When I lived in Los Angeles, I liked to shop at a second-hand clothing store on Beverly Boulevard. The place was crammed with stuff — some of it cast-offs from studio costume departments, some of it sold by actors who booked one job, spent it all on new clothes, and then never worked again. The place had the distinctly Hollywood combination of optimistic overspending and the penny-pinching of broken dreams.
In other words, you could find some great stuff in there.
Recommended Stories
One day, I wandered in, made my way to the back, and found something amazing hanging on a rack that clearly hadn’t been properly assessed yet: a vintage motorcycle jacket, brown leather, perfectly worn. The young man at the register, who was enjoying California’s then-recent loosening of marijuana laws with what I can only describe as wholehearted commitment, waved me through without a second glance. I walked out of that store feeling like I had gotten away with something. It’s the kind of jacket that magazine-shoot stylists would get into a slap fight over.
But here’s the sad truth: The jacket has spent most of its life in my closet, unworn.
I’ve worn it a handful of times over the years, and each outing has been, objectively, a triumph. Once, a stranger stopped me on the street and told me it was the finest example of that kind of jacket they had ever seen. High praise. But still: I went home, hung it up, and didn’t wear it again for years. Then, on a separate occasion — different city, different crowd — someone offered to buy it off my back. Not metaphorically. They named a number. A stupidly high number. I declined, went home, and hung it up again.
This is not rational behavior. The jacket has passed every test. The jacket has done everything right. And yet there it hangs.
Part of the problem, I think, is that I am a 60-year-old man. I am, by any reasonable measure, not cool. The vintage motorcycle jacket is, by any reasonable measure, extremely cool. So there is a gap there. I should note, in fairness to myself, that thanks to a modest amount of weight training and the manufacturers of tirzepatide, the jacket currently fits better than it did when I bought it. But still, once you look at a garment and ask yourself, Can I still pull this off? Something shifts inside you. Because if you have to ask, the answer is probably no, put it back on the hanger.
And then, Easter weekend, the answer to that question came, as answers sometimes do, from an unexpected direction. I am, as I keep mentioning, getting my Master of Divinity at Princeton Theological Seminary and in the process of discernment for ordination in the Episcopal Church, which means I occasionally assist the clergy at services.
At Saturday’s Easter Vigil — a long, beautiful, ancient liturgy that begins in darkness and ends in joyful proclamation — there is a moment when the assisting clergy slips something colorful over their white albs. It’s a poncho-like thing, called, in the Episcopal Church’s tradition of giving vaguely medical names to perfectly normal objects, a tunicle. Mine was bright red, with glittery threads woven into the fabric. And I will say this: I looked really good. Not in spite of the scarlet color or the bedazzled fabric, but because of it. There is something about committing fully to the garment — not hedging, not apologizing, just rocking the crap out of the thing — that worked.
Which is when I realized: If I can stand at the front of the church in a bright red liturgical smock and carry it off, the motorcycle jacket is not the problem. The problem is the hesitation. The problem is reaching for it and then not reaching for it.
Although I’ll say this: if someone offers to buy it again, I’ll probably take the money this time. That’s another thing that age gives you, eventually. The wisdom to know when to cash out.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
