I'll Dress, I Guess

I remain a novice in dressing up nicely. I am improving and now can pull it off a little bit, appearing fashionable for perhaps a day every few weeks and maintaining a look of torn-up jeans and shabby shirts the rest of the time. The nice clothes just don't hold out for very long. They will overtake my wardrobe piece by piece over time, but for now I must pick my spots. I think I manage that all right, with some exceptions.

I resort to trickery when I must dress decently for more than a couple days in a row or, as is most often the case, when I am unprepared and having nothing decent properly laundered. At such times, I look for my nice collared shirts and find them all crumpled into balls in a pile. They are invariably badly wrinkled. If I think of it, I stash one in the bathroom when I shower. The resulting steam makes it possible to make them look passable under minimal scrutiny.

The nice thing about a suit, at least as I see it, is that when the shirt is iffy, other items hide much of it. The jacket covers most of it, hiding the effect of an ill-fitting shirt. The tie conceals much of the rest, making wrinkles somewhat less noticeable. Also, provided that it all looks all right, who would guess that the pungent smell is coming from the man dressed so formally? Probably everyone, but I at least can delude myself on that front.

I strive as always to improve. I hope to get in the habit of keeping those shirts clean, and learning all the other proper things to do so that I don't feel I'm fooling people with sleight-of-hand (or worse, not fooling them with it at all). Finally I have opened up and assembled my steamer, and I am more habitually using a pants press. Perhaps with the hand of God himself guiding me, I may even procure and learn to use an iron. I suspect though that it would take nothing more than the motivation of winning a woman's hand or a good job.