John Cowart, Male Fashion Model

If Esquire or Gentleman’s Quarterly need a male fashion model, I now qualify.

Yes, this weekend I have become a clothes horse.

You see, it’s like this.

For years and years now, every Friday night my wife and I celebrate a date together. Back when we were poor, our dates consisted of walking down to the river to watch the sunset, share a Three Musketeers candy bar, and talk all evening. Now that we’re affluent, we often visit the library, then go to a restaurant to drink tea, munch on fries and read our books, or talk all evening.

Well, she once commented that she liked the way a certain red-plaid shirt looks on me; so, ever since, I have consistently worn that shirt for our Friday Night Dates and on other special occasions.

The thing is that she made her comment on my red-plaid shirt back in 1968.

The shirt is not red anymore.

Besides, being a careless pipe smoker, I manage to get hot ash on my clothes and burn all these little holes here and there.

For years Ginny & I have collected clothes for a rescue mission (see my article “Brassier Hunt “ in the right-hand column of www.cowart.info for odd details) so literally tons of cloth have passed through our house.

Occasionally I’ve been tempted to snag some of the newer shirts and pass one of my old shirts along to the poor instead; but Ginny says that my old shirts are too shabby to give to the poor. She says the poor deserve better. And since I don’t see any sense in throwing perfectly good shirts in the trash, I send on the newer cloth on to the mission and keep wearing my same old shirts myself.

So I had a closet full of shirts dating to the 1960s and '70s, though some of them (Ginny says all of them) are getting a tad frayed and faded — like me..

But who cares diddle about what a writer wears?

Well, on our date last Friday night Ginny mentioned that my red-plaid shirt is not quite as attractive on me as it was back in 1968. The lower buttons now stretch to meet the buttonholes... So I decided to spend money on new cloth.

I went to a mission thrift store and in a frenzy of self indulgence bought myself NINE new/previously-owned shirts including some bearing the Ralph Lauren label. I squandered a total of $27 cash money on such cloth stuff to make myself fashionable.

I feel positively decadent.

But Wow! do I look natty.

Dressed good enough to bury.

While I was on this cloth-buying spree I also bought a couple of dainties from Victoria’s Secret and Frederick’s of Hollywood for my beautiful Ginny ....

But that’s another story.

Posted on Monday 23 of May, 2005 [00:40:05]