“What’s wrong with black tie?” Jane asks. “You look nice in it.”

I borrow from Mrs. Browning: How do I hate thee, let me count the ways.

Any response to clothes is a reaction to their meaning. We can’t just look, we must look like: do we like how an outfit makes us look? Dress is a uniform, signaling allegiance, rank, division, announcing who we are and aren’t. Dress typically reveals more of us than speech. We may claim to be free-wheeling, original, intrepid – watch what we wear.

I was born in a tuxedo. Not literally, but you get the idea. Gentlemen primped. Decorously, of course – too much flash connoted garish – arriviste or swish – but “well-bred” implied you cared about cufflinks, studs, stays, pleats, and knew how to knot your bowtie (heaven save us from clip-ons!). Gentlemen also knew how to carve a turkey or roast beef (overcooked).

I imbibed the prejudices of my tribe. We all do – we can’t help it. Existence means nothing per se, as sidekick Henry reminds me, wagging his tail; meaning is ascribed. By whom? By the invisible, mysterious consensus of one’s milieu. We weaponize wardrobe to wage social wars. “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,” warned Henry’s namesake famously.

I wanted to please my parents. Most kids do, I suspect – until they don’t. I wanted my parents to be – in that toxic phrase – “proud of me.” My choices, thus, were their choices, or a commentary on those choices, eventually a revision or rejection of them. I even owned – in my late teens – I blush to report this – white tie and tails, fully accessorized – which I donned, I think, twice.

I attended to my appearance – though never applauded it. I’ve always shied from mirrors, even when my reflection didn’t shatter them. That’s because my actuality fell so short of my aspiration. It surprises me, happening on an old photo, I wasn’t bad looking, even, dare I say, handsome! That wasn’t not how I felt inside my mufti. I felt less manly, impressive, persuasive, suave than I had in mind, a clumsy approximation of a lofty ideal. Ugly’s an attitude, not a fact, as innumerable tedious self-help guides insist.

Black tie for me meant on duty, maneuvering to prevail in some silly social scrum. I intended my appearance to impress, entice, seduce. Black tie required conversation to be vacuous, tactical, adroit, insincere – and boring! – but so what? Winning was what counted, not thinking. Thinking – about one’s servitude, say – could land you in “hot water.” Walden remains a subversive text if heeded – right up there with the Sermon on the Mount.

I didn’t resent my subjugation because I didn’t notice it. My soul may have chafed – and sought release in music and poems – but what kook listens to their soul! I was privileged, I had plenty, but I wanted more – and more – the most! The guy with the most was the winner, right?

I shudder to revisit the vile values of my immaturity – a period that persisted for decades, and of which my “black tie” is a shameful memento. I see myself knotting my noose – I mean bowtie – through Thoreau’s eyes – or Saint Francis’ – or any eyes I honor – and cringe. That was me, I hanker to explain, but that isn’t me, me now, the solitary singer who may always have been sighing in my depths. My clothes – or fingernails – or haircut have nothing to do with the real me, who’s so unlike that dapper baby in his crib. Who is this “real me”? My words, I hope, offer a clue.