The Blue Suit and I were talking about our lives Tuesday afternoon. The rain had come back. It was a dreary day, and sometimes, on dreary days, life seems dreary – doesn’t it? The real power we can wield over our lives and the trials and tribulations we all live through, is to take each day as it comes. Looking into the future is folly, to a certain degree, just as not paying attention to the future can lead to major dysfunction in our lives.
The Blue Suit takes each day as it comes.
“I have to,” he said to me as we drove around Everett. “My life has been tentative for so long that I sometimes don’t know which end is up. I feel worn, and torn, just a bit tattered and wrinkled, stained and over all, in need of a very long vacation. But at my age, there is not much of a future. When you are a 12 year old cloth suit as I am, the future is grim. Let’s face it, newer suits coming out now are better designed, more useful for day to day wear, and altogether affordable. There are some suits that can be bought online for $49. Can you imagine! When I was made in China 12 years ago of cheap cotton, with plastic buttons and not much sense of swagger or style I survived just getting along and putting up with every curveball thrown my way. I learned how to survive in a very tough environment. I got tough. I learned how to fight, although I’ve been kicked around more than I care to recall. What I miss, what I really, really miss, is having a companion,” the Blue Suit said to me.
Frankly, I have a great deal of trouble understanding the Blue Suit. For instance, who could he possibly think he might fall in love with?
“I’ll tell you who I could fall in love with,” the Blue Suit said thoughtfully. “I’d like to be hanging out with a high end cot- ton summer dress or even a wedding dress made by a French designer in a fancy salon. Sometimes I think I’d like to go out with a tailored woman’s suit made of light wool fabric. Some- times I think I’d get along well with a tailored wool suit – preferably dark, kind of charcoal gray. I wonder if I could find such a women’s suit in Everett?”
I thought about this for a moment.
I turned to the Blue Suit. I began again.
“Many, many people who barely know one another meet in this city quite by accident and begin a romance. The summer is filled with such scenarios. You know, younger people meeting and falling in love. Well, guess what? Older people, like you, can meet other older people and begin a relationship if the energy is right. But let’s face it, you’re an older cloth off the rack blue suit, well known, smart, but kind of used up even though you still have a great deal of energy. The problem is this. Where do you meet a partner?”
The Blue Suit turned to me and smiled.
“I can’t go on Tinder,” he laughed. “I’d like to but I can’t. Older cloth blue suits like me have trouble finding partners on dating websites. That’s just the way it is,” he added.
“What are your options?” I asked him.
“Dry cleaners are where older cloth suits hook-up. When you’re all rolled up into a wrinkeled ball at the dry cleaner, and a female cloth suit gets tossed near to me…well…that’s my opportunity to start up a conversation. I haven’t been to the dry cleaners in a while. So I’m feeling a bit stale. I talked briefly with a city lawyer wearing a Brooks Brothers suit recently. The Brooks Brothers suit told me he had met an Andover Shop suit (the famous clothier in Harvard Square) and that they hit it off immediately. But this was all about male suit friendship and not about a man and woman relationship such as I am wishing for,” the Blue Suit said.
He continued.
“I have always held the belief that someone was coming to- ward me as the world turns, that someone was going to meet me and fall in love with me, and we were going to take off and live happily ever after. Now that I am 12, that dream is still a possibility but a fading possibility at that. I am alone, all alone. Yes, I have many friends. Yes. I am very well known. I am surrounded by people wherever I go. Just yesterday at the New Bridge Café I was mobbed by people all wanting to shake my hand and to pat me on the back or to share a high five. At the end of the meal, I was glum – full but glum. I want a partner. I want to shine like a tuxedo and to sting like a bee,” he joked.
“Mostly, I wish for a meaningful relationship and for many more years of usefulness. I’m tired of being alone. Maybe this will be the summer when I find that special women’s suit and ride off into the sunset with her, never to be seen again, or to both again with my previous life. You know what, Josh? That might be refreshing.”