The Day I Went to a Men's Wearhouse

Afterwards, when I thought about it, I would realize that I'd never been into a Men's Wearhouse before. I had seen them, in malls and in strip malls, but I hadn't yet in my life had occasion to rent a tuxedo. My friend Jimmy had me set to be a groomsman in his wedding, and he directed me there for a fitting. “Go,” he said severely, “Go swiftly, and carry with you the envy of all men everywhere.”

Jimmy was not habitually one to wax poetic, so his words left me viewing the prospect of tape measures prodding my balls through a new and eager lens.

It looked ordinary from the outside. The inside, too, was as I had expected. Rows upon rows of men's suits in blacks and grays and browns and silvers. Shiny neckties. Leather belts. Shoes that were both leather and shiny. There were no sales clerks or whatever you would have me call them in sight. But as I approached the counter an elderly man in an immaculate white tuxedo appeared beside me, as if conjured out of thin air. Had there been a passageway I overlooked? And how was it that he moved with such spectral silence?

“Welcome,” he said, and here he paused for dramatic effect, in my opinion overdoing it by just a little, “to the Men's Wearhouse.” By what I perceived as sleight-of-hand, he profferred a martini and held it out to me insistently. As it looked unpoisoned, I accepted.

It was a perfect martini, made from aromatic gin, and stirred, not shaken, as only a purist would prescribe. I said, “My God, this astonishing. But I thought I was here for a fitting. My name is...”

“We know why you're here, Mr. Braltonby.”

“Actually my name is...”

“Everyone who enters the Men's Wearhouse is given an assumed name. You can do as you please here, and never have to answer for it. The outside world will never know. And we'll pretend we don't know either. What happens in the Men's Wearhouse stays... in one place and that place is the Men's Wearhouse.”

“Yeah, Braltonby, I thought it kind of sounded like a made-up name,” I said.

The old man smiled. “Our tailors will be with you presently. Why don't you wait in the Game Room?” And with that he parted a rack of blue-gray suits as though they were a curtain, revealing a low-lit corridor, with walls of solid marble trimmed in gold filigree. He did not follow me down the corridor. For a moment I thought I heard him laughing after me, but I turned and he was gone.

The Game Room was as bright as a dive bar. Most of what light there was came from an incalculable array of arcade games, and high-def plasma televisions hooked up to every video game system known to man, some of which, I was quite sure, had not yet been released, not even in Japan. This Vegas ensemble barely made perceptible the distant, oak panelled walls, which were decorated with the heads of ten-point bucks, and portraits of every great manly man from Davy Crockett to Sonny Crockett. Suddenly a merry, booming voice cut through the air. “Braltonby,” it called.

“I think so?” I answered, turning to find a man seated on the leather sofa, the one next to the billiard table. He was at once both plump and haggard, looking for all the world like Winston Churchill. I could not be convinced it was not actually Winston Churchill.

“The name's Tompklinson,” he said with a knowing wink. And this is our good friend Dardingsworth.”

I looked Dardingsworth up and down, and asked him, “Aren't you Harrison Ford?”

“Dardingsworth,” muttered Harrison Ford, shaking his head.

Tompklinson, or whoever he was, offered me a seat next to him on the sofa. He put his arm around me and chortled, “How's your martini? Perfect? I expect so, my good man. Would you care for some caviar? Or perhaps the bean dip and Fritos.” He laughed brightly as he saw me reach toward a Frito Scoop. “Excellent choice, sir! Might I suggest pairing it with a refreshing can of Pabst Gold Ribbon?”

“Gold Ribbon?” I asked.

“You can only find at the Men's Wearhouse. There's a cooler on your left.”

“The shit's fucking awesome,” said Harrison 'Dardingsworth' Ford.

I popped open a can of Gold Ribbon and, after a sip, exclaimed, “Impossible! This is even more watery than the Blue Ribbon! I could drink a million of these!”

“Why, it's more watery than water!” said Tompklinson, “Modern technology, wot.”

“Fucking awesome,” rejoined Harrison Ford.

And “To Jimmy,” we all toasted.

Tompklinson rubbed his hands together excitedly and said, “We're so glad you could make it, Braltonby. We've been in dire need of a new sparring partner for this next round of Halo 3. Are you prepared to be schooled, young man?”

“As if!” I contested.

“Afterward, we'll engage in some vintage Duck Hunt on the Nintendo Superscope, before heading into the lobby to hunt ducks.”

“Real ducks?”

Tompklinson nodded eagerly. “You're guaranteed a hit in the lobby! Or do you prefer deer hunting? Or even bigger game? Something to the tune of a robot rhinoceros? The Men's Wearhouse has plenty of M-16s on hand, if you forgot to bring your own firearm.”

“Real rhinoceroses are endangered,” explained Harrison Ford, out of fucking nowhere.

“How do you feel about hunting the Predator? You know, the titular Predator. From the film.”

Suddenly, the old man called out from the cigar-hazed shadows. “Mr. Braltonby, your tailors are prepared for you.”

“Sorry,” I said to my new friends, “Time's a-wastin'.”

“No worries,” said Tompklinson with a grin, “But do an old man a favor, yes? Give this to Milchetshire on your way out.” And with that he tossed me a football.

Across the room, Brett Favre was absorbed in a Virtua Fighter console.

“Milchetshire,” I shouted, “Go long.”

Brett Favre rushed to the other end of the Game Room, and obediently caught his football. There followed a mutual thumbs-up.

“ALLRRIIIGHHHT!” cried Mick Jagger, looking up at us from his heated session of Guitar Hero.

As I left for the fitting room, Tompklinson called out to me one last time. “Do come back after the chicken wing dinner,” he bellowed, “We're all getting together to fart and grow regrettable moustaches!”

The man in the white monkey-suit was waiting for me in the fitting room, along with two blonde models, nearly nude. “Braltonby,” he intoned, “meet Bambi Jubilee, and Martha.” The girls, from their kneeling positions, each held up their flexible cloth tape measures. The old man continued, “They're here to give you your tuxedo fitting, with happy ending.”

“Proceed,” I said boldly. And, “What is this place?” I whispered, as the girls depantsed me. “Have I stumbled into a waking dream?”

The old man laughed melodiously. “Only the best for Jimmy's friends. It's a well-kept secret that the Men's Wearhouse is a secret club for men that only men know about. Secretly.”

“What about...?” and I left the sentence unfinished as I gestured to the girls, who were engaging me in lewd activities while tabulating my pant length and shoe size.

“Oh them? Yes, they're actually men.”

“I am no longer completely comfortable with this arrangement.”

The old man laughed again. “I'm only kidding. They're whores, actually. But they're blind and deaf. They'll never share our secret.”

I was confused, and so, confusedly, I asked, “They're deaf? Then how did they hear me assent to this handy?”

“There are such things as safe assumptions, Mr. Braltonby.”

I nodded sagely. “Do women have a secret club as well?” I ventured.

“You have heard of Victoria's Secret?” returned the man in white.

“So Victoria's Secret is, like, the opposite of all this?”

“No,” he said, “They just sell lingerie.”

“So the 'secret' is that there is no secret?”

“Now you're beginning to understand women,” said the old man, partly vanishing behind a rack of suitcoats.

“This is all wonderful,” I said, “Do you do bachelor parties?”

The old man re-emerged, his head lowered, I thought, in sorrow. His eyes clambered out of his furrowed brow to lock with mine, quite seriously. “Once you take the vow of marriage, and align yourself completely with a woman that you love, the secrets of the Men's Wearhouse are closed to you, forever.”

“But how? Why?”

“You cannot lie to a woman you love truly,” he said, simply. “The opacity of our club can never be entrusted to married men. We have, like, mind-erasing things.”

“Like in Men in Black,” I said.

“Exactly. Yes, yes. Awesome movie.” And with that, he disappeared. It would be years later when I finally recognized him as Sean Connery.

And as I came on Bambi Jubilee's face, I understood the sacrifice Jimmy had made, both for his bride Kate, and for me. A life of bachelorhood and bean dip, and all the clandestine pleasures of manhood, tossed aside in favor of one woman, one true love. By the time I write this, Jimmy will have already forgotten about the hidden corridors of the Men's Wearhouse, but I never will. Even if, someday far in the future, I attune myself to the graces of a soul matching my own, and Will Smith appears before me with a neuralizer, removing from me every thought save those of my beloved, I will carry these memories of Jimmy, and Kate, and of the Men's Wearhouse, in my heart. And so, "To Jimmy."