Each week in the Leader Herald the Blue Suit- a blue cloth suit who sits close to the pinnacle of power here in Everett – speaks with Josh Resnek about life, about his life, about life in Everett, about his life as a well known Everett character.
Talking with a cloth blue suit – the Blue Suit – is no easy task. Very, very few people in the world are able to communicate with an inanimate object like a cloth, off the rack blue suit.
In fact, I may be about the only person living or dead who has carried on a friendship with a cloth blue suit.
For many, many of our readers, me talking with, sharing friendship with, breaking bread with a cloth blue suit seems incomprehensible.
For a long time, the Blue Suit revealed to me nearly everything he knows about Everett and its politics.
Today, the Blue Suit is more about survival than revelation, more about loving his life than putting it on the line, and most about getting along with everyone and enjoying his existence.
Again and again I repeat over and over, it is difficult to impossible to convey to some of our readers that I physically, tangibly talk with, eat with, and ride around Everett in my Lexus with a cloth blue suit.
Whenever I talk like this to the Blue Suit, he grows outraged.
“I’m as real as you are, Josh,” he quite often remarks when I’m trying to explain how I have a friendly, private relationship with a cloth blue suit.
“I’m not just anyone’s cloth blue suit,” he answers angrily when growing uptight about what I have to say about him.
After all, I understand there are readers who try talking with blue suits they have in their closets.
I’ve spoken with some readers and it went like this: “I tried to eat with my blue suit in my apartment on Main Street. It didn’t go well. My cloth suit couldn’t stand up. It was unable to exist off the coat hanger it hangs on inside a master closet. I tried loading my blue suit into my automobile. It sank like a pile of cheap fabric into a small mound on the driver’s side seat,” one of my readers told me.
“No matter what I try, my blue suit is not able to breath, let alone to eat or to make jokes. How do you do it, Josh? I want to know. Many of us want to know.”
In many, many ways, the Blue Suit is the equivalent of the character brought to life by the late writer Ralph Ellison titled “The Invisible Man.”
Ellison wrote this national bestseller about a man who existed but he was invisible – that is – he could not be seen by others but he was just as human as the rest of us.
Think about that, about Ellison’s invisible man, walking among us and we don’t know he’s there! He can watch how we act. He hears conversations he otherwise wouldn’t hear. And he is Black, so people feel free to make racist comments because they can’t see him but he hears what they say.
The Blue Suit is not invisible. He is one of the most public people I know.
When he’s outside the closet where he hangs when not being used, he is a force of nature, a powerful guy to deal with, like his owner.
The Blue Suit as most of you who follow his exploits have come to know, has an extraordinary appetite. His appetite has no boundaries.
Bottom line, the Blue Suit is a class act. He exists.
He lives and breaths.
He eats and goes to the bathroom.
He has a sense of humor and a bit of charm and he loves being around crowds of people.
Mostly, he loves being a celebrity (in his own mind) in Everett.
On the other hand, many people who read the Leader Herald from neighboring communities claim to know him or to have met him or to have eaten with him.
After all, the Blue Suit has a wide coterie of friends and acquaintances.
It is hard to say just how popular he is or how widely known he is in the Everett community.
It would be interesting to do some polling to determine how many people have met him, eaten with him, spoken to him about politics or who have shared political secrets with him.
I know he gets around. I’ve been with him when he is mobbed by people seeking his autograph.
He knows everyone important at Everett City Hall, and though he doesn’t like to talk about it, he knows about everyone’s secrets at city hall.
He knows who is there everyday at their desks and who are not.
He knows who take sick days when they are not sick and he knows who takes vacations and where they go and what they do. Yes. The Blue Suit is a repository of city hall information.
“Did you hear about so and so?” he asked me the other day when we were driving around in my car.
I played along with the Blue Suit. He’s always asking me questions like that.
“No,” I answered. “ Tell me what happened.”
“Forget it, Josh. If you don’t know then I’m not telling you.”
“Come on,” I complained.
“OK,” the Blue Suit said. “There was an incident I know about that happened to a political candidate in the city. But don’t rely on me to give you all the details.”
“You’re the bigtime reporter. You can get the story on your owm,” he added. “Is that the kind of answer you’d expect from a cloth blue suit!”
Not really!