April 28, 2020
Over the last few weeks, more shoppers at my Market 32 were wearing masks as time wore on. I did not. I’ve always preferred to be a low-profile soul. I’m a firm believer in the old Japanese adage “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down”. When everyone started wearing masks per the Governor’s request, I took my 3M respirator out of mothballs. There were no inexpensive paper masks to be found anywhere. I didn’t need them anyway. My 3M is an impressive device with two filters and a double bypass air management system.
The first time I donned it, I was coming to the end of aisle 5 (baking goods) and turned left. A woman was in aisle 6 (juice) turning right and we met unexpectedly. She recoiled in horror. She didn’t look familiar so it probably wasn’t a long-forgotten memory of a date gone very badly. Likely she feared that I was a festering bag of pathogens. I was starting to warm to the minor notoriety of having such an elaborate mask when, disagreeably, in the same checkout there was an old geezer (pushing 60) with precisely the same mask, even down to the pink trimming of the filter canisters. How humiliating!! My fashion statement co-opted.
My GQ shoot is obviously not going to happen.
