I am also an expert on menswear at the beach, around the pool, and in the hotel lobby.
What many men here do wrong is wear socks that are the same color as their shorts. This is tacky. This is unforgivable.
A man who wears socks the same color as his shorts is a bowler or builds cabinets in his basement or contributes to television evangelists.
To be absolutely correct, a man should wear no socks whatsoever with a pair of shorts. If a man insists on wearing socks with his shorts, he should at least stick to white.
One other thing a man should consider is never to be guilty of New Jerseyitis. Men suffering from this condition wear sandals with their shorts, not to mention over-the-calf, black stretch hose.
Jesus wore sandals, it is true. But he didn’t wear those awful socks with them, and that’s why New Jersey—especially Newark—turned out the way it did.
Here are some other don’ts in the area of men’s leisure fashion:
Don’t wear a tank top. If you must wear a tank top, at least make certain you have a tattoo to go with it so people will think you’ve been out to sea since the mid-sixties and don’t know any better.
Don’t wear anything that features a picture of a pelican, a pink flamingo, or a beer can.
Don’t wear one of those skimpy European men’s bathing suits. If you do, you’ll embarrass God, who didn’t have skimpy European bathing suits in mind when he created man.
More on socks. Don’t wear tube socks with your shorts or swimsuit. This ain’t the Moose Club annual picnic and softball game.
Don’t wear clip-on sunglasses. If you do, it suggests you arrived by bus and once wore leisure suits until the Surgeon General declared them harmful to your health.
Don’t wear white shoes with a matching white belt. That went out with Wildroot Cream Oil for your hair.
Don’t wear a silly hat. If communists went to the beach, they’d wear silly hats.
As for me, I’m off to the pool again in my Ralph Lauren swimsuit ($575), my Calvin Klein terry-cloth robe ($1,500), my Gucci leather pool slippers ($2,750), and my Bill Blass designer sunglasses ($14,000).
I take no fashion risks. Why should you?
Living the Battle of the Bulge
I made a major decision recently. I decided to buy myself a pair of blue jeans.
A forty-one-year-old man should not take on such a thing without first giving it a great deal of thought, which I thought I had done.
First, I asked myself if this was a first sign of middle-aged craziness.
Men do a lot of strange things when afflicted by that condition. They quit their jobs at the bank and go off somewhere to become wood-carvers or fishing guides.
Others leave their wives and buy themselves sports cars, while still others have hair transplants, date girls—girls whose first names end in i (Tami, Debbi, Staci), and wear gold neck-chains.
But, I decided, none of that could be happening to me. I’m not going to quit my job, I have plenty of hair, and I took out Tami, Debbi, and Staci (one at a time) and none worked out. I had underdrawers older than all three.
Second, I had to ask myself if I could still fit into a pair of jeans.
I stopped wearing jeans after I graduated from high school. I was quite thin in high school and my jeans fitted me perfectly.
I am by no means obese now, but I have noticed my body taking on a different and more rounded shape in an area that may be described as the navel and surrounding areas.
It’s caused, I thought, by fallen chest arches.
But don’t they advertise those jeans with a “skosh more room” for the mature jean-wearer?
I went to the department store and found the menswear department.
“How may I help you?” the salesman asked.
“I’d like a pair of jeans,” I replied.
“And what waist size?” said the salesman, eyebrows raised.
“Thirty-four,” I answered.
“Let’s start at thirty-six and see where it takes us,” the salesman suggested.
I couldn’t get the zipper up all the way on the 36s.
The 38s fit okay in the back, but they were still a bit too tight in the front and gave me the distinct look of being about three months pregnant.
I even tried on a pair of 40s. I have a rather small backside. There’s enough room in the seat of that pair of jeans for a small company of Chinese soldiers to bivouac.
“I’m afraid, sir,” said the salesman, “you have the two-bellies.”
“The two-bellies?”
“Indeed, sir. What happens to some men who reach middle age, they develop two distinct, shall we say, midsections?
“They have one just above their belly button and then another one below it. The two-bellies makes it almost impossible for one to fit snugly or comfortably in a pair of jeans, even with the extra ‘skosh.’”
So I had only been kidding myself when I thought I could still fit into blue jeans.
I’m a two-belly, and my blue-jean days are sadly behind me.
“Could I interest you,” the salesman asked, “in a fabric with more give? Say, polyester?”
God, the ravages of age.
3.
Dining Out
Fit to Be Tied at the Plaza
I was staying at the Plaza Hotel in New York recently (my publisher was paying for the room, that’s why I wasn’t at a Motel 6 in Newark), and I went to have lunch in one of the hotel’s spiffy restaurants.
For the occasion, I wore a blue blazer, accentuated by a pair of khaki trousers and a white golf shirt I’d worn only once before.
I knew I was in trouble the moment I saw the maître d’. He was a tall wisp of a fellow who was probably born with his nose turned up that way.
I wasn’t absolutely certain he was light in his loafers, but when he traveled across the restaurant escorting guests to their tables, he touched the floor only once or twice.
“Table for three,” I said to the maître d’, once he had landed back at his station.
He looked at me as if he were looking at a dead cat in the highway. The right side of his lip curled upward, his nostrils half flared, and the lid of his left eye went to half-mast.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “are required to wear ties when they dine here.”
There are a number of phrases I enjoy saying at times such as these, but my two companions were ladies, and I was afraid Donald Trump, who owns the Plaza, might be within earshot, so I abstained.
I wear ties only to funerals of close relatives or heads of state. I stopped wearing ties during the late to middle seventies because they made me feel uncomfortable.
I especially hate to eat while wearing a tie. Once I was at a banquet and they served barbecued chicken with lots of red sauce on it.
My tie at the beginning of the meal was blue. At the end, it was red. I gave the tie to my dog. He ate it.
I’m also convinced ties restrict the blood flow to the brain, causing such disorders as forgetfulness, blurred eyesight, and even criminal tendencies.
Al