I am Sean Spicer’s Tailor

Ian Stevenson
Jul 23, 2017 · 5 min read

I am Sean Spicer’s tailor. This is my story.

My parents were born in Slovenia and were farmers, and so I was born in Slovenia and worked the farm, too. Things change more slowly there. Our home was not far from Melania’s parents’ place, actually. In fact, I knew Melania slightly, so she was a “good friend”. In our part of Slovenia there weren’t many peeps around, so anyone you knew in the least, just like here in Washington, you called “good friend”. And check out my new American slang… in Slovenia, “peep” is sound made by baby bird!

Also here in Washington, America, everybody makes such a fuss about how beautiful Melania is. By Slovenian beauty standards, she was just another farm girl, average at best. She’d rate a “6”, I’d say. It’s true she was an inch or two taller than the norm, so she could reach the figs on the higher branches at harvest, but that wouldn’t be worth even a point on the Slovenian beauty scale. We would never have called her “hot”, or “smokin”, unless she was actually hot, or smoking.

All my life, I worked the farm with my parents and siblings. Every morning, my father would yell out:

“Get up everyone, it is time to work the farm!”

He actually yelled it in Slovenian, of course. If he had yelled it in English, none of us would have understood what the hell he was saying, and I doubt anything much would have gotten accomplished. Now that I think about it, the farm would probably have failed. It’s funny the effect that an alternative fact like that might have had.

So, after my father shouted out, we’d pretty much work on the farm all day. At night, however, after everyone went to sleep, I would sneak into the barn and cut little pieces from the fig sacs and stuff them into my “swatch bag”. I couldn’t help myself. I loved the feel of the fabric — well, technically, the sackcloth. It was for this reason that I actually relished working on the farm. I loved the feel of the fig sacs… so tactile, so woven, so… burlap. They seemed to me so much more real than our silken French sheets, robes, or underneath garments (owning a fig farm in Slovenia was actually a pretty good gig). All my life, I had to hide my swatch bag from my family and my siblings lest I be thought some sort of perv, as things are very strict in Slovenia. Funny, it just occurred to me… in Slovenian “perv” is still “perv”. How about that? Crazy! Some things are the same everywhere!

Finally, though, one day — I’ll never forget it — my younger brother, “Bruce” (not his real name), found my swatch bag stuffed under my mattress.

He shouted out, “Look what I found!” as he held it high and shook its contents out onto the floor.

Upon seeing my swatch bag and all my little snippets of sackcloth, my father was furious. He really let me have it.

“So it has been you cutting holes in the fig sacs, you little perv! Now we know who is causing, for many years upon years, our figs to fall out from our otherwise intact sacs!”

[Note: It’s true, as you can tell from this, that Slovenian to English translation, other than the ubiquitous “perv”, comes off sounding a bit stiff, so you should probably cut Melania a break, for crissakes.]

Then my father bellowed the words that would change my life:

“Get out of here, you pervy little sac-snipper… you are no son of mine!”

So, I had to get out. It was probably time, anyway. This was maybe like a year ago, more or less, and I am 44.

I had spent some spare time in my 40’s studying English, plus I always loved old American movies. I was forever enamored with the way film noir newspapermen dressed. Their sport coats reminded me of the fig sacs whose look and feel I treasured. I thought to myself:

“I shall go to America and make jackets for newspapermen from the sort of fabric I love so much!”

I applied for and got a temporary 6-month travel visa to America, and to America I came. When I got here, to my dismay I discovered that just about every bloody newspaper had gone out of business, plus I heard that the last really major one still standing was failing. There were hardly any newspapermen left, and of those at least half were now women — women who probably would not wear my lumpy, stretchy sackcloth. Worse, I knew of no one in America… well, no one but Melania. I called up her truly hot cousin that she was best buds with back in Slovenia, a total “10” who I used to hang out with at the tractor parts shop on weekends, and asked a favor: please, would she contact Melania and ask her to maybe help me out with getting some jacket-making work?

Sure enough… good old, average, work-a-day Melania… next thing I know, my cell phone rings and it’s her.

“Sure, I can help you out, my husband is very powerful man.”

“Sounds great!” I said.

Next day, I get a call from Mr. Spicer: “I was told to call you by Mr. Trump… that you will be making my suits.”

“Yes! I will be making your suits!” I replied. “You will love my way with the fabric, you are a newspaperman?”

“Something like that,” he replied. “Sort of an alternative, in actual fact.”

“Hey…” I said, “After I do your fitting and make your suits, do you think you could help me out with extending my visa?”

He answered, but I couldn’t really figure out what he said… it didn’t seem to make any sense. This didn’t stop me. As a lifelong Slovenian farmhand with a perverse love of lumpy sackcloth, I happily made his suits. I was so proud that he donned my work in his effort to help Make America Great Again.

Still, he never really answered my question. I checked on the Internet, and discovered that for his talent of being able to respond to me as he did without really answering, he is a very famous person.

Now I hear he suddenly quit his job because of a new man at the White House, Mr. Scaramucci. That’s OK. I’ll reach out again through the grapevine to Melania. I am sure Mr. Scaramucci will want suits just like the ones I made for Mr. Spicer.

And hey, if you don’t believe my story, how else do you explain his tailoring?

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