It was a couple weeks ago when I expressed my abject ecstacy at trying on what I refered to as “The Pants” — the pair that I’d chosen to not to donate and thus keep around as a reminder of what I used to fit into during my last bout with thinner-ness — and they actually fit!
Well, today it was the tux — no quotes or capitilization needed because I only have one. Yes, it is true I own my own double-breasted tuxedo. My mom purchased it for me as a Christmas gift in the early 1990s because she believes every man — or at least her only son — should own one and I have worn it three times since. Once (because I said I would and no one believed me) to the Pierce College journalism department’s end-of-semester awards banquet in the spring of 1993 where I was presented as the next semester’s incoming editor-in-chief, next in 1995 posing for a way-too-stiff-and-formal family portrait arranged by my mom and taken in her house with her, me, my daughter Kate and my mom’s dog Crockett, and last to the 1997 premiere of Ragtime at the now demolished Shubert Theater in Century City.
In the nine-year interim I recall donning it on several occasions, but never do I remember fitting in it. So this morning between re-hanging the kitchen wall clock and getting ready to take Shadow for our daily walk. I pulled it out of the back of the wardrobe and out of it’s plastic storage jacket and put myself inside the dapper thing.
Almost everything has more than enough space: shoulder room, check; chest room, check; stomach room, check; waistline, check. Ass; no check. Hmmmmm…
But I do recall that on those rare occasions I put it to use the caboose was snug as if made for any number of men more… shall we say “ass-challenged” than me. Being that I’ve always carried a decently sized trunk and and proportionately sized monster thighs, that last aspect of today’s try-on did little to negate the elation at both the further evidence of my dieting success and the knowledge that if push came to shove and there was a quick-turnaround dry cleaner in the vicinity I could be suitably attired for a rush-order trip down a red carpet.
That is if I can remember how to tie a bowtie.
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