I'm officially an adult, now?

In the Hebrew faith, you have the briss (ouch?) followed by (some time later) the bar mitzvah.

Some african tribes mark the start of a young man's adulthood when he kills his first lion.

The world is littered with various ways of signifying the commencement from childhood to adulthood.

I, however, bought a tux.

Now I feel like a goddamn grown-up fer sure!

Actually, I feel more like James Bond than anything else. The Sean Connery James Bond, that is. Not the pussy Roger Moore James Bond. (Yes - he was the first Bond to wear a leisure suit!) If I were tall and skinny, I could probably hang with feeling like the Pierce Brosnan Bond, too. But (as far as I'm concerned) Sean is the standard.

Anyway, I now own a tux.

All my life, I have pretty much been a slob. Comfort has been the watchword with me. When I was on the road all the time, it was either sweats or jeans during the day, and then other jeans or (during the metal band years) leathers on stage. FYI - I was never one of these "put-on-all-the-shit-you-wear-on-stage-and-go-to-the-mall" kind of guys. I have to establish a little credibility here... As we got older and advanced into the "not-getting-paid-shit-to-travel-everywhere-and-play-your-own-music-instead-of-covers" scene, I found that whatever I was wearing during the drive to the gig was what I was wearing that night. Convenience has a name, too...

Once I "retired" from the music biz and started working "real jobs", I became aware of an idea known as a "dress code" (or "duress code" as I called it). The code was that whatever was most uncomfortable wear became that which you would wear. But that also brought about the advent of "casual Friday". This meant that on Friday, you could be more "casual", relatively. So if everyday dress was slacks and tie, on Friday you could wear slacks and polo. If everyday were "business casual", Friday could even mean blue jeans.

What I learned over the years was how to squeeze every ounce of casual out of "casual Friday". At one job that I kept for 7 years, I was down to sweats and tanks on Friday. I have a knack for making myself very indespensable at a job, which helps lower the veil of blindness over the eyes of the bosses. This also helps me get away with growin the hair back out, etc...

You guessed it... I'm just a big, dumb kid! But not anymore! I. Have. A tux! Woohoo!

During the last 10-12 years, I really let myself go. I was hovering around 300 lbs. Then (long story short) I dropped down to 210 and found that my only good suit could not be altered enough to fit me. No big deal for the nonce, as I wasn't planning on going to any funerals or suit-requiring gigs.

That was also before I met a girl that has become the object of my affection. She is stylishly hip, but also doesn't care if I dress like a tramp cyclist or homeless guy. In some freaky, quirky twist, that has made me want to "clean up nice" somewhat as well. And while I will never be one of these GQ model guys, I have begun to make something somewhat akin to an effort to, on occasion, attempt to portray myself as someone that doesn't make the average passerby feel sorry for the girl walking next to me. It's an odd feeling to have.

So anyway, since I have finally come to a weight that is probably where I will be staying, I decided to go ahead and get a new suit (since even the magic tailor Al couldn't bring the old one in enough to not look like somone had autopsied me while wearing it). A blue one. I am also having to learn a little about things like "what goes with what". She is infinitely patient with me. And while those who know me think I may be selling out, I have found that I really enjoy the moments when I appear all shorn and natty and her eyes pop open and she makes comments on how good I look. It's amazing.

However, while dressing up in a suit is nice, I still prefer a tux. A good tux makes you feel like you will be having sex before the sun rises again! Plus, I have made 2 trips to the opera as of last month, and an outing to the ballet is next week. I could have saved myself a little dough if I had bought this in October. So it's really a fiscal statement more than a stylish statement, I guess.

But it's a really cool thing to own. I feel almost like I did when I bought my house! How strange is that? But the really good part is that now, when I go to any function and run into other people wearing tuxedos, I can glance down my nose at them, roll my eyes and murmer quietly - "rental".