Hey Tux Boy, you breathin' my air?

So it dawns on me that we've had two tuxedo references in this space in the last week. And now it's three, which actually equals the number of times I've actually worn the tuxedo I own.

I bought a tuxedo for my wedding, using the Guy Logic that says, "well hey, if the bride spends $47,000 on a dress she's only going to wear once, why shouldn't I spend a few hundred dollars on a piece of formal attire I could wear literally hundreds of times?"

I used this piece of logic even though the only previous occasions that had called on my to wear a tuxedo were a) the aforementioned Winneshiek (Iowa) County Fair Queen Pageant; b) the aforementioned (in the comments section of the same posting) Decorah (Iowa) Bridal Show; and c) my brother's wedding (not in Iowa).

If nothing else, the tuxedos employed for occasions a) and c) were at least timeless styles - no powder blue, no ruffles, no loud vest. Ironically, the Decorah Bridal Show (which was employing me as a "celebrity" escort for the women modeling the wedding gowns) put me in the least attractive of any of them - a black tuxedo with a long, white collar, giving off the effect the I had a wet towel around my neck - as though I'd just changed into my tuxedo after playing racquetball.

By the time my wedding rolled around, I was living in Flagstaff, which at the time had two formalwear options - one was a formalwear/lingerie boutique which employed a little too much red velvet in the decor for me to be comfortable with. The other was normal enough store, but after the saleswoman critized my taste enough ("Oh, cummerbunds are so 1990... What you want is a nice, flashy vest. And maybe a white collar...") that I gave up and went to San Diego to buy a tuxedo. (Hey, what's an eight-hour drive, when you consider I'll get to wear it literally thousands of times?)

So of course I wore it to my wedding. And, a year later, to a charity fundraising ball, as moral support for another guy who wanted to wear the tuxedo he had bought for his wedding. And I wore it as the Master of Ceremonies at a community orchestra concert last winter in Flagstaff, which gave me the opportunity to tell people about Handel, while at the same time trying to figure out if my cufflinks had fallen off.

I'm sure I'll get to wear it again before too long. I considered putting "owns a tuxedo" on my résumé back in my job-hunting period, but decided that would only help if I were applying for a position has a billboard model for Indian casinos, or a job drawing lottery numbers on TV.

So I'll keep looking for opportunities. Or co-workers in need of a formal racquetball game now and then.