Tag: The Blue Suit

“I’ve never told anyone what I’m going to tell you about the mayor,” his Blue Suit said to me. “I’m not excited. I know what I’m doing. I just want to get this stuff off my chest so people will know who the mayor really is,” his Blue Suit told me.

“I know how popular my discussions are with you with an awful lot of people – the people who matter – those Everett readers, homeowners, businesspeople and voters who read your column,” the Blue Suit added.

“He continues to wear me all the time. I thought he might trade me in for a new off the rack suit…but no…he is stubborn. He won’t change. If he does, he believes it looks as though you are winning and he is losing,” the Blue Suit said whimsically.

“You remember how he told you he was going to put you out of business in four weeks? I was there with him when he charged down to your office on Church Street and blustered his way in to see you. In his own mind, he believed he was going to destroy you and to put you out of business. Others had told him it was a bad idea, that you couldn’t be crushed and that you had very loyal friends who never give up and who would never let you down. Still, he couldn’t be stopped from trying to act like a tough guy when in fact, everyone knows he’s just a small city bully out to hurt people and to enrich himself at everyone else’s expense.”

“You really believe this?” I asked the Blue Suit.

It is an exceedingly strange sensation for the mayor’s favorite blue suit to speak with me as often as he does. He told me so.

I’ve come to know the Blue Suit as a close friend. He’s confessed to me about being off the rack and a bit worn and so tired from being abused by the mayor.

“Josh, speaking with you about what the mayor does when no one but me is looking gives me a major rush. You know why? Because he mistreats me. Talking to you about him, sharing with you his secrets, and you revealing them to your readership is pay back.

“He hurts me all the time. Why shouldn’t I take pleasure in causing him pain?” the Blue Suit said to me.

“Every Wednesday is a like the Battle of the Bulge for me. I face great odds and a huge weight difference. The mayor leaves himself open to attack. He talks a big game about fighting but there’s not much fight in him. All he cares about is money and himself, mostly himself,” he repeated for emphasis.

“Last week, when the Leader came out he got his copy as he does moments after the paper is delivered. Hiding it from sight, he sneaks away to read The EYE where no one can see him, so no one will know. He reads every word – and then he goes nuts. When people ask if he saw the Leader, he always replies: “No I never read it. It’s a rag. I pay no attention to it,” he said, the Blue Suit told me.

“That’s when the calls start,” the Blue Suit told me.

“Jerry Navarra is usually the first one to call. As much as he loves Jerry, he is driven crazy by him. He has sometimes talked about letting him go. He could never do that,” the Blue Suit said to me.

‘Why?” I responded.

“He knows too much about the mayor,” the Blue Suit said.

“Did you read what was in the Leader today?” Jerry asked the mayor last week on the cell phone, the Blue Suit told me.

“I thought the mayor was going to have a heart attack,” the Blue Suit said to me. “What the mayor doesn’t know is that Jerry and I are buddies. When he says stuff like that to the mayor, he knows how it gets under his skin. He enjoys that!” the Blue Suit added.

“I had to go out with him the other day,” the mayor’s blue suit told me.

“He makes a bit of a fuss over himself before he leaves the house. I know. I’ve been with him for years.”

“When he decides to wear me, he takes me from the closet and lays me on his big bed in his master bedroom. Then he goes to his closet again and picks out just the right shirt and tie, which he lays neatly on top of me.

In the master bedroom’s en suite bathroom, (all polished marble and stainless steal donated to his cause by folks wishing to do business with the city) he usually shaves. He splashes on a bit of cologne when finished. He puts some gel in his hair and combs it back neatly. He loves when his black hair glistens in the light. During this ritual he is staring at himself in the mirror. He enjoys staring at himself. Truth be known, at times like these, he stares endlessly at himself, moving this way and that, pulling in his stomach for just the right look. He admirers himself, changing his facial expressions. He pivots right and left as though he’s former Gov. Chris Christi, before he had a stomach tuck, preparing for an engagement. At other times I can assure you, he hates himself and can’t stand what he sees of himself when he looks into his reflection in his bathroom mirror,” the Blue Suit told me about the mayor.

“Dressing is easy. He slips me on over his legs. He puts on dark socks and those crusty leather shoes of his that he loves so much. He puts on the shirt and tie. He buckles the belt. Then comes the big moment. He stands in front of the mirror and admires himself. I know what he thinks when he’s looking at himself in the mirror, when he turns just so to gain an image of himself from an angle, or when he smiles as if practicing the smile, or when he extends his arm and points his index finger at the mirror as if to say, ‘Now you listen to me. I’m the mayor. I run the city. I own the city. It is mine’” the Blue Suit said he heard him say.

The brilliant French philosopher Voltaire wrote: “In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other.”

The Blue Suit, that is, the mayor’s blue suit who speaks with me about his boss, loves Voltaire. The Blue Suit has told me so.

“Common sense is not so common,” Voltaire wrote, the Blue Suit told me.

“Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts,” is another Voltaire bit of sarcasm and wisdom told to me by the Blue Suit.

“All is for the best, in the best of possible worlds,” Voltaire wrote in his magnum opus, Candide. The Blue Suit liked this one when I read it to him.

“Voltaire is unreal. Do you realize Carlo has no idea who Voltaire was or about Candide. The mayor might say to me, ‘What candy are you talking about?’ because Candide sounds like candy,” the Blue Suit said to me.

“You sound like you’re down. What’s wrong?” I asked the Blue Suit.

“The boss. The mayor. Carlo is down in the dumps about money. I know he is. I can tell how he’s acting that he needs money. He’s grouchy. He’s quiet. He doesn’t want to be disturbed or to do anything but what he wants to do with his life. The social distancing is killing him on the inside,” the Blue Suit said to me. “Believe me when I tell you. His bank account is hurting. It is almost non-existent. Take it from me. I know. I hear him talk about his financial condition all the time. He needs a score real badly,” the Blue Suit said to me.

“I thought the mayor was rich because of his relatives?” I asked.

“No. No,” the Blue Suit replied.

The Blue Suit and I had quite a discussion earlier this week. Incredible, really!

The Blue Suit said he had been looking back, and that I should look back, too, when it comes to his owner, the mayor.

“If trouble was money, the mayor would be a multi-millionaire, instead of losing his donut shops,” the Blue Suit began. “Before I begin, I want you to know what agony it is when he wears me, when he sits down on me like a lump, grinding and crushing the bottoms of my pants, and terrifying me when gets up and then sits down again and again. Not only does he hurt me but he is destroying me…the way he destroys people,” The Blue Suit said.

“When he’s sweating and eating, dropping food all over me, it’s worse. Generally, I hang in the closet praying to God he doesn’t wear me. That’s why the Coronavirus has been so good for me. He’s going around in his jeans and sweatshirt. He’s a got a big collection of those. You know, hoodies and crumpled jeans. He’s got a collection of footwear, sneakers and running shoes. Boy, I feel so sorry for the shoes. If one day he gets rid of me, you’ll hear plenty from his sneakers. What stories they can tell about trying to survive when he’s stomping round wearing them!”

“So what’s up?” I asked the Blue Suit.