The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Your Makeover

Previously: "Dates Made and Dates Contemplated" 

The afternoon that follows is one of gauzy impressions punctuated by one or two sharply etched incidents.

In a dream-like haze you let Eva and Jessica and Cindy guide you through the men's department, where, alternately, they hold up shirts and sweatshirts to your torso while making cryptic comments about your "coloring" and your "geometry" and they tug at your cargo shorts and sloppy t-shirt while making critical comments about your "style." "You dress like you're still in middle school, Will," Jessica says with a tight-lipped smile. You have no reply to that, and docilely let them pick out clothes to try out.

They're not shy about following you into the changing rooms, either, and Cindy and Jessica shut themselves up with you inside one of them while demanding that you strip to your boxers. You have to fight to stop yourself from covering your skinny torso with your skinny arms while they openly look you up and down. They're gentle with their comments, though, and Jessica says something about how "a good wrapping job" is all you need. They let you alone to change, though, when Eva hauls in the first batch of things to try on.

T-shirts, you discover, are right out, except as undershirts for the button-down numbers they press on you. Some of these are dress shirts; others are heavy denim; most of them are a dusty rose or dark forest green, as those are what the girls have settled on as your "colors." They also bring you jeans and heavy trousers whose baggy legs that hide your skinny shanks. They bulk you up with undershirts topped with dress shirts, which can be overlaid with sweatshirts, which can be draped over with unbuttoned denim shirts.

After fifty minutes of picking you out a basic ensemble, they begin augmenting it in various ways. First they bully you into ditching your belt for a rugged set of suspenders that, you have to admit, look good against the showy shirts they've put you in. In the shoe department they find you some dark brown hiking boots that put your crown an additional half-inch off the ground. They experiment with leather bracelets for one wrist, and a silver chain for the other. Ties—cable-knit in solid colors, not fancy silk dress—are picked out, and Jessica adds a silver bolo tie to the pile.

It's nearing supper time and you're exhausted, but they still have plans for you. They put you in a chair and pull off your cap and brush your stiff hair out. You are eyed with purse-mouthed hauteur as Eva pulls your hair back and pushes it down in various ways as they try to decide what if any hair style could possibly work with your hair and the look they are trying to evolve for you. Tempers are beginning to fray—yours included—before Jessica snaps her fingers and tells everyone to wait while she runs off. She's gone for five minutes during which Cindy and Eva murmur unhappily; you have the sense that your stiff, straw-like hair may be the complete undoing of all that they have planned. You're sinking into your chair when Jessica runs back in with a couple of wide-brimmed hats. "Let's try these," she says.

You're not thrilled. "A fedora?" you croak. "Aren't those, like, for losers with neck-beards?"

"These aren't fedoras," Jessica snaps as she shoves one onto your head. "They're for outdoor wear. Besides, you need to start shaving. Every day, if you can remember." She steps back, and her frown blazes into a smile as she studies you. "There!" she exclaims.

Cindy gasps and Eva squeals. "That's perfect! Oh, but the brim, don't you think it's a little—?"

Jessica nods, and snatches it off to replace it with another, which brings coos of admiration from her friends. "Stand up," she tells you. "Straighten up. For fuck's sake, don't slouch, Will. You're looking really good. Come on." She grasps you by the wrist and pulls you over to a floor-length mirror.

It's like a stranger staring back at you. A kid in rugged jeans and rugged boots, his soft, dusky denim shirt restrained by a pair of understated suspenders and set off by a tie the color of old roses. He's crowned with a leather hat that's shaped basically like a fedora but which exudes the tough, battered, character of a cowboy hat. It gives the scraggly hair that falls over his ears a scruffy charm that is more manly than boyish. As you study the reflection, it straightens up, lifting its chin, and a raffish smile twists its lips.

"Oh, that's genius, girl," Cindy says. "Get the other things, let's see how he—" Eva and Jessica scamper away and return with ties and sweatshirts and the other accouterments, including a soft leather bomber jacket that you couldn't help shrinking from when they put it on you earlier. Now, when you put it on—

Well, you look like Indiana Jones's scrawniest grandson, but you still feel yourself blossoming inside it. And when Eva sweeps the hat off and sets your old cap back on you, you cringe. "Yeah," she chortles. "You don't ever want to wear that again, do you?" She knocks it to the floor and puts the leather hat back on you.

"Here!" Cindy thrusts a cell phone at you, so that you can look at the screen and your reflection in the mirror, side by side. The phone shows a photo that she surreptitiously took of you in your old togs, and you flinch to recognize the aptness of Jessica's remark that you dress like you're still in middle school. The awkward, gangly, rabbity scarecrow on the phone looks like a retarded goof next to the young man in the mirror.

* * * * *

But how are you to pay for these new things, since you are now too embarrassed to be caught in your old ones? "It's our treat," Eva says when you mumble a guarded comment about how much a new wardrobe would cost. "Between the five of us, we got you covered."

"The five of you?" you ask.

"Two silent partners," Jessica adds smoothly. "Don't worry about it."

"Technically, there's ten of us," Cindy says, but Jessica hushes her with a gesture.

"But how do I explain it to my parents?" you ask.

"It's a school project," Cindy says. She grins. "Give a guy a makeover, that was the assignment. Wasn't it?" she looks around, and the Garner girls hurriedly agree. "We'll get together tomorrow after school for a photo shoot. Before and after pictures. So bring your old stuff and the new stuff with you to school."

"You mean I'm taking the new stuff home now?"

She smiles. "Don't be a dumbass, Will."

* * * * *

You do insist on changing into your old things before going home, but your parents are already at the dinner table when you get home—your dad looks steamed at your tardiness—and you have to lug four bulging bags of dry goods past them. "I got some stuff to show you after supper," you tell them when you're back at the table and have fallen onto the victuals. You give them the very lame-sounding story about a bunch of girls buying you a whole new wardrobe as part of a "class project." Your astonished parents question you closely, but you can only shrug and flail and answer that it is as much a shock to you as it is to them. Afterwards, you show the clothes to your mom and dad—and your brother, who insists on peering into your bedroom over their shoulders—and change into some of them.

Putting yourself into the new duds turns the trick. Your mom had been as skeptical as your dad—who is nearly apoplectic at the story you've told—until she sees you in them, whereupon she firmly tells him that you will be keeping the new things. "We'll pay the girls back for them," she tells you gently, and inquires after the receipts. When you tell her that the girls still have them, she informs you that youmust retrieve them, and your dad growls that he wants to talk to these girls to ask them about this "class project." He and your mom have some kind of talk out of sight, for he comes to you later and in a mumbled, shame-faced way tells you that he's glad you've got some new clothes and he'll be really happy to see you in them. "I just want to know about this 'project'," he insists.

* * * * *

You're awake early the next morning with a the fluttery feeling in your stomach like you get when it's Christmas. You take a good long time in the shower getting extra clean, and you carefully shave away the fifty or so stiff hairs you have growing out of your chin, jaw, upper lip and left cheek. In your bedroom you try on three combinations of clothes before settling on a denim shirt and heavy cotton trousers, a green cable-knit tie, and the bomber jacket and hat. Your brother stares at you with open-mouthed astonishment when you come down for breakfast. Your mom and dad also look you up and down like you're a stylish stranger who has moved into their house. "Don't forget to get the receipts," your mom tells you.

You turn the radio to a classic rock station and drive out to school with one hand on the wheel and the other splayed across the bench of your truck. You feel three inches taller after you've dismounted in the student parking lot, and instead of scurrying toward class you saunter slowly toward the gym with your shoulders back and your chin high.

Do clothes make the man? You've a feeling that today you're going to find out.

* To continue: "A Fashionable Foot Forward" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"