Like I Have Time for This

Little Buddha Thundercloud or whatever the hell he's calling himself this week is trying to get his affairs in order before we jet off, so he asked me to fill in for today. I'm supposed to stick to non-controversial topics and not say anything embarrassing.

Pull up a chair.

Oh, my sainted aunt, you should see this guy pack. On any given day he can't find his own ass with both hands, but give him a ticket for a cruise and he's Sir Edmund Hillary casing Everest. We got lists all over the house. Lists for the camera bag, lists of outfits for every day (subdivided into morning, touring, and evening), lists of masculine beauty products, lists of knitting junk and writing crap and travel papers and lists to keep track of all the lists.

We went shopping this weekend to fill out the holes in his wardrobe and I swear to God I almost killed him dead in the fitting room at Marshall Field's. Did you know that every piece of clothing the man owns is either black or gray? And a minimum of ten years out of date?

So I tried to help, because I live a life of compassion. He had carried a big pile of...I dunno really, all I know is everything was ecru...into the cubicle and when his back was turned I grabbed it all, plus his pants, and ran out of the fitting room. He started yelling, but sometimes it's time for tough love and so I stashed his trousers with the very accommodating salesman (kisses to you, Schuyler) and threw a bunch of Sean John and Lucky Brand and Ben Sherman over the door.

He shouted at me that it looked like he'd been playing strip poker with a boy band and they'd lost, and that he wasn't wearing any of it.

So I said he could try it all on or take the bus home in his Arthur the Aardvark underpants.

Don't judge me harshly. You have no idea what I'm up against. He has three basic looks: James Dean manqué, Brokeback Schlub, and Herbert Hoover on the golf course. It gets depressing to be around. I'd just like to see a little color around his face, maybe get him into a pair of pants that don't sag in the butt, you know what I mean?

He went into one of his typical monologues about refusing to be a slave to the corporate fashion machine blah blah blah blah, so Schuyler and I went and had a snort at this little bar on Wabash and by the time we came back he had just finished talking and was standing in front of the three-way mirror in a pair of tight Luckys that gave him a snooker-ball bottom and a precious acid-green destroyed t-shirt that said "SHRED MY TUBE" in curly seventies lettering and he actually looked almost his own age instead of forty years older.

"Be still my heart," I said. "You look good enough to abduct and defile."

"Me first," said Schuyler.

"Give me my damn pants back," he said.

"No," I said. "I think you should charge what you've got on and wear it home."

"Give me my damn pants back now," he said.

"I think we should accessorize you with a pair of flip flops," said Schuyler.

And then he just came at us, waving a pants hanger and saying very unkind things and so I swung my purse quite forgetting that I'd slipped a split of Veuve in there in case I needed a pick-me-up and suddenly he was on the floor and not shouting any more.

"Holy shit," said Schuyler. "We gotta call security."

And we did, of course, but first we took a moment and rang up the outfit. Like many men I've known, Franklin is so much more cooperative when he's unconscious.

Some day, he'll understand and he'll thank me.