"That’s a beautiful midnight blue gabardine fabric, sir". My then tailor said convincingly. And so it was, made up in a double breasted suit with top stitching all over the seams. I set it out the first evening I got it to go with a blue end on end shirt with a straight collar I planned to pin with my vintage gold safety pin, a navy tie with printed white dots (needed that small knot the print makes to make the pinning effect neater), black calf brogues and a navy pocket square with small nautical flags all over it that i had gotten from Paul Stuart. I found that none of my navy socks worked with the midnight blue of the suit and thus I had to use basic black.

The first day it was worn by your hero it was observed by a pretty girl who said admiringly, “Hi FNB, that’s a nice black suit you’re wearing.” I had been just sauntering onto the elevator to leave for the day when, hearing that comment, all she must’ve seen next was my paw come out from around the inside of the elevator to catch the door’s rim and push the bumper down. The door stopped closing and a slightly knit browed FNB stuck his head around the corner and said, “Actually, it’s midnight blue.” To which she, a Spanish girl, said “Non…it is black. Negro, like the cat.”

Nokaaay.

Note to self, pretty Spanish girls from Barcelona are goofy too.

Disgusted with what was shaping up to be a candid camera like set up with regard to my suit and its color, I sighed while leaning back, head upward, against the rear of the elevator car, watching her knowingly winning grin, white teeth flashing behind bee sting lips, while the door closed slowly on my day world.

Earlier that same day, I had given another woman with bouncy, curly, fire engine red hair and almond shaped, fluorescent green eyes and a sexy hooked nose a 5 minute dissertation about the difference between black and midnight blue. I even made her walk with me to a window to observe the effects of the sun’s rays on the fabric. Although I was popular with her, she still managed a face with pillbox enough slit eyes that signaled to me it was time to offer her something from Starbucks. She accepted and pulled my pocket square out of my jacket waving it behind her as a sort of pawned item to be redeemed upon bringing her the frappa-mocha-whateva she had asked for. So far, my choice of suit color was costing me money.

Back to the elevator, I entered the lobby wondering why I felt so tired and as I distracted myself, I tripped over my own feet right through the revolving door and into a conveniently waiting cab. Halfway through the ride, I leaned forward and asked the cabbie his opinion on what color my suit was. He answered “What are you talking about?” I scrunched my pre migraine face together in a self wondering bunch and thought he’d just asked a very good question. I suppose I left him a good enough tip for him to say, “Oh by the way, your suit is black.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Over to the Korean deli, buy the seltzer, buy the mini Tylenol package. I couldn’t help smelling the dampness of the gabardine’s tight, un-breathable wool interacting with my heated body on that 75 degree fall day. The suit was for the 50s and I dont just mean the 1950s.


I walked a few blocks and met my date at the restaurant, half expecting her to comment on the color of my suit. She looked better than I remembered, straight dark brown, small of her back length hair; her hair glistened like a shampoo advertisement. And it all swayed to one side from time to time exposing a  small, freckled, bobbed nose and frisky eyebrows, all with that sort of chin which is slightly pointed and juts upward a bit. She had on tartan trews in navy, purple and yellow and a mauve sweater that made me hotter just looking at its fuzziness and weight. We ambled down the aisle together towards the greeting podium and I realized that for her slight frame and height she had some pretty big feet.

Anyway, she didn’t comment on my new suit. First woman of the day not to do so. I felt like I should ask her for her opinion but I didn’t at first. Then the throbbing in my head began again, so I just asked her in order to break the awkwardly descending slience. “Amber, what color do you think this suit is?” She looked at me a little oddly, the sort of look which might suggest I was either more interesting or stranger than she had originally suspected.  Only a little though because although she’d never discussed clothes with me before, she’d obviously suspected that I was into them. “It’s black”.

I was very disappointed and was just about to explain to her the virtues of midnight blue over black when the sexy maitre D’ said to me, “I love a man in a black suit, it’s so Hollywood.” I gave her this tilted head look, taking in her perfectly creamy skin and large brown eyes and replied (as if she could’ve known) “It’s blue, midnight blue, it just looks black.” One of her waitresses, a French girl with an unusual, for her nationality, bubble butt packed salaciously into a tight black skirt and the maitre D" spent the next minute pinching and twisting the wool of my suit’s sleeve and rubbing up against me to contrast their black clothing with my suit cloth. Amber joined them in a threesome of just girls discussing the merits of my suit’s color, taking the opportunity to rub my back with her hand, as if that would help her to detect the suit's true color. I made a joke about feeling black and blue and the maitre D’ bopped me on top of my head, my aching head, with her stack of menus. "Yu no yu juz luv eet, dahlink." As my bottom lip fastened upwards from the aching but unexpectedly pleasant move from the leggy Slovakian, I couldn’t help thinking, it’s good to wear midnight blue…