Wearing Nice Clothes.
I have an active rotation of seven or eight in-office work shirts, and I didn’t buy them myself. My mom gave me a few and my wife bought a few; I’ve had one traded in exchange for some miscellaneous work and a few given to me. If, by chance, I have to leave my office and see people who aren’t used to me wallpapering myself in untucked polos — wrapped in charity — I take from my out-of-office inventory. My out-of-office shirts have a lot of buttons on them, should I have to deal with folks who are either tethered to the myriad conventions of overmatched middle management (shoes tied tight, tie on right) or believe they can discern the quality of one’s work without actually observing the quality of one’s work — which is a game played by a bunch fools who have nice shoes on. And I tuck these button shirts into my pants before a deep breath and a tightening of my belt buckle because — by and large — when you’ve authored a game with no discernable scoreboard, you’re stuck either leaning into or away from the game’s narratological bent. The value of your work might not be a fiction, but it’s a story. And it might be a story you believe, but it’s not a story you (yourself) tell. You’re not in charge. Everything is fungible, and we’re all making it up as we go along. It’s all prevailing thought, which is to say, not our own.
I used to play such a game sitting at the back of my church’s auditorium prior to a service starting whereby I’d survey the room and choose a section of it, a third of it usually. My goal was to introduce myself to the least amount of folks as possible in a given section. It was like a game of golf in which I put on my shoes of the gospel, ratcheted my belt of truth, pulled out my nine-iron of hey, how’s it going, I don’t think I’ve seen you here before? and started hacking at all kinds of shit.
Hi, my name is Rick, is this your first time at … ?
If I had to talk to ten or twelve people, it meant that none of them were comfortable looking me in the eye, usually because most of them weren’t and were suspect of a complete stranger’s introduction. Also, I was almost always over-caffeinated. If I talked to five or six people, it usually meant I got distracted with some ensuing minutia: the actual score of the actual Cardinals game and what actually happened therein, the last church someone attended, or how old all of someone’s kids were and what those kids were actually doing at one point or another. If I talked to five or six people it usually meant that a few folks talked to me like I cared — and I did care. But hollowing out one, particular topic or another pre-service was hard because segues are hard, and our time was limited. If I talked to one or two people, it usually meant that person or those people asked a lot of questions about the goings-on of the church or what to expect once service got started and those people were ideal; they signified a readiness to move from the periphery of a weekend as service and into community, commitment and a whole lot of other shit to do, time to give and money to spend.
That sounds cynical, I guess but when time predestined and, more importantly, when people are understood as investments, your margins matter. They really do. So I’d stand at the back of the auditorium and start placing bets on who to talk to first. I’d fill out the bet slip with one rule: I’d talk to you if you didn’t look like an ***hole. That usually translated to: If it doesn’t look like I’ll hate you, I’ll talk to you, and I’ll move by descending order. By rule, that made sense to me. From there, it got really complicated — but it turns out in an auditorium full of low-hanging fruit, most of them dressed nice enough. I was in a Kohl’s commercial, and I’d found myself a casting agent.
I haven’t said a lot about my long-standing disillusionment and eventual break from Charismatic Christianity, but in light of what I have said, I’ve heard from a few of you. And maybe in anticipation of what you think I might say, I’ve heard from more of you. I’m glad you’ve reached out and I want you to know that, with me, there’s no boarding time, no last train home. Reach out at any time, for any reason. Young or old. Man or woman. I won’t judge you, one way or another. That doesn’t mean we’re friends. And if we ever see each other in public, I won’t hug you. Not because I’m afraid of meeting you head on and having our parts touch. But because I don’t want to touch you. I’d rather hear from you.
