My secret identity

I've never put a lot of thought into my clothes.
I've never had to. I wore a uniform in elementary school, and when I was in
high school, I had a dress code that more or less became my uniform as an
adult: dress shirt, slacks, a blazer and one of many, many ties.

Of course, I didn't live in those clothes. I've always enjoyed those
moments at the end of every day when I got to tear off my shirt and tie
-- I feel a little like Clark Kent turning into Superman -- and throw on
a flannel shirt, a pair of jeans, and my bedroom slippers. I wouldn't want
anyone to see me dressed like that, but that was the point: my uniform, my
dress clothes, was the barrier that kept the rest of the world from seeing
me as the carefree slob I really was.

I don't think I was all that unusual in this regard. Most people put on
different clothes for different occasions, after all. But I tended to take
things to extremes, because I'm shy. When I joined my first writing
workshop in college, for example, I began wearing really loud Hawaiian shirts
every time one of my stories came up for discussion. I told myself that if
people criticized me or laughed at me, they were really mocking my shirt,
and not my story (and by extension, myself). It gave me the confidence to
get through the class, although it didn't do anything for my fashion sense.

My first job out of college was at a newspaper. Being a reporter is
a tough job for someone who's painfully shy. Not only did I have to talk to
people whom I didn't know, but I had to ask them awkward and difficult
personal questions. In order to do it, I had to become someone else. "The
real Rob -- the one in flannels and slippers -- could never talk to people
like that," I told myself. "But once you put on that shirt and tie, you
become Rob the reporter, and Rob the reporter can do whatever it takes to
get the job done."

And it worked.

Until I moved to California.

I'd been told that the people in California dressed more casually than
those of us on the East Coast. And it's true that you see more people
walking around San Francisco in T-shirts and jeans than you'd ever see on
the streets of Boston. But the real difference is that clothing here means
something completely different than it does in the world where I grew up.

In Plymouth, people who saw me in my shirt and tie saw it for what it
was: a uniform. They knew if they wanted to get to know the real me, they'd
have to look past my clothes and draw me into a conversation. (Most people,
of course, didn't bother: one of the joys of living on the East Coast was
the ability to stand out in a crowd when wearing a Hawaiian shirt and to
become completely invisible whenever I wasn't).

In California, there are no uniforms. People here seem to construct
outfits as extensions of their self-image. The T-shirts and jeans I saw
San Franciscans wearing cost more than most of my wardrobe put together,
and the folks who were wearing them actually put a lot of thought into
which T-shirt went with which pair of jeans. I felt self-conscious when I
went to work, not because I was the only person wearing a shirt and tie to
the office, but because people looked at me as though that outfit was the
way I'd chosen to define myself.

I hated feeling out-of-place. But I didn't want to leave my suits
behind. Everything in California seemed so different -- the driving laws,
the food, the way people behaved toward each other -- that most of the time,
I felt lost, confused, and foolish. The only time I felt confident or
in control was when I was at work, being a reporter. And I'd come to
associate that reporter persona with the clothes I wore to work. My dress
clothes were like Dumbo's magic feather -- they gave me the confidence I
needed to become the person I really was.

Because that's what I'd like to believe. The real me isn't the guy in
flannels, the one who's too terrified to ask a stranger for directions,
who treats every minor inconvenience like a major life crisis, whose life
is defined by what I tell myself I can't do. The real me is the one who can
go to the scene of a fire to interview the survivors, who can find his way
through a smoky, underground monastery in Kiev without panicking, who can
deal with angry readers and demanding editors and days without sleep without
losing the confidence in myself that keeps me going.

So I've started wearing jeans to work. I'm still wearing the dress
shirts; I don't think I'll ever show up in a T-shirt, or even a flannel. But
I've left the ties at home. And somehow, the world hasn't ended.

But I'm feeling a little more relaxed at work, and a little more
confident at home. I still don't know where I'm going or what I'm doing
half the time, but I don't let it get to me. I tell myself that's part of
the fun of being here.

And sometimes, I actually believe it.