A BRIEF CONVERSATION WITH MY TAILOR
You can barely move in there for the racks and racks of clothes. Is he working on all those clothes? Selling them? Making them? He’s old school. Measuring tape around his neck. Laconic. From Abruzzi. Watches pornography on a tiny television in the back area of his shop, wedged in among the piles of trousers. He’s hung a pair of pants to block the patrons’ view of the screen, but he’s miscalculated the geometry. So you see it; some sort of ancient imported Italian porn; taped before boob jobs, viagra, hair dye, waxing. Skinny men sticking small penises into flabby hairy women. Bad light. Porn from the old country. I’m looking at the cuffs of a jacket he’s done for me. Always there are loose threads stuck all over the completed garments.
“Nice job on the cuffs.”
He shrugs. “I sew them the way they sewed them 75 years ago.”
It’s what you want your tailor to say.
