My recent items on wearing clothes to death and bowties attracted attention I did not expect. In particular one friend of long standing reminded me of the black-tie dinner parties I used to hold back in the 1980s.
Why? I owned a tuxedo and knew several other men who did, along with women who had formal dresses. Vicki and I enjoyed cooking fancy meals and drinking nice wine, and had friends who shared those tastes, some of whom were willing to fly across the country for a good meal in our formal dining room served on China with heirloom silver accompanied by wine and crystal glasses (the latter won on the Wheel Of Fortune).
Two of our guests from those days have died, and the rest of us have settled into adulthood, parenthood and domesticity.
It is still true that we can cook a better meal than you can get in most restaurants, but it just doesn’t seem to be worth the time anymore. I’m glad I did it, and I am glad that I got the video off VHS tapes before VHS players became impossible to find.
I can’t help but mention, again, a childhood friend who, like me, was raised working class. When he saw me in a tux on New Years’ Eve, he joked (I think he was joking) “You’re wearing the costume of the oppressor.”
Since I aspired to rise from the working class to the oppressor class (but without the oppression part), I was fine with that. Besides, a tux is also the costume of the working class, in restaurants or on entertainers (like me when I play in a brass band).
VHS players are not impossible to find. You can find one in my living room, where we use to play tapes for our grandsons.
Posted by: Lee Giguere | September 06, 2021 at 12:49 PM