Let It Be on Your Head

Your defenses are down on vacation and you’re subject to all sorts of emotional vulnerabilities, so it’s no wonder that sometimes, despite your best efforts, you find that someone has bought you a hat.

It’s nothing to hold against a man, having a hat bought for him, it could happen to anyone.

The salt spray, the play of sunlight upon the water, the sandy beaches, the cool midnight breeze under the moon, all conspire to make things once unimaginable real.

The notion is presented to you, you consider it for a moment, and then you say, ‘why not?”

And if this were a play and you were writing an essay on it, you could remark at this juncture that this is a key turning point in the drama, where the tragic hero, little knowing the path that Fate is taking him down, says in an offhand manner, ‘why not?”

That’s been the tone of the whole trip, this ‘why not?’ business.

Trying this new dish, sipping this new drink, admiring if not partaking of the native dances, generally exploring whole new sides of life that you hadn’t given sufficient credit to before.

Everyone is so nice!

Everyone takes your credit card with such flair and such an unabashed enjoyment of life!

You wouldn’t have known of yourself that you had these hidden angles to your personality, this openness to new experiences, nor that there was something in you that would flower in this way, or would be so responsive to the new and the unknown.

There’s a side of you that they just don’t know about back home. A bit of an adventurer, really, something of an explorer when you get right down to it.

You’re under this spell more or less, and that’s why, when someone stumbles upon a pile of hats in that artful shop along the wharf, or whatever it is they call that damned thing, and gazes over at you in a speculative way and then tells the shop clerk, ‘we’ll take one of these,’ you don’t immediately bolt from the shop.

Now this shop clerk says – and this, perfect ass that you are, is what convinces you – says “oh, I think that would be perfect on him!”

Well, she should know! She’s in the hat business after all!

Such is your thinking, if you want to call it that.

And the way she looks at you as she says it, you can see that the prospect of putting the final touches on this, well, well, I can hardly say it, on this dashing individual gives her nothing but pleasure.

It doesn’t strike you at the time that the stacks of this particular style of hat are uncommonly tall, nor does it cross your mind as you look at this shop clerk that you are looking at someone not trained in the haberdashery business but instead at someone with a hat inventory problem. And she has just seen a way to start whittling it down.

This hat, then, I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that it is so far out there as the hat that that fellow wears who shot the apple off of the other fellow’s head, nor the hat on the head of Puss’n’Boots in the fairy tale, nor the hat worn by either the good guys or the bad guys in those TV westerns, nor a bullfighter’s cap, nor a hat better worn in an opera than on a street, nor a hat that Zorro or Yankee Doodle might wear and be proud of.

No, I would put it just under the category of frank unhingedness that characterizes these others, just under by a hair.

That is its scheme, don’t you see; it masquerades as an ordinary hat in the store, but it is only in the hard reality of the light that it reveals its true unsuitability for human consumption.

There’s something about the cut of the brim, the sweep of the crown, the feather tucked along the side, that don’t go together, that makes it look more like a droll parody of a hat, if you know what I mean?

As if anyone who knew anything about hats would never have put it together just so, in this manner that makes one think instinctively of Picasso in that period of his when the ladies' eyes are both on the same side of her head and her nose faces the wrong way? That kind of hat?

I don’t think I’m quite getting it across. 

As though you were watching one of those sophisticated English comedy troupes when you don’t quite know when they have told a joke or not so you laugh at regular intervals just in case…..this is the kind of hat that the fellow they’re making fun of would be wearing?

There, does that get you any closer?

You had thought there in the store that you looked rather European, not unlike an Italian film director scouting out new locations for his next depressing venture into cinema, or like the mysterious stranger that sweeps into small town Americana and has everyone talking about him before nightfall.

Instead – and you see this as you inadvertently get a glimpse of yourself in a mirror along the wharf or whatever they call that damned thing when you least expect it – what you really look like is a failed embezzler from the 1930s, last seen in the vicinity of Sioux City, Iowa, scamming getaway funds from the ladies in his mother’s bridge club.

There’s a new kind of weaseliness to your mouth when you wear that hat, and your eyes suddenly take on a beady cast; there’s a weakness of character and what you might call a shiftlessness of the soul that comes out when you wear that hat.

Still, you wear it, in the spirit of the vacation. And though you receive no actual compliments on the new piece of your wardrobe, as far as you can tell people don’t actively shy away, or shield their children’s eyes from the sight.

Well, people are wearing a lot of goofy things on vacation these days, and I have to say in retrospect, fashion-wise, the bar was set pretty low out there.

In truth, it’s hard to know exactly what you might wear that would elicit comment along the boardwalk, or whatever they call that thing, that wooden sidewalk along the beach. Set pretty danged low is what I’m saying, between the beach wear, the shorts, the sandals, the blouses and shirts and swim wear, pretty danged low indeed.

Well, it's funny how context changes everything.

What seemed sporty or lively in the hat department there on the coast looks over-vivid by San Jose, questionable by Las Vegas, outlandish by Salt Lake City, and an affront against polite society by the time you step foot in your Midwest home base city.

As you go from west to east the response of your fellow travelers range from simple bewilderment to compassionate dismay to head-shaking dolefulness to outright anger.

“The thought that you can’t even walk through an airport terminal these days without seeing a thing like that…” seems to be the message behind the hostile glares and muttered asides towards the end.

You remember the kind ones though, you always do, the ones who come up and pat you on the shoulder and say ‘you poor man,’ or ‘this is so brave of you,’ or simply sketch a wordless salute.

It gets to a man.

So you have to have your guard up on vacation and not let these feelings get the better of you. In fact, there might be a business opportunity in administering a slight electric shock when the sales clerk tells some unlucky customer that some men were just made to wear a hat, and right when he's about to say, ‘do you really think so?’ I suppose that’s when you'd apply the shock.

Sound like too much? Does it really? Easy enough to be cold from where you stand. 

The image  in the mirror says otherwise and is very clear in my mind right now, very clear indeed; if I can prevent just one man from this third-rate embezzler look…it will all have been worth it.

Honestly, I hadn't known that eyes could go beady all of a sudden like that! And all because of one hat.