This memorial contains almost a month’s worth of parts – though not all of ‘em are about clothes! – and the post you’re reading is the first in the series. I did the organisational work in the middle of December although I’d been writing the different sections all throughout the year. It’s a labour of love for the benefit of friends and family – and all those who take an interest in my wellbeing.
On 4 January, the day before moving in, I picked up a new belt from my new house, as the old one’d become too loose and my pants threatened, when I was walking along the street, to fall to my ankles. The belt I now selected has on it wear marks set at notches inserted by the manufacturer further up the tongue – I was slimmer than when I’d formerly used it, which must’ve been a decade earlier – and though I couldn’t remember how fat I’d been two years before evidence of progress was clear when, on 6 January, after my first night at the new house, I tried on a pair of 38s and they fit perfectly.
The photo was put on Facebook. Back at the beginning of my weight-loss journey, the previous year, I’d been wearing size 42s and even they’d been too tight.
In the end I dropped three sizes. Even in January it was a sort of vindication for my method (chronicled in my monthly “Shopping lists” and in the ‘Health and wellbeing’ part of this memorial) thanks to my GP, Dr Nanda, who’d suggested cutting carbs. I’d previously tried losing weight through exercise and had signally failed. When I’d lived in Maroochydore – I recalled as I watched myself getting slimmer and slimmer by the week – I’d gone to my local clinic and asked for advice but the GP I was using at the time told me simply that I should exercise more. As a result I bought a stationary bike but even with daily application my weight only went down moderately, and as soon as I stopped using it the kilos came back on.
His wasn’t a real solution. Where aerobic exercise fails, restrictive diets, like my new regime, positively work. I laid out my clothes in the new dressing room with its racks and drawers and alcoves, and contemplated possibly – one day – putting on pants I’d not worn in 30 years, for example size-32 slacks I’d used when living in Japan in a former incarnation before the fall. A distant memory erupted in the present like a bird’s call or like the first bars of a symphony. How would the tune play out? I’d make a dapper conductor dressed in a suit and tie and with a new haircut (I’d got it done on 7 January). Mere appreciation of Wagner wouldn’t turn me into a music-school candidate but an artist need not dress up, he’s in company with his pencils and paper. I promised myself that I’d cut out forms from memory and place them on the surface of a table I’d not yet bought. I’d celebrate the unveiling of a stone. I’d carve my name at the base of the precipice of art and call it “chosen”. If I fell, it would be my own way down. A few days later, on 10 January, I sorted through my trousers and placed separate the 38s so that I could get to them easily and on a lower rack in the closet placed the 40s and the 42s (with some pairs of 44s). Four pairs of 38s would have to do for present use, I reflected as I contemplated earlier collections of clothes, including pants I thought to myself it might be possible – if I got skinny enough – to one day put on. A rack full of short-sleeved shirts – items I’d not put on since coming back to Sydney in 2015 – called out to me though the house was cool enough even on the top floor at midday in summer to do without air-conditioning.
I’d no longer look like an ageing curiosity. I now wore short-sleeved shirts to signal awareness of summertime and since losing weight I could finally be seen. Slimming does good things for your self-esteem but because people are less likely to patronise you they turn to competition so there’s a trade-off in the exchange of signs and the processing of emotions and feelings and ideas that all the time completes itself within the socius as we daily go about carrying out tasks and meeting with people in the streets and in the suburbs. As I’d physically become more comfortable in my skin friends and family began to wear down my patience. The novelty began to make itself felt particularly strongly in autumn.
On 6 March I brought upstairs from the storage room old, still-serviceable pairs of shoes, including sport shoes, sandals, and slip-on casual shoes from a decade ago. I find it diverting to wear such shoes, thereby indulging my vanity by demonstrating to what length my disregard of fashion's prepared to go, the conceit allowing me to feel superior to the many men who swan around in fashion-labelled clothes and expensive haircuts, or who – in all likelihood – belong to that selfish tribe of motorist that takes off slowly from traffic lights despite the press of cars behind them.
Wearing old shoes is, for me, an ego boost. And three days after salvaging them I went to Prouds’ at Broadway Shopping Centre to ask about removing links from my watch band. They would only do it for timepieces bought from their stores, however, yet the woman behind the counter helpfully pointed me to Mister Minit in the arcade, where, for $14.95, I got done what I’d come to do. The man working there initially took out three links but I said that this made the band too tight, so made him put one back in. It looks a lot tidier now with links removed. The photo below shows me wearing an old shirt I’d had a new collar put in at the tailors in Pyrmont – I wrote about this one year – and on the same day I got the watchband tightened I was in that suburb only to see that my tailor’d moved premises to sit on Union Square.
This is a much better location as it puts him right in the way of commuter traffic. I promised myself to take trousers there to have them taken in, once I reached a size 36. I still had four pairs size 38 pants to get on with, but it wouldn’t be long – once I reached, I mentally calculated, about 88kg (I’d be wrong) – before smaller size trousers’d be required. The 42s and 40s could be cut and resewed so that I’d have more clothes to wear and, while in Pyrmont on 15 March, I researched the project by asking the tailor what it’d cost to alter them. He said he’d have to see how much needed to be taken in, and where. I understood from talking with him that, if legs needed to be made narrower, the cost of alteration per pair’d be higher. He estimated it’d cost $30 a pair but promised me a discount for nine pairs. I reminded myself to take the trousers with me when I went to see my psychiatrist the following Thursday.
On the same day as I spoke with the tailor I started using the final hole of the blue-and-tan belt I’d been using for the past three months. The next morning I started wearing a cardigan for the first time in 2021. Within a few days I’d be using a black leather belt with a narrower profile and on 26 April – while traversing the heart of autumn – I went to Kmart and bought size-L briefs. I’d worn size “XXL” for the best part of a decade but my waist was now smaller. Using my mobile phone in the store I confirmed the size I should be wearing, the search term I used bringing up a set of results among which I saw one that showed that a size-36 trouser equalled a size-L waist.
At the same time I bought socks and slippers, the latter being necessary because slippers my friends Ming and Omer had bought months earlier were too loose and I risked falling down the stairs. The new slippers have backs to them that grip the foot so they don’t fall off but eventually they’d also come loose and I’d have to resort to clipping them back on several times in my journeys up to the second floor.
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