“How about this one?” the salesman offers. He is earnest. Trying to help me.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
He rifles through the metal hangers on a rack marked “SALE: FALL JACKETS.” He pulls out a navy windbreaker. “This one?”
Cheesy. I shake my head.
“This?” He shows me something that’s burgundy and shiny, then pushes up his tortoise shell aviator glasses and strokes his mustache.
“No, that’s not it.”
“OK.” Mustache Salesman crinkles his nose. He yanks out another. And another. Another.
No. No. No. None of these jackets are “it.” Not the one. Not the new me.
He puts his hands on his hips, trying to mask his annoyance. “So, what exactly do you want?”
I’m not sure. I am 15. All I know is I want a cool jacket, because I want to be cool, because I’m not.
Which is why on this sharp, early September Saturday, I am shopping for a fall jacket for the start of the school year that already started two weeks ago, in this discount department store, with my guardian and my broken mother, having already made the rounds of several other clothing stores and sportings goods stores, some cooler than others, mostly not cool at all, in all the neighboring towns. I don’t want to be shopping for this, or anything this essential, with my guardian, who is patient and bored and aloof, and my mother, whose brain bled out three years ago, who is not patient, who is limping behind us like a lost kid in the men’s department calling out, “Ethaaaaan?…. What about this?” which is mortifying because now everyone is looking at the source of her inappropriately loud voice and thumping gait as she walks with her cane and now everyone glares as she flick … flick … flicks her cigarette lighter and hobbles to catch up. They notice her, and by association, notice me. Us.
I am her, and she is me — the most uncool, busted mother and son on the planet, even if I don’t consider her my mother anymore but something else, a creature, a limp, a sound, a hindrance, a set of manacles, something not me, and not her, not who she used to be. Not who we all used to be.
We are at the discount department store, not the Newington Mall, or the Fox Run Mall, not stores like Chess King or J. Riggings or Merry-Go-Round, or Designs by Levis Strauss where I will work the summer after my senior year. If we had gone to the mall, I could say, “Uh, I have to go somewhere. I’ll be back,” and ditch the mothers, and head to the Dream Machine to play Robotron 2084 or Galaga, and maybe grab an Orange Julius or go to the hobby shop to check out the new D&D stuff, like the new Fiend Folio, and then go to Spencer’s Gifts and look at the dirty board games and edible underwear and fake poop.
We are, instead, here. Looking for a kind of jacket — a windbreaker or warm up jacket or tracksuit top or hoodie or trainer or varsity jacket — I don’t know. I know I’ve seen it somewhere. I saw the jacket on Tom Cruise in Risky Business or Robert Romanus in Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Mathew Broderick in WarGames, or Michael J. Fox in Family Ties or David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider or Ted Danson in Cheers or Tom Selleck in Magnum, P.I.
One of the cool kids at school wears the jacket of my desire, someone like my arch nemesis, John Tegan, whose name is a hybrid of “tease” and “Ethan G.” If I wear the jacket he wears, he’ll stop flicking my hair and bumping into me in the hallways and calling me “Dickwad.”
This all is before I have any concept of what might be cool, or what my version of cool might be. All I know is that into this fabled jacket I have woven all my hopes and expectations and desires, and I will emerge from the awkward, uncomfortable carapace I have constructed for myself to discover my new skin. The jacket will be my new covering, my new home, my new exoskeleton for the person I want to be: confident, suave, cocky. Unafraid to talk to girls.
When I wear the fabled jacket, I will become the kind of person — boy, kid, teen, man — who can wear the jacket.
But I don’t know what the jacket is called, nor can I describe it, or coherently declare what I’m looking for.
All I know is that these sad, shiny, slippery, shoddy, tawdry, tacky, off-brand, house brand, uncool versions at this store, and all the other stores we’ve been to today, are not it.
I don’t yet know that the jacket I am looking for is beige, ecru, fawn, buff, sand, oatmeal. It has angled pockets and stretch cuffs and hem. Its low profile collar has a double snap iconic throat latch. It has signature shoulder epaulettes, and a trademark front logo pocket. It is made of polycotton, it is imported, and features a discrete inside pocket. It is part Nehru jacket, part Han Solo and U.S.S. Enterprise. It’s exclusive, so exclusive, that I don’t even know its name: Members Only. I won’t know its name for 40 years.
“Can I help you, or not?” Mustache Salesman asks me, one more time.
No, this is not the jacket I’m looking for. No, this is not the substitute parent I’m looking for. No, this is not the mother I’m looking for. No, this is not the family I’m looking for.
No, these aren’t the droids I’m looking for, either.
No, these are not the feelings I’m looking for.
Not these, not them, not me.
All I can say to the salesperson is, “No, I’m done.” I don’t want to shop anymore. I don’t want to want anymore. I turn to my mom and guardian. “Let’s go.”
Image by Antoni Shkraba on pexels.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Members Only - September 30, 2026