What we wear on vacation can be a reflection of who we admire. I am in a vile mood. I was supposed to write about tarot cards today but there is a hole in the soles of my desert boots. I searched for a cobbler on the island and it turns out that there is one not even two miles from my house. I threw on my jacket and my other shoes (canvas sneakers) and braved the rain for five minutes until the bus came and kindly delivered me at the driveway of The Cobbler Shop.
Which was closed. So as I watched the #1 make its way toward Edgartown, I began to trudge homeward in the other direction. Now I am sitting at my desk and contemplating whether or not mine is the first case of trench foot seen in quite some time. My socks, since removed, have become mush. My olive green coat has taken on more of a kalamata hue. If it is not abundantly clear already, my day has been derailed by the rain. I have run out of options to fight it. My inventory is dry (actually, it’s wet) and for the first time in a while I am unprepared for inclement weather.
You can blame me, global warming or Mother Gaia, but I don’t have an excuse. Like most Midwesterners, I take seasons for granted. Summer is wet and hot. Fall is temperate and colorful. Winter is hellish. Spring is half-winter. Never mind that climate in the Midwest rarely ever follows this template year in and year out. It’s just what we expect of our seasons. And so when it is 55 degrees in November, we wear jeans and a jacket–55 in March and out come the shorts and sandals. So leave it to me to assume summers on Martha’s Vineyard will be a never-ending stream of sun-kissed 80-degree days.
I imagine that some who saw me sloshing down the road today silently wrote me off as a tourist. I would have, anyway. At best, I looked ill-prepared in my canvas shoes, without an umbrella, and utterly soaked to the bone. Though in my jeans, jacket and long-sleeved shirt, I’m sure I appeared better equipped than some. You know who I’m talking about. They disembark from the ferry en masse in their boat shoes, polo shirts and pastel shorts. Wayfarers hanging around their neck (it’s cloudy and will be all day), and perhaps a contrasting sweater draped around their shoulders for chilly nights. If we’re really lucky we’ll see a patchwork madras blazer or its more southerly cousin, seersucker. These outfits are the equivalent of felt cowboy hats in the summer, berets in France or any other number of stereotypical clothing attributed to a place, odds are you’re going to look a little foolish in them.
But I suspect that the reason some tourists here dress like they emerged from a Vineyard Vines catalog is not a sartorial joke, like some cartoonish Halloween party in July. More than likely, it comes from a desire to blend in. Personally, I’ve found that the more time I spend abroad, the more American–both internally and externally–I become. But I have plenty of friends whose wardrobes went black when they returned from France, their clothes just a little more slim-fitting than usual. When we travel, Americans especially, we like to be mistaken for a native. It’s flattering.
Unfortunately, this desire runs only skin-deep. I can easily fit in at a bar in Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam. I will never be mistaken for a Congolese, Malaysian, Indian. If I arrived in Beijing dressed like a rice paddy farmer or an ancient emperor I might come across as a racist. None of which is to say that if you throw on a Ralph Lauren shirt and hop on the ferry to Oak Bluffs, you are therefore an arrogant snob. The point is that cultural capital has an exchange rate. Some are valued more than others. And the more I think about that, the more I wish I could drape myself in a Detroit Tigers jersey and never take it off until I go home.
