The breeding ground for my unreadable novels was the California desert, where my catastrophic literary judgment was rivaled only by my crimes against fashion. Allow me to paint you a picture of excess so garish that even Liberace would have staged an intervention.
There I was—a freshly minted full-time professor in a sun-scorched town, drunk on a heady cocktail of naïveté, unresolved teenage angst, and the disastrous influence of International Male and Urban Gear catalogs. To my 27-year-old mind, these catalogs weren’t mere collections of overpriced polyester; they were sacred texts, blueprints for the modern alpha male—or at least a man who looked like he managed a European nightclub and occasionally fled the country under mysterious circumstances.
But even my delusions had their breaking point. The pinnacle of my sartorial madness arrived in one final, glorious misstep—an outfit so egregious that it shattered the patience of my English Department Chair, a man whose tolerance, until that moment, had been almost biblical.
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 into the 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.
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 small-town 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 