How Clothes Make the Man, Though the Man Picked the Clothes

So today I was looking very good. For the first time in over a year, I went out wearing pressed suit trousers and a nice shirt. I was looking for a part-time job and wanted to make a good impression.

Immediately I experienced the old familiar misperception on the part of strangers, that I have money.

This happened to me in New York City’s East Village in 1976, when two prostitutes came up and asked if I wanted to party (I didn’t; I had a girlfriend) and it happened today in the supermarket when the gal pushing people to apply for a special Kroger credit card wouldn’t leave me alone.

I know the poor thing needed the job just as much as I need the one I’m looking for, and that she desperately needs people to apply because it affects how much money they’ll pay her — but I’m trying to pay down my credit cards, not get new ones!

Besides, if she only knew that I wouldn’t qualify for more credit anyway, based on my income!

But my lying clothes told a different story.

The nice side of the misperception is that complete strangers said hello to me, asked how I was doing, and sat beside me in a waiting room (I kid you not!) — which they never do when I’m wearing jeans and haven’t shaved.

I prefer it when they think I’m a bum.

They leave me alone, and nobody embarrasses me. I’m not used to this attention!

As an old hippie dedicated to the belief in equality through simplicity, this evidence of eighteenth-century elitism in the twenty-first century is really rather disappointing.