PUBLIC CONVEYANCE

The Guru Wears Plaid

Disco bodhisattva takes the bus

Have I, at long last, found my guru? And is he wearing mismatched plaids, sitting on the M101 bus, and heading west on 14th street?

Ascending the bus stairs was a man of about 60, with a medium build and thick graying hair. He wore chunky black, square glasses and a dark mustache.

His slacks, for they could not be called pants or trousers, were polyester and flared in a wide blue and white plaid, in a pattern that used to be called loud.

His jacket, also polyester, had wide, almost pimpish lapels. It too sported a loud blue and white plaid pattern, but — incredibly — a DIFFERENT blue and white plaid than his slacks.

This man is wearing two different plaids.

The cognitive dissonance burned. Perhaps his clothes had been fighting amongst themselves, and each plaid army had conquered a different region of his wardrobe, though at what terrible cost, no man can say.

I live in the East Village, accustomed to all manner of sartorial aggression but this War of the Mismatched Plaids was giving me a hematoma.

At first I wondered, is he wearing this get-up to take the piss out of everyone? Always a possibility, but he was also wearing a white dress shirt, tucked in, and a wide navy blue tie, knotted. If this was some sort of Punk Irony Gesture, it was next level. And the guy is 60.

Unless — he is a 22-year-old stripper in disguise, on his way to the office to surprise Donna in Accounts Receivable?

Still weirder questions arose. Did you just wake up from a coma? Are you the Ghost of Disco Insurance Salesmen Past and you’re taking the bus to 1978?

Are you acting out a savage contempt for current fashions or do you have a head injury?

Am I witnessing the bleeding edge of fashion or is your body hosting a malignant alien, like in “Men in Black?”

I felt dizzy and flummoxed, like I was looking at misspelled traffic signs. Those plaids would have made Alexander McQueen take a breath and say, now that’s irresponsible.

I tried to recreate the crime, with me playing him.

I woke up this morning, considered all my clothing options and made the following choices.

I will wear these loud blue and white plaid slacks.

I will wear the white dress shirt, with the wide plain collar, and the matching wide navy blue tie.

I will wear this jacket, the loud blue and white plaid one, the one that almost matches my loud slacks, but not quite. I know they don’t match. I will wear them together anyway.

Once dressed, curated, I examined myself in a full-length mirror. I am unstoppable. I smile, the corners of my mustache curling up.

“Perfect,” I say.

My pre-conceived judgments began to crumble. What kind of man ventures out like that on an 85 degree day in August?

The most confident man on earth.

A man reconciled to incongruity within himself and within the world.

A man who has filtered out the noise of ego and conformity to obey a higher voice.

If a man is completely at ease, is that not the definition of success?

Here before me was a master of his fate, a captain of his soul, in clashing synthetics.

I would have what he has. As my guide, this man would teach me to wear the wide-lapeled blazer of serenity.

I only saw him for maybe two seconds before the bus pulled away.

But a second later a voice in my head, loud as plaid, screamed run, you fool, run down 14th street as fast you can, and bang on the door of the M101.

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