Let me paint you a picture of fashion excess that even Liberace would’ve advised against. There I was, a freshly minted professor in the dusty town of Bakersfield, high on a cocktail of naïveté, unresolved teenage regrets, and the sartorial influence of the International Male and Urban Gear catalogs—an unholy trinity of misguided masculinity if there ever was one. In my 27-year-old mind, those catalogs were less about clothes and more like ancient tomes revealing the very essence of manhood. But this delusion reached a sartorial climax that finally broke the camel’s back—or in this case, shattered the patience of the English Department Chair.
At first, my colleagues generously excused my increasingly bizarre wardrobe as “youthful exuberance” from a Bay Area transplant trying to assert some “big city” flair in a desert outpost where fashion trends arrive three decades late. But one fateful day, I pushed the boundaries beyond reason. I strutted onto campus like a peacock ready for a ballroom dance-off, dressed in tight Girbaud slacks that practically screamed, “I’m here to give a lecture, but I might also break into interpretive dance.” My feet were clad in Italian loafers, complete with tassels and tiny bells—yes, bells. Who needs socks when you’ve got bells?
But the crown jewel of this sartorial disaster was the sage-whisper green pirate shirt. And when I say “pirate shirt,” I’m not talking about a whimsical Halloween costume. I’m talking about a translucent, billowing monstrosity that looked like it was plucked from the wardrobe of Captain Jack Sparrow after a particularly wild night of plundering. My bulging pecs were practically hosting their own TED Talk through the sheer fabric, and the effect was more Moulin Rouge than Macbeth.
Word of my fashion blunder made it to Moses Okoro, our distinguished Chair, a no-nonsense scholar in his fifties who had traded the vibrant streets of Lagos for the dull sands of this backwater town. Moses prided himself on being a man of deep thought, the kind who savored life’s complexities and relished philosophical debates like a connoisseur of fine wine. In the rarefied circles he once frequented, he had been celebrated for his intellectual rigor, a reputation largely sustained by an essay he penned two decades earlier on a celebrated Nigerian novelist. The essay, which dissected themes of post-colonial identity with surgical precision, had been lauded as groundbreaking in its time, securing Moses’s place as a respected voice in academic and literary discussions. But the years had passed, and that once-prominent essay had become a relic—he still leaned on it like a crutch, bringing it up whenever the opportunity presented itself, hoping to rekindle the admiration it had once inspired.
In Bakersfield, however, Moses’s brilliance was met with blank stares and indifferent nods. The dusty little town was not the place for nuanced explorations of African literature or the intricacies of global politics. The locals, with their straightforward values and pragmatic concerns, found Moses’s musings a touch too lofty, too irrelevant to their daily lives. He would hold court at dinner parties, weaving rich tapestries of thought, only to be met with distracted glances and the awkward silence of guests shifting in their seats. The wisdom he offered—hard-earned through decades of scholarship and contemplation—was like pearls cast before swine. It left him feeling both superior and isolated, like a prophet in a land of the unworthy.
Moses’s frustration was only amplified by the success of his wife, Olivia, a writer who specialized in best-selling women’s fiction. Her books—full of romantic entanglements, gripping betrayals, and redemptive arcs—flew off the shelves. They were the kind of stories that readers devoured in a weekend, utterly hooked by her knack for creating characters who felt both relatable and dramatic. While Moses dissected literature with a scalpel, Olivia spun tales with the effortless charm of someone who understood exactly what people wanted to read. Her popularity irked him, though he would never admit it openly. She was always jetting off to glamorous book tours and literary retreats, sipping cocktails in Paris with her coterie of fellow best-sellers, while Moses stayed behind, holding the fort in Bakersfield, watching the horizon for intellectual company that never arrived.
The contrast between them was stark. Olivia lived in a whirlwind of vibrant social engagements and glossy magazine features, while Moses felt marooned in his world of abstract ideas and unsung brilliance. He couldn’t help but feel sidelined, a minor figure in the grand narrative of her life. Though he loved her in his own way, there was a gnawing sense of exclusion, a quiet bitterness that his profound insights seemed valued less than the escapist fiction that had brought her fame and fortune. He felt like an aging lion, majestic yet irrelevant, while Olivia basked in the attention of an adoring public.
Yet, he never confronted her about it. Moses would retreat into his study, surrounded by shelves groaning under the weight of dense academic tomes, finding solace in the solitude of his thoughts. But even in that sanctuary, there lingered the unspoken truth: the world had moved on, and he was living off the fumes of past glories while Olivia thrived in the present, leaving him behind in the dusty echoes of Bakersfield’s indifference.
By the time I got the midday summons to his office, I knew I was about to get the fashion red card. I walked in, and there was Moses—feet ensconced in some sort of luxurious foot-warmer device, a necessary accessory for his gout. He flashed me a grin that was half-amused, half-pitying, like a man witnessing someone try to cook a steak with a hairdryer.
“Jeff,” he began, in a tone that suggested he was both fond of me and horrified by me. “You’re a striking figure, I’ll give you that. But this—” he gestured vaguely at the shimmering monstrosity draped over my torso—“is taking things too far. I can see more than I care to.”
I glanced down at my exposed chest and, for the first time, realized that my pecs were starring in their own soap opera under that filmy fabric. Moses continued, “I get it—a man with your bodybuilding prowess wants to flaunt it. But, Jeff, this is an academic setting, not Studio Fifty-Four. Be more of a professor and less of a Desert Peacock.”
He then instructed me to march straight home, ditch the pirate couture, and return dressed in something befitting a person who isn’t auditioning for a Vegas show. Before I could slink away in shame, Moses added with a smile, “Jeff, I like you. You’ve got potential. But let me remind you, this town is a fishbowl. Whatever you do in the morning, the whole town knows by lunchtime.”
That was the Bakersfield way—a place where the smallest fashion faux pas became a full-blown scandal before the sun hit noon. As I left his office, I knew that my pirate shirt days were over, along with my delusions of dressing like the love child of Captain Morgan and Don Juan.
With a sigh, I trudged home to swap my dreams of high fashion for something a bit more… professorial.
Cinemorphosis 