Tux Tux

I'm just going to come out and say it: I hate getting fitted for tuxedos. There are several things I hate about the experience.

Let me enumerate.
I hate the idea of getting fitted for a tux because it represents the flushing of money down the toilet--and lots of it, too. I am, essentially, paying alot to look pretty for a day (a feat which, regardless of the clothes,is easy ;p), after which time, I will have to return the clothes with nothing to show for the money except someone else's function's pictures. My mother suggested that, for as many function's as I've been in, I should just buy a new tuxedo. But the problem with that is a wedding is a girl's special day, and everything has to be just so. A guy showing up in his own tuxedo messes with the feminine order and sets off all sorts of alarms in the female mind, which is, at this point, thinking that the deviant groomsman will stick out like a sore thumb and ruin the whole day. She'll think of her wedding pictures and the off-color tux that will cause all future generations of her family to say, "Why is the negative always smudged over that guy?" I would become a figure of ridicule and also an object lesson. "You budge an inch, *insert person's name*, and look what will happen to your wedding. You'll end up with someone like that guy showing up and stealing the holiness out of the whole occasion." Also, at this point, I'm at the tail end of my matrimonial dealings; to buy a tux at this point would no longer be practical.

I also don't like getting fitted for tuxes for the same reason I don't like going shoe shopping: it is a visible reminder that, in the clothing realm, I fall into the category of freak. The people at Ermenegildo Zegna didn't know what to do with me. "Oh, you're so tall!" they said as they bustled around me, perspiring, muttering under their breath, "What are we going to do with you?" Well, they had me try on several different things--all of which, mind you, only brought out the freakish qualities of my appearance and made me feel like the things woven into my genetic code were the result of years and years of obstinacy, all the consequence of foresight in my looking forward to making their lives a living hell the moment I walked into their store. "That's too short; we need something longer." So they fetch something longer and I looked like a twelve-year-old boy in his father's closet. The women then bicker about how to hide my unsightliness. One of them says, "I'm glad I wore my high heels today!" They poke and press and order me around, taking measurements and then taking them again, making me feel like freight to be shipped rather than a human to be dressed.

With every flick of the pen as they write my measurements, I feel judged and evaluated solely on that basis, as my data will be transferred to their store's mainframe supercomputer where I am nothing more than another set of zeros and ones (except zeros and ones with larger proportions than the others).