Dress for Coronavirus Success

Last time I saw my brother, he smelled bad.
Don’t think he’d washed in a week.
Maybe two.

His hair was greasy and his teeth were yellow.
His clothes were stained and he wore mismatched socks.
And his t-shirt was inside-out.

It was painful to behold: the depression was killing him.
He died a few days later.
Suicide.

I realize now,
and only in retrospect,
that the signs were all there.

When someone loses the will to look good,
it’s often because they’ve begun to lose
the will to live.

Anyone who’s worked with the elderly
will tell you this.
“We knew Mrs. Johnson’s days were numbered

when she stopped putting on her make-up.”
“We knew Mrs. Cooper wasn’t long for this world
when she stopped curling her hair.”

Like most of you, I was vain in my teens and twenties.
But I was vain with a bad conscience.
It felt like a character flaw. Something shameful.

I used to despise vanity in myself and others.
But I find that I’ve warmed to it in mid-life.
Indeed, I’ve come to see the wisdom

in something Benjamin Franklin said in his autobiography:
“Most people dislike vanity in others,
whatever share they have of it themselves;

but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it,
being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor,
and to others that are within his sphere of action;

and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd
if a man were to thank God for his vanity
among the other comforts of life.”

Dear Jacob,
I teased you the other day for wearing a tie at home
during the pandemic.

I teased you, in other words, for being what you are:
a veritable paragon of grownup male formality.
But I wanna take it all back, Professor L.

Don’t get me wrong though, I ain’t gonna wear a tie.
But I tried putting a little effort in this morning.
I shaved off the stubble and retired the sweatpants.

I put away the ratty old t-shirt and combed my hair.
I put on some decent clothes and my favorite socks.
And I’m happy to report that it worked. I feel better.

Looks like Stephen Marche’s nemesis,
Marie Kondo,
was on to something after all.

Warm regards,
from a more civilized place,
your friend, John

I never forget to make the bed now,
first thing in the morning,
and Anna-Liisa never forgets to hang up her coat.

We dress for coronavirus success now
because apparently civilization
is just a beautiful island of order

that emerges, from time to time,
like Atlantis,
out of a sea of chaos.

—John Faithful Hamer, Social Distancing (2020)