Rod Stewart, Me & the Schoolboy Jacket

This is me several years ago at the very British Jack Wills shop on King’s Road in London.

With sudden rain, umbrellas were out, some like large bright petals and others black as funerals. Hurrying pedestrians knocked into each other. Rain drenched everything, even the stylish dogs in yellow slickers. We stepped into this clothing shop, I shaking my shoulders of wetness, and my wife pulling away from me to inspect the baggy pants, bright as toucans, she had spied across the room. I was left behind to stand in the middle of the store mildly interested in the displays. Every item seemed youngish, and the sales help, boys and girls I would call them, were all young and bright as candy. The music from the speakers was not my cup of English tea. It was all electronic sounds, the stuff of headaches, music that robots might dance to.

In an old velvet chair, I opened a biography of multitalented J. B. Priestley, a prominent author from the 1930s and 1940s, but had to get to my feet when my wife called, “Gary, come here.”

I looked about, for my wife Carolyn is short and often lost among the racks of clothes. When she called again, I got moving. I found her on the stairwell, waving for me to giddyup. She led the way and I followed, a hand on the rail for balance, and was soon standing before a wall. I asked, “What am I looking at?”

“The jacket,” she pointed.

Since there was a display of six jackets, I risked, “Which one?”

“The maroon one—get it down and try it.” The maroon jacket had a school crest and brass buttons. Tiptoeing, I unlatched it. It was heavy wool. I could tell it was vintage from the lining, which was yellowish from age. I put it on and shrugged at the cuffs.

“Look in the mirror,” my wife commanded.

I looked. I saw myself, shoes splayed, my pants wrinkled, my hair wild from rain. The schoolboy’s jacket was admittedly stylish, hip. I turned sideways and recognized that in my jeans my butt hadn’t fallen too far. You could pull this off, I told myself as I pulled in my stomach, a brief liposuction that lasted no more than seconds.

I stripped the jacket off and handed it to my wife who began to search for a price tag. Finding none, she walked upstairs with me in tow. She called to a young man in periwinkle-colored shorts, “How much is this?” Bright red sunglasses were on top of his head.

The young man walked over in leather boaters—he wore no socks, I saw, and the cuffs of his trousers ended around the tops of his ankles. He took the jacket. His face crumpled as he searched for a price tag. But his search ended when the clerk at the counter hollered, “Scott, it’s not for sale. It’s display.” His voice was high, as if on tiptoes.

The counter clerk, it appeared, was the boss of the moment, the one who directed the very youthful staff to go here, go there. He was all of twenty-five and groomed with a boyish part in his hair. The counter clerk dropped what he was doing and the young man who initially helped left, heading to the stairs and back to his station on the second floor.

“Not for sale—why?” my wife asked. She seemed bewildered at this piece of news. Like, what was the world coming to if you put something on the wall and it’s not for sale!

“It’s for display, ma’am,” he answered. He was wearing orange-colored pedal pushers. His striped T-shirt hugged his lean body. Unlike many of his generation, his throat was not inked with a tattoo.

“Why?” my wife asked.

He repeated that the jacket was hung for display, to color the walls with a British sensibility. He remarked, with prideful confession, that they had previously sold only one of the same jacket—to Rod Stewart. He had let something out of the bag, and my wife was on it.

“Then why don’t you sell this one to us?” my wife asked. She had taken possession of the jacket.

“Because…” the young man stalled. He blinked a set of pretty eyes at my wife, refrained from offering an explanation, but finally came up with: “Because, oh, how do I say this.”

He said it. He said that they sold the same maroon-colored schoolboy jacket to Rod Stewart because Rod was a celebrity and hinted that I, only a husband and nothing more, was just off the street. He even looked out onto the street when he heard the toot of a taxi.

My wife jumped in. “But do you know who my husband is?”

His eyes slowly moved from my wife to me. He pondered me for a second and answered, “No, but I think you’re from New York—am I right?”

“He’s a famous writer. In America, everyone knows him.” She added that we were from California, but didn’t say our second home was in Fresno—like, what?

At that, I became embarrassed at her untrue statement, then enlightened at the power of human will to bargain for clothes. For the first time in our thirty-six years of marriage, I saw Carolyn as a true, go-for-broke shopper. But really! A famous writer is someone who has his or her sober image on a coffee cup. And hadn’t two of my last books been remaindered with others, like lemmings, soon to follow?

The clerk gazed at me with eyes clear as unpolluted sky, so young this boy was. He said after a moment, “I like novels if I can see the movie first.”

The movie first?

He pondered me for a few hard seconds. Maybe he is a writer of note, the lad was thinking, or perhaps, he just resembles my gramps. Finally, he confided, “You know, sir, you have the same build as Mr. Stewart.”

Rod Stewart and me with the same frame? I wondered. Remarkable.

“Let me check something. What is your name, sir?” The young clerk turned away, walking briskly to the counter. He opened a laptop computer and his face, already bright with pinkish cheeks, brightened even more with computer light. His fingers began to scramble across the keys.

Meanwhile, my wife and I cut across several islands of sweaters, long sleeve jerseys with British overtones, a table of impossibly slim fitting jeans, to a cubbyhole display of jackets. While I, a novice shopper, looked slowly, possibly with the face of extreme boredom, she speedily peeled away one jacket after another. She was frantic in her quest to make me dapper (I was in my late fifties) and perturbed that my credentials as a writer were suspect. However, the way she described me to the clerk would have meant a best seller, not a poet with a couple of lucky textbook hits that made a nice income. True, I was not Rod Stewart rich, but he and I share the same build.

“I hope we get it,” she muttered at the rack of jackets. She yanked at the sleeves of these jackets as she moved through them searching for one that said Gary.

I spent my time first ogling the price tags and then the jackets, all wool, all retro in 1960s style, all darn expensive. I was puzzled at a price tag marked down from 150 pounds to 85 pounds in vicious red when my wife said, “This is nice.”

I tried on the nice jacket and it fit. I figured it would fit Mr. Stewart, too. We were of the same build and of the same era, he slightly older of course, he much richer of course, he trying to regroup and discover new music of course. I had hair like his—once, when I was in my early twenties, I had sported his trademark rooster look. But in that department his hair (dyed) remained much bushier, while mine went with the wind.

The clerk returned and said cheerfully, “I looked you up.” He halted in front of Carolyn but spoke of me. “Your husband is famous. We can sell the jacket, I think.” He explained that he had to talk to the regional manager who was not present. He left flipping open his cell phone and the wait

allowed me to pick up a pair of argyle socks—ten pounds for socks? No wonder the staff here didn’t wear them.

My wife had drifted away but not far. She was now ripping through the sweaters.

The clerk returned within minutes and told us that, yes, the jacket could be sold. My wife and he haggled over the price while I, like smoke, drifted away to look at the sweaters, none of which I would buy.

In the end, the schoolboy jacket with the crest and bronze buttons was mine. I also bought the other jacket that my wife had located and we left Jack Wills, my wife going first, she so invincible when she sets her mind to shopping. We looked about, squinting because the sun had come out and the sky was blue as that young clerk’s eyes. It was humid, though, and it was it was late afternoon, time for a pint, time for my mouth to pucker up a hardy drink. Wrong. My wife had spied a women’s shoe store with a half-off sale banner across the street.

“Aren’t you exhausted?” I asked.

“Exhausted? Yeah, but so?” She told me to hurry up because the light was about to turn red.

I, a husband and nothing more, followed.