Victor Krowchuck Gets Dressed

Victor Krowchuck, naked as a jay, goes to his closet with a view toward adornment. He puts on a choir of prepositions, 142 adjectives, 317 ramifications of cotton, a lemonade toupee of breathtaking audacity, 445 cross-gartered yellow stockings, eight highways, each blessed by the Pope of Abstraction, three childhoods, one of them complicated by too much gravity, 53 melodies united in spruce, 81 symptoms of eggnog, 78 mechanical headlines, 316 feathers from 252 different birds, 75 crustaceans and a big guffaw, a lambent scrawl of husky electricity, 99 doorbells and a gyroscopic area code, 102 waterfalls trapped in Corinthian leather, five wool sweaters and a mohair verve, an oxymoronic beginning at the end of a start, two startled starlings and the abdomen of a fully developed dialogue, 43 drums and a psychotic traffic light, a misunderstanding made of pure methane, a pink emotion, a blue door, and 177 semicolons engorged with cabbage. He looked at himself in the mirror. He pondered whether to include a tie or not. A piece of amber by his larynx. A pulley dangling from his chin. What can he add to make himself stand out? Getting dressed is more than putting on clothes. Getting dressed means wandering the junkyard of one's ancestors. Paying homage to fasteners and buttons. Homage to sleeves. Homage to pants and cuff links and belts and shoes. Shoes especially. Shoes are the crowning achievement of the human sartorial arsenal. For they have soles and tongues. For they cover the feet. And protect them from the irregularities and litter of the ground. For they may be adjusted to fit the moment. The vicissitudes of life. Which is full of blisters and blues. And so Victor Krowchuck went out into the world. Wearing the air as the sky and water do. Unfettered in his clothes. Delicate in his linen. Ecstatic in his shoes.