divert attention from myself and said, “Call 911 and don’t open that door till they get here.” Quite a little crowd had gathered when I got to the door, all agape at my appearance. “Hard shopping,” I growled by way of explanation.
I still had time to kill before the ferry left and had resigned myself to admitting that shopping was not something I should attempt alone. It’s not the first time in our relationship I have had to acknowledge her better judgment; it wouldn’t be the last.
Before long I’d settled down and, still with time before the boat left, I went to the grocery store for some items I can’t get on the island. I took note of the intriguing reading news beckoning to me from all sides at the checkout counter. There at the bottom, I assume for the bottom dwellers, was The Globe, celebrating a good turn with the headline, “Bigfoot Saves Infant from Burning Trailer.” At eye level, though, were the magazines whose covers broadcast the comings and goings of beautiful people, or once beautiful people, in way over their heads with other beautiful people. I was struck by the pitiful circumstances of the suspected, the unsuspecting, the jilted, the devoted, the long suffering, the magnanimous, the revealed, the hidden, the revered, the hated, the barren, the fertile, the faithful, the infidels, the insatiable, the frigid, the impotent, the over-sexed, the anorexic, the overweight, the selfless, the put-upon and the addicts. I was also moved by their desperate straits as they tried, sometimes valiantly, sometimes barely, but always ineffectually, to keep some modicum of privacy and to conduct even a tiny fraction of their lives free of scrutiny. As I considered their circumstances my thoughts segued again to Away Happens, my thought-provoking compendium on the human condition, and on the book deals, movies and TV series likely to follow. Someday soon, I concluded, I will be standing here, or my personal shopper will be standing here on my behalf, looking at my own visage peering out from these covers.
Perhaps I will have been seen leaving my publisher’s office with my arm around Ms. Welsch, my beguiling personal marketing representative, and, their inclination being to make things seem as sinister as possible, the resulting photo will be plastered across the front page of Entertainment Weekly above the caption, “What Happens to Acclaimed Away Happens Author When He Happens to be Away?”
Maybe paparazzi, disguised as a passing Mariachi band, will, as they draw near my pale form emerging from the surf in Cancun clad fashionably in the briefest of swimwear, suddenly shed their silver studded Charros, pull cameras from their vihuelas and zoom lenses from their trumpets and produce a frightful image that will glare balefully from The Star over the caption “Vacationing Bigfoot Coughs up Distasteful Author.”
Perhaps The Globe will station themselves at my favorite spa, Sustaining Miracles, until they have a nice shot of me emerging freshly buffed and perhaps, given the latitude customarily taken, they will doctor the photo to make it appear I am with a companion and the headline will read “J Lo Raises the Bar, Pursues Intellectual.”
Well, as I said, I am ready.
Phil Crossman lives, writes and sometimes promotes himself on Vinalhaven.