by Mark Falanga
You go one day when your kids both have playdates. You drive on roads that you have never seen before, and after one hour and fifteen minutes you pull up to an unmarked warehouse. The parking lot is nearly full. The man that you talked to on the phone was right. This windowless, one-story box of a warehouse is chock-full of suits, and the prices are what he told you they would be, cheap.
You go to the 40-regular section and have a man that you think works there point out the area for three-button suits, because you think they are in style now. In about five minutes you pull off fifteen that look good to you and begin trying them on. Like eating and showering, shopping is something that you like to do fast. Ten of the fifteen fit, and you buy them. You spend $2,000 for these suits, $200 each, and, to you, each one looks like a $1,000 suit. You are smart! You notice some labels that you think you recognize, like Armani and DKNY; that is good, right?
You confirm with the checkout guy that these are not rejects and he assures you that they are not. First quality, you think he says, in a difficult-to-understand Eastern European accent. You do not have these suits altered there, because you know that having to pick them up will mean another drive out to this nameless suburb with loud airplanes flying overhead every forty-five seconds.
You take the suits home and proudly show the big pile to your family. They feign interest for a minute or so and then go back to whatever they were doing. You call a tailor that you find in the phone book, the one closest to your home, and ask if he can alter ten suits for you. He thinks that you are joking. “Nobody buys ten suits,” he says. “I will see you in five minutes,” you say. You show up and you tell the tailor what a terrific deal you got on the suits. By doing this, you want to prove to him that you are a smart guy and not the obnoxious spoiled brat that he thinks you are, showing up with ten new suits to tailor.
He marks one suit and says he will alter all the other ones to match. This is perfect. You do not waste any more time than you have to on this taking-you-away-from-your-family chore.
You pick up the suits on Wednesday after work and pay the tailor $113, and he seems much less impressed with your purchases today than when you brought them in on Saturday. He does not treat you like the big shot that he thought you were then.
On Thursday, you select one of your new suits and wear it to work. You feel good, like a man wearing a new suit should feel, all day long. As you are driving home, you feel a more pronounced breeze on your right leg than usual, and when you look down at your leg you see it—your leg, that is. The seam has separated on the outside of your leg from your hip to your knee on this day when you christened your new suit. You are unsure how long this condition has existed, but you suspect that your colleagues have a much more accurate sense of when this situation transpired. You give them the benefit of the doubt by assuming that they were just too polite to tell you.
You stop off at the tailor on your way home that evening and he “reinforces” your pant leg while you stand in the dressing room in your underwear. He asks again how much you paid for your suit. You respond, “Not enough.”
On your way out, he says, “See you soon.” He is right.
Take the Train to Work
One sure way to tell if you live in the suburbs or not is by the seats in the train that stops somewhere near where you live. If the train seats are hard-surfaced, molded plastic, or have only a quarter inch or so of inadequate padding, with the seat backs at something close to a ninety-degree angle, then you do not live in a suburb. You live in the city.
However, if the train that stops near where you live has four- or five-inch-thick leather-covered padding on the seats and seat backs, and if the seat backs are at a more comfortable angle—say, seventy-five degrees—and if you can rotate the seat backs so that you can reconfigure the train seats to oppose one another, then you live in the suburbs.
When you take a train from the suburbs, you usually take it to the city. It is one way corporate executives get to and from work every Monday through Friday. There is great similarity in the way people who take the train that you take are dressed. Even in this day and age of casual dress, most men on the train that you take into work wear dark suits, white shirts, maroon ties (usually), and shiny black shoes. Each suit-wearing person on that train platform, you assume, has paid more for their suit than you have for yours, and each has most definitely visited his tailor less frequently than you have yours. They usually carry a briefcase.
Women are usually very well dressed. They wear what you think they call pantsuits and they wear professional-looking skirt suits. They wear shoes with heels that are not too high, so as not to give the wrong impression to other corporate executives. They, too, carry something you might call a briefcase.
On the train that you take, these uniforms are worn by just about all of your fellow commuters, with one very significant exception. There is one person whom you take note of because “she” is a unique-looking individual. To you, it looks as though “she” would fit in better if “she” were sitting on a train with the hard-shelled, plastic molded seats with little or no padding.
There are a few things that give you this impression. “Her” physical characteristics are as follows:
“She”:
has long thick blond flowing hair that is waist-length;
is slender;
has long legs;
wears tight, usually black stretch pants that flare at the bottom;
wears a tight, collared black knit shirt with a minimum of three buttons open;
wears high-heeled shoes, accentuating an unusually tall frame;
accessorizes with two-inch-diameter hoop earrings;
has cleavage like a female weight lifter;
has long fingernails that are manicured;
wears very tight black leather gloves when it is cold out;
walks with a great deal of confidence;
has a runway-trained cadence;
from the back, looks like the most attractive woman on the platform;
is allocated more personal space than all other passengers;
is usually the only person who has a seat all by “herself” all the way into the city;
has visible panty lines;
wears black eyeliner;
sits on the train with “her” thighs pressed very closely together;
has a clean-shaven face;
has an Adam's apple.
What is interesting is that this individual has selected to live either in your suburb or the suburb that is immediately south of yours. “She” has chosen to live in an area that everyone else has chosen because there are good schools for the kids and plenty of kids to play with. You hope that “she” has chosen this area to live for other reasons.
You, like everyone else on this train, wonder where this person lives, where “she” works, and why “she” dresses like “she” does—questions that will remain unanswered, because knowing the answers to these questions would require talking to this person, something that nobody on this train has been willing to attempt in the past four years.
Support Your Wife in Her Pursuit of Making Money
Your wife, like many wives in your suburb, is well educated.
Your wife is now a full-fledged stay-at-home mom. The kids are now in school and, having a desire to do something professionally and few mental roadblocks, your wife gets the idea that she is a clothing designer and begins designing clothing for kids. She names the company after your children, whose names become an acronym for a lengthy company name that you can never remember exactly. She designs kids' and women's sweaters and skirts. They are knit and they have chenille, you have heard her say repeatedly.
Her sweaters are cool and everyone who sees them likes them. She finds a woman in a run-down neighborhood who lives in a small, run-down two-unit apartment building who has some friends that have knitting machines, which to you look a little like electronic keyboards. These women, in the unfinished and unheated basement of this two-flat, become
your wife's “factory,” as she likes to describe it.
They while away the hours and make sweater after sweater to fill order after order.
The sweaters do look great, and wherever you go people are talking about this new apparel line. Sometimes you go places and people are wearing her clothes, which they have purchased at Barneys, Nordstrom's, or some high-end boutique on Armitage Street in the city or in SoHo. The sweaters are not cheap either. You don't really remember, but a kid's sweater would sell for something like $200. You and your wife cannot really believe that there are people who buy $200 sweaters for their kids, and you laugh about the absurdity of this. But, hey, they do.
On occasion, you ask your wife if she is keeping track of her revenues and expenses. She responds, “Keeping track of what?” You try to assist her in creating a simple-to-use spreadsheet that will help her (and you, as the de-facto venture capitalist in this new venture) determine if she is making any money selling these $200 sweaters. This is not your wife's forte. She gets frustrated with you every time you bring this up, because she is a designer. She cannot be bothered with the noncreative aspects of this one-person business.
You try several times to understand the material and labor costs and how they relate to the price that she sells the sweaters for, because Brian, your ex-accountant, who is probably checking in a naked couple right now, is no longer available to probe these issues for you. Your wife tries to help you with these numbers but mostly looks at you with a blank expression and then adorably admits that she has no idea. “I am a designer,” she says.
For two years, you try to assist the designer you married to understand the financial impact of what she is doing so that you can understand the financial impact of your investment in this venture, which requires frequent cash calls. She gets frustrated. She spends a lot of time driving to her “factory,” which is located in a neighborhood where gang graffiti decorates most of the homes and where sneakers are draped over telephone wires.
There is always a big pile of sweaters in your SUV and you have to build a storage room in your 1920s suburban house that acts as the “warehouse” for mounds of $200 kids' sweaters. You add the cost of your new warehouse to the capital-expense line item on the income statement that you are trying to assemble with little help from your wife. The good news is that for two years you have no taxes to pay on the business that shares a name with your kids. Your new accountant, who has a wife you have met, offers no comment on this development.
Barneys files for bankruptcy and the reps don't feel like pioneering this new line. The only way that this business will take off is if your wife devotes all of her time to it. She chooses not to and has a sample sale to sell off the inventory in your “warehouse.” You will not be looking forward to an enormous sum of money coming from this business anytime soon.
Meet Your Loving Neighbor
Your neighbors are very friendly, which is something that you really like about your suburb. A few, however, are maybe too friendly. David Golob falls into that category. He tells you that he loves you, and he tells you this each time that he sees you. And you think that he makes it a point to see you often so that he can maximize the number of times that he tells you that he loves you. In the city you didn't have any neighbors who told you that they loved you, and you appreciated that about the city. In fact, you did not even know most of your neighbors in the city.
At first you think that maybe this is the way neighbors express themselves to one another in the suburbs, and that concerns you. This is not the kind of “Unity Through Diversity” that you signed on for when you moved to the suburbs.
Now, if this were your neighbor across the street, Annika, expressing such thoughts, it would probably be something with which you could deal a little better. Annika is the kind of “Unity Through Diversity” that you can handle any day of the week. But this is David Golob, and while you believe he is one of the most sincere guys around, you have five problems with him telling you that he loves you each time he sees you:
1. David is a man, and when any man repeats these three words to you it makes you extremely uncomfortable.
2. David is probably ten years your senior.
3. David is married with children and lives in the house behind yours.
4. David shares an alley with you.
5. David seems to time his comings and goings around yours.
David “runs into” you frequently as you are opening your garage door to pull out of your garage. You imagine that he spends a lot of his time watching your rear door to see when you leave so that he can leave his house at the same time and “accidentally” run into you in the alley. You think that he does this so that he can tell you he loves you and tell you that you are the salt of the earth each time he “coincidentally” runs into you in the alley.
You begin developing fake-out tactics to avoid his words of affection. One tactic involves exiting the rear door of your house and then stalling before entering your detached garage, hoping that David will have left before you open your garage door. Only it doesn't work. You think that somehow, unknowingly, you have struck a special chord in David and that for some reason he has singled you out as the neighbor onto whom he will shed his love. You soon learn differently.
When David sees your wife, he says that he loves her too. “You and Mark are the salt of the earth,” he says, immediately after telling your wife that he loves her. You are not quite exactly sure what that expression means but you are positive that you have about as much comfort with David telling your wife that he loves her as you do with him telling you that he loves you, which is none. All this talk of love makes you nervous about your new neighbor.
After this you become more curious about David and begin making inquiries about his loving behavior. You soon learn that David loves many of your neighbors including Peter, Bonnie, Robert, Margo, Jamie, Mary, Ellen, Paul, Eddie, and Bernie and that they too are the salt of the earth. They have all accepted David's outpouring of affection as “That's just David.” While you hope that you never get comfortable with all this talk of love and salt, and you will do your best to avoid it, you conclude that this is just David's way of being a good suburban neighbor.
Go to a Dinner Party
Your wife takes care of your social calendar, and for this you are mostly thankful. She knows a lot of different people and always has something interesting arranged. She is a social animal and the unofficial mayor of your suburb. She believes, as she should, that she is in command of your social schedule, and generally you are thankful for this. You know a lot of people because of your wife, you go to a lot of parties because of your wife, and you see some good movies because of your wife and some others that you can live without, like Fried Green Tomatoes. For the most part, this unspoken arrangement works to your advantage, with two minor exceptions.
First, in this arrangement, you can never schedule any social function on your own. This is a mistake. Your wife will have already committed you to be somewhere else. She will get angry at you because you have taken the initiative to make your own social choice, an activity in which she engages all the time. This is her turf; do not encroach on it. If you do make some plan, it is not what your wife would like to do. The time is wrong because your daughter has to nap then and your son will be hungry. You will schedule something over one of your kids' friends' birthday parties or a sleepover. The location will be wrong. “What? We have to drive there?” your wife will ask accusingly. “Why can't they come here?” And/or the people will be wrong, mostly because they are your friends and not really hers.
The second downside of this arrangement is the fact that your wife, if you are lucky, will give you up to one hour's prior notice before any particular social function that she has arranged for you. Usually it's a half hour. You deal with this fine. You are a man with flow. You are flexible and adaptable. You are ready for anything. You roll with it.
Generally, you have no issues with this arrangement except when your wife gets
angry at you for not being ready for an event that you have absolutely no idea that you are attending.
For example, one Friday evening you come home from one hell of a week. You eat a light dinner with your family, hang out with your kids, and before you know it, it's their bedtime. On this night, your wife puts your daughter to bed, and you do the same with your son. You read with him (he reads his book and you yours), you turn out the lights, you tell him a story, and then the two of you say a prayer (a Catholic one). This has become your nightly routine and you both like it. Your job is done and you go to your bedroom. You are engaged in a book called The Gold Coast, by Nelson DeMille, and you want to read it now. You go into your closet, put on your pajamas, go to the bathroom and brush your teeth, wash your face and try to dry it with your herringbone-patterned towel, and slip into bed and begin reading. Your face is damp.
A few minutes later, your wife comes upstairs and she looks at you in disbelief. She is startled and angry. “What are you doing?” she asks. You respond that you are lying in bed and that you are reading the book that you have been enjoying. It is a book about an Italian mob guy who moves into a Waspy old-money Long Island town called Old Westbury.
She looks at you, demanding a response to her next question, “Why aren't you ready? You have been up here all this time and you are not ready? We are late. The babysitter is downstairs.” You did not hear anyone enter your house. “Babysitter? Late for what? Where are we going?” you ask. “Where are we going?” your wife responds. “We are going to the Fairchilds'. They are having a dinner party and we are late. It has been on my calendar for a month! Get ready.”
This is the first time you have heard of any dinner-party plans, but this does not surprise you. You say, “Oh, OK.” You get out of bed, get dressed, and head downstairs. You greet the babysitter and you inform her that you are going to the Fairchilds' for a dinner party. She tells you that she knows that because your wife told her three weeks ago.
