My Hobo Disguise

My girlfriend and I aren't luxurious people. We don't travel the world or eat at fancy restaurants or go see elaborate shows with scantily clad exotic dancers (though I am open to exploring that option). We live fairly simply; cooking at home, occasional meals at a diner or the Chinese place, a movie every now and again, etc. Nothing too high end. However, we do splurge on one thing:

Heroin.

Haha! Just kidding, blog-monitoring authorities! We don't do heroin and, even if we did, we'd get it cheaply from a guy named Wing-Pu in the back room of a Chinatown McDonalds (knock twice and say the word "candelabra"). No, the area in which we do our splurging is laundry. One of the many bricks that fortifies the surrounding walls of my girlfriend and I's relationship is a mutual hatred of doing laundry and the way we've reconciled this fact with our daily lives is by taking advantage of the wonderful "drop-off" service that so many laundromats offer these days. Sure, it costs more. But it beats the hell out of sitting around a dirty, hot laundromat filled with screaming kids and unpleasant, dirty clothes aromas.

The one flaw in this otherwise airtight plan is that, occasionally, you can't get to the laundromat in time to pick up your large parcel of clothing before they close. Which is precisely the predicament I find myself in today. I'm wearing clothes, yes, but the clothes I'm currently wearing are to the rest of my wardrobe what Little Leauge is to the MLB. Sure, it's essentially the same components, but it's a vastly different quality of play.

So let's break down what I've decided shall henceforth be known as my Hobo On A Job Interview outfit:

Socks

I am forced, today, to wear the perennial last pair of socks in my drawer; the wooly ones. They're thick, unwieldy and very, very warm. While the rest of my body is a very pleasant temperature, my feet feel like they're casually resting in a pot of boiling sweat. Also, they keep bunching up around my heels, making me feel like I'm walking on wads of dead hamsters.

Pants

These are a pair of fairly dressy (for me) khaki pants that I found hanging in the back of my closet. They appear to be the khaki's of a much thinner man; Pee-Wee Herman, say. While I've managed to pack my bulk into them well enough to wander around in public without frightening children, I will say that they're erring on the side of uncomfortable in much the same way that the ocean errs on the side of being wet.

Undershirt

An Old Navy t-shirt that never fit me quite right. Apparently, I have a freakishly long torso which, while not always an issue, can occasionally leave me wearing a shirt that, on a normal person, would look just fine. On me, it looks like I'm wearing a bellydancer's "kicking around the apartment" outfit. The effect is shocking, to say the least.

Shirt

This is really a sad case. What was once one of my nicest dress shirts, now it seems has fallen on hard times. While still a puckish light blue, it's now permanently wrinkled, giving the impression that I'd worn this shirt during a three-day bender complete with frequent naps in a ditch. Also, the fabric on the buttons has curled up, for some reason, leaving big planes of my undershirt showing through. While I could view this as giving me the illusion of possessing bulging muscles, I'm pretty sure that most people won't see it that way.

Add to these elements my dirty baseball cap, my scruffiness of face and my Payless shoes that have holes in them and, well, it's a wonder I was even let into my office building this morning. Eh. Well, tomorrow is another day. I'll be freshly dressed and sparkling new. And perhaps I can panhandle some change on the subway ride home.