Spirits needed to be lifted. One of my friends just started her first real job after getting her degree but hadn’t had the energy to do anything else on a Friday night than soak in a tub. The other had just been dumped for the second time by the same guy in the same month. I needed to remind myself that I received a long awaited paycheck by spending it on something frivolously youthful. The plan was to get a fancy dinner and go bar hopping in the trendiest part of town.
And were we fancy and trendy? We were more than suitably fancy and trendy. We owned that whole neighborhood we were so damned fancy and trendy. Rebecca climbed out of the lukewarm bath water and almost slipped and died so she could do her makeup, and not just a little bit either, the whole face. Sarah paired pigtails with a coat she got at the kid’s section of Target. I was The Pinstripe Kid. From the sport coat to the socks on my feet everything I had on was geometrically vertical in pattern. Even the forelock of my hair pointed upward to the lofty heavens.
At the end of the night we went to a dive bar at the heart of the hoppin’ Short North district. It is without a formal appellation, other than what people usually call it in conversation, Mike's No-Name. On a Sunday morning from a café across the street I watched a fight spill from the doorway of this bar out onto the sidewalk. Two large men were going at it until the biggest and seemingly most sober man won by pinning his adversary down on a large planter, thus placing the opponent’s head in the way of a bus lane. We entered with trepidation as a man exiting explained that if he were a regular patron he would have smashed us with the door. The standard liquor was available with two kinds of beer on tap, Budweiser and Old Milwaukee. The odor of the uncleaned restroom was apparent everywhere in the bar.
I am proud to live in Columbus most of the time and here is one big reason why. As we three friends were slumming in the hippest part of town I was approached by a man with missing teeth and a wandering left eye. His clothes were stained and dirty and the hair beneath his ball cap was stringy and unwashed. My usually weak inner machismo swelled as I prepared to stave off another creepy old man come to awkwardly hit on my girl friends. He came to our table and said to me, “Hey man, I’m not bein’ sarcastic or anything, but I really like your stripes, man. That’s really cool.” What!? Sweet! Someone noticed my ensemble! Dirty burned-out rednecks appreciate style and fashion! I thanked him and he explained that, “I’m just an old hippie, I wanna love everybody. I’m an old deadhead, too—wanna see my tattoo?” He showed us his tattoo of the Grateful Dead lightning skull on his forearm. “I just wanna love everybody and get ‘em high. You wanna smoke some pot? It’s real sticky!” So I ask you, Other Cities of America, where else in the Midwest can you be rewarded with drugs for possessing a superior fashion sense? And I ask you, Los Angeles and New York: how many generous rednecks with dope do you have prowling the streets waiting to give random compliments? NOT MANY! Welcome to Columbus, bitches!
Even though his compliment is a highlight of my life, I can’t help but wonder how many more compliments and outright stares I would have received had I been wearing a white belt. It takes a lot to rock a white belt and I’m just not sure I have what it takes. I saw a retro greaser wearing a white belt earlier that night but the giant mud-flap girl being used as a buckle made him look like a jackhole. Does this mean I can’t use my rustic Winchester Rifle buckle? Or can I? And when do I wear things that would allow people to even see the white belt? What if I end up looking too scenetastic for wherever it is I’m going? How white is too white?
The most important consideration, however, is this: what kind of person am I with a white belt? I want to be fancy and well dressed but I don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard. I don’t want to look like I’m not trying enough, either. A balance must be achieved between affect and effect. The belt must not project itself, but something important about me that I want others to know. It is a means and not an end. It must indicate subtly that I am not afraid to be noticed, and that, while I have excellent judgment, I make decisions that are sometimes risky and spontaneous. The purity of the belt’s whiteness will impress upon the people around me that I keep it clean below the belt, while the ironic buckle I have chosen will be a sly wink that people can interpret as an intriguing wild side.
Again, am I that person? That I am uncertain is reason to think that “No” is the correct answer to that question. If the white belt were a person and we were out and about together people would call me The Quiet One or The Sidekick. Mister White Belt would be The Popular, Out-Going One who gets pretty girls to buy him drinks because they want to curry favor with him and earn a continued place by his side for the evening. I, Mister Shirt-Tails Hanging Out, will probably lose interest and leave my place at the periphery of White Belt’s attention to go dance like a spazz by myself at the back of the club. One might argue that the boldness of character necessary to dance alone in a bustling nightclub is indicative of white-beltness, but this is really just a sign of detachment from social interaction and reluctance to initiate conversation.
Until I’m ready for white belts I will continue to revel in pinstripes. The white belt, while it says a lot, is not as versatile as pinstripes, which one can enjoy on a variety of garments in an array of fabrics. It is a fact that in the August, 2005 issue of GQ there are eight instances of pinstripes while not one white belt appears in all 180 pages. One day, however, when the situation demands it, I will rise to the occasion and gird myself with a white belt confident that I am the right person to wear it.
previously in 'Pocket' 2, 2005
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© 2006 Damion Armentrout. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.