Dress To Suppress

At the age of 38, I have come to the conclusion that I have no one to impress on a daily basis.  Unless I am looking to advance in my career or I am mandated by certain mores such as company dress code or acceptable for the event, I will dress mostly for comfort.  Now, granted, being a t-shirt designer, after work and on the weekends I’m liable to be wearing a tee I love or designed, which has a message or is used for marketing purposes.  In any case, the my morning goes like this.

I get up, shower, and then put on clothes that satisfy the following criteria: did I wear that shirt last week, and is it comfortable for the weather  Beyond that, I don’t put a lot of thought into the manner or style of dress.   However, if you were to ask the me that was 25 years  my junior, you’d get a vastly different answer.    There was no comfort involved.  It was dress to suppress.

Now, what does that mean?

Well, in the case of eight to ten year old me, I wore a good deal of hand me downs.    Being the youngest of three, by seven years, I was subjected to wearing the clothes my brother had from a previous decade.   Factor in that my parents didn’t have a huge bank account, I wore the same clothes for multiple years while they fit.

But at some point, I wised up.  I went to my mother and thanked her for my impeccable fashion sense but asked if my older brother could take me clothes shopping before the first day of 7^th grade.   In my town, you had K-6 (Grade School) in one building, 7-9 (Junior High) in another, and then 10-12 (High School) in yet another.   You see, the division in schools also determine the threat level to one’s psyche from their classmates.  In grade school, you could get away with wearing sweat pants, a ¾ sleeve baseball tee, and Sears’ brand Velcro running shoes without drawing attention.  However, in sixth grade the natives begin to take notice and you prepare yourself for the inevitable catty comments about how you dress and how you look to your peers.   So, I decided to keep that from happening and turned in my running shoes for Nike high tops, just so I could keep up with the pack.   Then, in the summer before Junior High, I went on that all important clothes shopping trip to the mall with my older and infinitely cooler brother.  I came back with Ocean Pacific and Shah Safari shirts, Bugle Boys and Dockers pants, a pair of Chuck Taylors and assorted shirts from 80s mega trendy stores like Chess King and Just Pants (I’m kidding).

That first day of school was all about blending in and not sticking out.  It wasn’t about the clothes drawing attention.   It was about disguising myself to look like the enemy.  That way I could infiltrate their ranks and they could see me, not what I wore.   In those days, if your parents got your clothes at stores like Gabriel Bros. or Montgomery Ward, you were an easy target.  The cool people could zone in on you like a geek seeking missile, claws bared, ready to attack your fashion.  It was survival of the fittest.

By when you reach High School, the claws retract somewhat.   The rules are more relaxed.  In Junior High, the bodies and minds of teenagers go completely nuts.  All the instability of hormones and growing fight your ability to be comfortable in your own skin, so you lash out at others as a way to justify your own metamorphoses from ugly caterpillar to butterfly.   In High School, you stop focusing on how to take others out of the race and work to getting to the finish line first with flare.  It’s called preparation for college.  Soon, you start to compare acceptance letters to schools like you did with shoes or earrings, years before.  It’s not about how you dress, it’s about how you will succeed in your post High School career.  Still, I did do my best to keep up and went the route of the Boyz II Men, Olive Garden waiter route with jeans, white button down shirts, and ties.  Some days loafers, some days sneakers.     But I never got called out by the worst offenders from Junior High when it came to my clothes.   I mean I caught a glimpse of it in sixth grade with my clothing.  In Junior High, there was that one disastrous pair of blood Red Pro Keds high tops that nearly destroyed me.  Luckily, the poorest of the poor kids had on Moon Boots and the geek seeking missiles locked onto him instead.

Funny how, when you get to college, all of that goes out the window and you end up wearing pajamas to class or sweats with a ball cap, and you’re just fine.  Sometimes you wonder if uniforms in the education system help to tone down bullying or other harassment of not so cool kids in those years.    My argument for that is to a kid going through all the agony of adolescence, their clothes should be a coat of arms for their individuality.  I wouldn’t bow to inappropriate or obscene clothing, but as a form of expression and a way to help that transition, clothes do make the man they will become.  Why suppress that?

The Afghan Incident

The title might suggest some sort of international disaster in Afghanistan, but it’s really just another in a long line of embarrassing moments in the life of Mongo.

In 1988, I was in trudging along through 8th grade. As anyone who survived adolescence will tell you, those are the dark days of growing up. After leaving the world of safety scissors and recess, that is grade school, you are thrust into the world of Junior High without a safety net. As you try to make that transition between childhood and adulthood, you are constantly being bombarded with the pressures derived from puberty, scholastic expectations and algebra. You’re brain is like a lit firecracker being held, tightly, in a fist.

It’s enough to want to make you crawl into a hold and die the first time you embarrass yourself among your peers. I was already becoming a pro at it. Teenage love and angst went together like chemical fertilizer and a detonator. Shakespeare was way ahead of his time writing Romeo and Juliet. If he were alive today, besides being really old and smelly, he’d probably be a writer for teen dramas like The OC and 90210. Honestly, he’d be the King of The CW.

Now, I tend to use Big Willie as a crutch in adolescent development analogies because he nailed it so well. Romeo and Juliet are the perfect encapsulation of what it is like being a teenager, to a teenager. Everything is life or death. You make one wrong move and you start the Mercutio Curse, setting off a cascading failure of events that eventually destroys your social standing. Sometimes you self destruct because a lack of self awareness and sometimes other people set the ball in motion. Usually, you find yourself digging a deeper hole, trying to rectify the misunderstanding, until the aftermath is the unraveling of an entire sweater thanks to pulling on one loose thread. This has happened to me.

One of my school friends had a Halloween Costume party at his house. Now, I didn’t have a store bought costume at the ready, because I was too old for trick or treating, and it’s not like I just buy costumes for the hell of it. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 had just come out in theaters a couple of months prior so, I decided to go as Freddy Krueger. My costume was cobbled together from an array of unauthentic elements. A red and white striped sweater was used instead of a red and green one. I had built the glove from a tan leather one, attaching sharpened emery boards, covered in foil, for the blades. My grandfather’s old green fedora served as Freddy’s trademark brown one. Still, it was passable considering I spent no money on the costume at all, though I still owe my mom some emery boards.

The guest list included a group of friends from school, all of which I had known for at least a year or more. There was my best friend, as well as a girl I liked, the non conformist punk type that managed to be your friend but still critical of you, and the very smart, yet always in trouble kid who also served as a nemesis/friend figure in my life. I say that because he functions as the sort of person that is friends with you on some days and against you on other days. We once ended being sent to the principal’s office after he lunged across the lunch table at me for knocking off his glasses. Yet, we sat there in hysterical laughter while we waited to be seen by the principal. See what I mean? With all these different personalities attending the party there was bound to be some sort of dramatic cataclysm.

At first everything seemed to be going fine but soon that social thread loosened and was about to be pulled. I don’t remember the exact details but somehow another kid’s shoe was thrown in my direction. I was holding a drink in one hand and did not have the cat like reflexes needed to block the projectile. My drink was knocked from my hand spilling all over my shirt as well as the blanket underneath me. But it wasn’t a blanket, it was an afghan knitted by a relative of kid who threw the party. Just after the shoe made contact with my drink and flew out of view, the kid’s father came into the room. I stood up immediately after feeling wet. The spilled drink that had pooled on my lap, fell onto the afghan in plain sight of the father. He immediately yelled out about the fact that the afghan was handmade. From the tone of his voice I thought he was joking so I nearly doubled over from laughter at his delivery. Apparently, he was serious and rather upset.

The gravity of the situation became worse as the nemesis and non conformist punk kid began adding insult to injury by lobbing supporting arguments at me in the form of “Why would do that?” and “What were you thinking.” Their participation in the situation painted me as a derelict that found pleasure in destroying other people’s personal property. Every step I took towards fixing the misunderstanding resulted in two steps back, in the content of my character, in the eyes of this man and no one else stepped in to help. I think it all just happened to fast to even comprehend what exactly had took place. It was a ping pong ball tossed into a room of mousetraps holding other ping pong balls. Before you even saw the first trap sprung, it was all over.

From that moment on, for the parents, I was labeled as “That Kid” while the best friend, who was the non conformist punk kid, was seen as the angelic friend to whom their son should aspire to be like. Meanwhile, the “angel” was sometimes friend and sometimes friend who used you as the butt of a joke to get laughs. Yes, for years I was known as “That Kid” and the will to overcome that was testament to the strength and resiliency of the teenage psyche. The long lasting effects of Post Traumatic Keds Disorder have finally ceased to hinder my ability to sit on woven materials while holding beverages.

Now, I cannot say with any certainty that this particular event was like the butterfly effect causing me to be cursed with ridiculous epic fail syndrome. I believe that this was a side effect caused by the skipping of “3rd Grade Swimming Lessons” for the class of 1993. That single event caused a rippling of bad juju throughout my entire class that ended up shortchanging us in a lot of things that were a part of every other class’ normal scholastic development and experience. But that is another story.

Ballad of the Bud Under the Bed

The house as it looked in 1987

Somewhere outside of Virginia Beach, in the community of Sandbridge, located in a house on Bluebill Dr, sits a can of Budweiser, 22 years past its expiration date, underneath a sofa bed. It sounds unlikely, but I’d like to think that it is still there waiting for me to return one day to drink it. I know the truth of the matter is that the can was probably discarded not long after that fateful week in 1987 when my friend and I stole it.

I was just 12 years old and the both of us were determined to get wasted. Our families had rented this house for the week and my friend and I shared the bottom floor bedroom that consisted of a bathroom and a sofa bed. We were no stranger to sharing living quarters as we had both spent a week, the previous year, in another house in the same community.

The seeds of anarchy and delinquency may have been planted the previous summer, over quiet discussions in our room. I remember a blaring radio playing the Beatles cover of "Twist and Shout", which had become popular again thanks to Ferris Beuller’s Day Off and Back to School. We may have used the noise from the radio to mask our strategic plotting, though I don’t remember the specifics. In any case, we were ready to spring our plan into action this year as we had the bottom floor all to ourselves. We could come and go as we pleased, just by sneaking out the front door. We could escape into the night and do the things that kids our age do out and about in the summertime night like walk around and wonder, “Okay, now what?”

But we didn’t. We were committed to the task. Our plan was simple and only had four goals.

1. Steal a beer from our parents’ stash in the upstairs fridge.


2. Hide it in our room until we were able to consume it without getting caught.


3. Get drunk like adults did.


4. Gain some insight into adulthood, letting the mysteries of the universe reveal themselves.

That’s what we thought would happen. At our age, we figured that there had to be some all important reason to consume alcoholic beverages. We were warned against it as children, yet I can remember on occasion my Father would sit me on his lap and let me sip small quantities from his can, much to my Mother’s dismay. In fact, there is a much recalled incident at family gatherings about a time when my whole family was kicked out of a Lum’s restaurant, because my Father gave my brother a tiny sip of beer. Surely, there was some cosmic conspiracy over this act and we were about to find out why.

First we had to take a look at our surroundings. The house provided just the right amount of concealment for our plan to go off without a hitch. Coming through the front door you could turn right into the garage or turn left up a spiral staircase to the main floor. Going straight would lead you into our room. Actually, the house was quite nice. From what I remember it was a house that might have belonged to the realtor and had just been put on the market as a rental. It wasn’t on the ocean and in fact it was on the opposite side of a canal that fed into Shipps Bay. We had a paddle boat docked at the back and an in ground pool, complete with deep end and diving board to entertain us. Now we had an additional part to our plan. Get drunk and go swimming. The reckless abandon, by which we had conspired to be bad, was astounding.

Early into the week we managed to complete step one of our dastardly deed. It was a quiet evening and while our families were swimming or otherwise distracted, we snuck a can of Budweiser from the fridge. Racing back down to our room, we needed to conceal the contraband. We couldn’t proceed to step three since it was still early in the evening, so we halted at step two by placing the can underneath the sofa bed. It was easily accessible, yet undetectable to the naked eye. When the time was right we would continue with Operation Inebriation.

During the rest of the week we continued to enjoy our time at the beach, always keeping a thought towards our plan. There were two instances when we almost cracked open that can, prematurely. “No,” we thought. We had to wait for the right moment. It was like one of those 80s adventure computer games. We were given an object that could only be used once and at the appropriate time. When the time was right, we would know it. Until then, maintain appearances, don’t let on what we had done and don’t tell anyone else. That meant keeping secrets from the other kids in our group that were also vacationing at the beach but at different houses. Holding onto that secret was at times exhilarating and also excruciating. We had this forbidden object just inches from where we slept at night that could elevate our cool factor into the stratosphere and yet we feared telling them because they might inadvertently blab to an adult. That would have been instant death to our plan and us, for that matter. Still, we kept visible within the circle of friends and went about our week.

Our friends were staying in houses right on the beach and even though we had the pool, they had the view. Actually, the one had a great view of the house directly across the street. The only other guy friend our age was staying at this huge house directly across the street from a place with two girls. We had come over for the last night of our vacation for a group dinner. We found our friend hanging out on the topmost deck, plugged into his walkman, blasting Def Leppard’s "Hysteria." It had just been released that month and he was already wearing it out something fierce. He didn’t even notice us sneaking up on him. When he did acknowledge us we asked him what he had been up to and his response was, “Watching some girl show me her underwear.” We both did a double take and then looked across the street at the house facing us. There, in front bedroom, were two girls waving at us and making silly body movements.

My partner in crime and I looked at each other in agreement. Those girls could share in our plan. We could have a party. We didn’t exactly know what we could do. I mean I had grown up watching stolen HBO, so I kind of knew what this all meant. I never actually imagined being in a position that resembled it, though. I began to think this could actually be the best vacation ever. We had an in with the girls. Just get them to come down and talk with us and we could let them in on our plan to get drunk. The beer was still sitting, hidden, in our room at the house. We could all sneak away and hang out at our place and go night swimming. It had to have been the best plan ever thought of by a 12 year old in the history of adolescence.

We quickly started making the universal sign for hello by flailing our hands around like we had no bones in our arms. They continued to duck down behind the balcony wall, holding up an errant bra that they had brought with them from their room. A bra, regardless of being removed from the person twirling around, was still like catnip to a teenager. We continued to use semaphore like movements to try and signal them down to the beach. Eventually, they got the hint when they saw us descend the staircase from our balcony and sneak across the street to their side. Not wanting to alert the adults, we snuck around the outside of their house in a wide circle. We ended up on the beach about a hundred feet from the steps up to their house and then ran all the way to meet them.

“Hey.” We said, out of breath.

“Hey,” They said, not knowing what to make of this rag tag bunch of misfits before them.

“So, like how old are you?” Good. Good. Establish a baseline. We don’t want to give alcohol to them if they are too young to handle it. Of course, everyone knows that the constitution of a 12 year old far outweighs one of a ten year old.

“I’m twelve and she’s thirteen” One of them said.

“Excellent,” I thought. Being the youngest of the three guys, I felt a sort of inclusion into the group with the confirmation of one of the girls being the same age as myself. I was worried that, if they were older than me, I would not stand a chance competing with my older, wiser friends. Yet, I still held the ace in my pocket…or more to the point; underneath the sofa bed at our house, a couple miles away.

We conversed for a little while longer, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves from inside the house. I feverishly searched for a way to introduce the idea of going back to our place for a late night swim and beer bash. However, they admitted that it was time for them to go. Alas, the opportunity never presented itself to include them in our scheme and they disappeared forever, another footnote in the annuals of summer flings that almost were. But we didn’t dwell on the matter. We had bigger fish to fry.

After dinner, my friend and I returned to our house and began to pack up our things. We knew what lay in store for us and didn’t want to have to try packing after our long night of consumption. We thought it best to get everything out of the way, freeing us from performing tasks that required dexterity and balance the next morning.

Being the last night in the house, we thought it appropriate to give the pool one last swim and spent a couple hours that the night contemplating our place in the universe while doing cannonballs off the diving board.

The eleventh hour had drawn on and we retired to our room. We decided to try and stay up as late as possible, outlasting our parents. We didn’t want them to come down and check on us in our drunken state. We took turns manning the staircase outside our room, keeping watch for adults or nosy siblings. Soon, the house went quiet and we too had ultimately just collapsed from sheer exhaustion. The heavy meal, the late night rendezvous and jog up the beach, as well as the swim was the final nail in our coffin, taking every last ounce of energy we had left.

The next morning brought on the hustle and bustle of packing up cars and checking on rooms to make sure nothing remained. We insisted to our parents that we had checked our room completely and that nothing was left behind. Neither one of us had a moment to snag the beer from under the sofa and stick it in our bags. We figured, if anything, we could transport it home and then sneak out to the park one night and finish what we had started. Unfortunately, we had no chance to stealthily slip the suds into our sacks and it remained behind like a fallen soldier in combat. The battle was lost. The opportunity missed. The beer left under the sofa bed, in the house on Bluebill Dr., in the community of Sandbridge, just outside of Virginia Beach, sat like a testament to what might have been.

While we may have only met two of our goals that summer, we took that first step towards being initiated into adulthood. As teens, a stolen beer is a rite of passage. It's intoxicating just to take it, undetected, not knowing that first stolen beers are usually nasty and warm and really don't do much for you other than make you sick. Those last two goals were a fictional representation of what we held in our minds as absolute truths in life.

It wasn’t until 22 years later that I finally understood the fourth goal. Yet, I confess, I never completed it. The mysteries of the universe were still that to me, a mystery. I still don’t understand why we thought that one beer would be enough to get us both drunk. I still don’t understand how we were going to travel, on foot, to a house somewhere in a two mile radius from our position that night. Neither of us bothered to pay attention to directions. Perhaps those are mysteries that only a kid can understand. Kids still believe in their immortality and the awesome power of a summer vacation giving them wisdom. Kids are kings among pessimists, always thinking that the future is bright and go on forever, like a sandy beach in summer.

The house as it looks today, 2009