His tie is still pressed and the shirt is white, even the collar and cuffs. You cannot violate the white shirt of the Sixties. You might kill me but you will never kill this shirt.
Cary Grant’s Suit (Todd McEwen in Granta)
Fun fact: Todd McEwen wrote my favourite novel. Of course it’s out of print.
Update: All of McEwen’s Granta essays
Hello beautiful,
There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you, something which has been welling up over the past few days (something entirely positive). And the crazy part of it is, I don’t know whether I have ever told you this explicitly before (for reasons explained below), although I have certainly spoken endlessly of it to every significant lover I have ever had, as well as many friends, and its only been 16 years now.
Of course, the something is that I love you. Your image will always be imprinted indelibly and eternally with the concept “mother” in my mind. I will go to my grave madly in love with you. I will love you always, I adore you forever. I love you. I may not be gettin married to ya, but I do love you!
All of this is so much more potent, because I lost my ex-fiancee rather unexpectedly less than a month ago to complications from her cancer treatment. We were handfasted at Maxworks, of all places! And though we never consummated out handfasting vows “unto the summerlands,” I am grateful to say that we were best friends until her death. I would dearly have each of my significant former loves maintain the agape. Right now there is only one who won’t speak to me, provided that I may have the blessing of enjoying your continued friendship. You have always been so kind whenever I have visited you. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to make this confession of love to you, that we are both still present for this to occur before our living, breathing ears.
I remember the moment when we parted. You asked me whether I wasn’t afraid, but I was so emotionally frozen because of traumas I had suffered growing up that I denied it. Every part of my soul screamed out to stop what was happening from tearing us apart, but I was absolutely paralyzed.
So much later, in recent years, I have sometimes reflected on what unconscious factors have limited my life so much since that year so long ago. And there was a moment last year or in the past one, during the cold winter months, when I was petitioning for a friend at that very intersection near where we parted, when I stopped in the doorway to contemplate for a moment. And it was then that I realized that I had never understood what happened!
And now it has been lo 13 years since I have laid eyes on you. (My God!)
Thank you for enlightening me and being such a high point of my life. The eternal feminine leads us ever on. Pardon the frozen emotional quality of my youth, and I hope you will know that my fondest dream is a deeper friendship with you. And, please know that I will always love you. I adore you.