the deuce: What do you wear to a beach wedding? (A grown man's adventure in Abercrombie & Fitch)

Welcome to part two of my expanded four-part series on preparing for my best friend Jason DePasquale’s wedding. Today’s episode covers my search for the perfect outfit for his wedding—a beach wedding. If you missed part one, illegally download it here. There are pictures of 5-year-old me posing with a bride wearing a big hat. It’s pretty hot.

Lucky girlfriend Rachel knows that I dread costume parties. Thinking up creative get-ups makes me anxious. Halloween, The Bang, Trailer Trash Birthday Parties, Discos in Space. I obsess about what to wear, attempt to utilize as many pieces of clothing I already own, panic, and end up throwing something together at the last minute.

I’m lumping Jason’s beach wedding into the costume party category. Who wears khakis, a white button-down and footwear to-be-determined on the beach but the Old Spice guy and Jacob from "Lost"? What do you wear to a beach wedding without looking like an ass? The best answer I’ve come up with is this—I need to look like an Abercrombie model. I don’t have the body, and I don’t have the blank stare, but if I buy the clothes, how hard can it be?

Rachel and I went to Briarwood Mall two weeks ago to find the perfect outfit for me. Briarwood houses a number of potential clothiers including the Holy Grail, Abercrombie & Fitch. We smell the store before we see it, which is not something you want unless you own a Chinese food restaurant or a Cinnabon franchise. What happened to the days of powdered wigs—where rubbing leaves on your nethers was good personal hygiene? The A&F odor cloud hovers over the kiosks in the mall concourse, reeking of frat boy perfume. One day, I want the CEO of one of America’s more offensive cologne companies to walk through Briarwood with his attractive family in tow and catch a whiff of his handiwork. I want him to really get a good snoot full of the stuff. I want him to pause and begin uncontrollably sobbing, realizing he’s built his fortune on the back of young men who don’t know any better. His young son will put a small hand on his shoulder. “Daddy, why are you crying?” he’ll ask, confused, but the CEO’s 14-year-old daughter will know. She’ll know.

Fitting room chic

Photo by Rachel Marla Smith

The smell is more off-putting than the salesmen who leap from behind the concourse kiosks offering free samples of hand crème and eyebrow threading. Thank Darwin; the human body has adapted to minimize offending smells after a certain period of continuous exposure (SCIENCE! I think). The body is also supposed to act similarly with sound, making high-decibel noise more tolerable with time, but Abercrombie & Fitch’s olfactory and aural assault on customers defies nature. Abercrombie & Fitch is the real hurt locker.

The music is oppressive. “What song is that?” I ask Rachel. It sounds kind of like Lady Gaga.

“They make everything into a dance mix,” she replies. “They even make Lady Gaga sound bad. How do you make Lady Gaga sound bad?” (Confession: We’re both fans.)

I listen closer and hear it. Abercrombie & Fitch throws Gaga through the Euro mixer with bleeps, bloops, and electronic throw-up until the song is worthy of the store’s smell. This is what Friday night at the Frankfurt chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity must be like.

Hot. Shirtless. PhotoShopped To enter the store proper, you pass a giant mural of a shirtless guy with the red A&F logo prominently displayed. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. The store is split into a guy’s side and a lady’s side. We choose wisely, finding ourselves surrounded by gaudy polo shirts, shorts that look like they were run over by a tractor, and A&F logos stamped on everything. Posters of buff men looking pensive cover the walls. They stare into the middle distance and try as I might I can’t make eye contact with them. I just want to be one of them. Hot. Shirtless. PhotoShopped.

We make one pass through the store and double back. The store is much deeper than it looks from the outside and I was only experiencing half of it. I block out the smells and sounds to focus on a reasonable goal—locating a white button-down. How hard can it be? These days, you can find white button-downs at Borders, but I manage to locate just one option, and it’s pretty shabby. Khakis are an even tougher hunt. I resort to asking a young associate for assistance, which she grudgingly lends. I think about asking her to give me the full "Pretty Woman" treatment but get the feeling we both want me out of the store without incident.

The point of this whole exercise was to introduce myself as a big-shot reporter and ask an employee to act as my stylist. He or she would take my beach wedding conundrum to heart and ask what I was looking for, offer suggestions, tell me how thin I look, tug on the hems of my pants, ring me up and try to get me to sign up for an Abercrombie & Fitch credit card. There would be handshakes, some pictures taken, maybe a hug—who knows? Instead, the associate points to two neat piles of identical khakis and disappears into a cloud of cologne and “unst-unst” music.

The largest pair of khakis on the table is two (great day) to four (normal day) inches smaller than I’m accustomed to wearing. That’s it. There’s no way Abercrombie & Fitch is going to touch my Amazon.com credit card this day, but like the disgruntled driver at the back of the pack in a NASCAR race, I’m going to finish—but not before rubbing some cars into the wall first. That means pouring my sweaty summer loins into khakis manufactured for a man far svelter than me, buttoning up most of the button down and posing for pictures in a fitting room for seven minutes. Take that, Kyle Petty!

I was a task master, and Rachel was a good sport. If you must know, sometimes we go into fitting rooms together. We also eat mall sushi, Judgy McBetterThanUs.

Hurricane wind simulator (keep reading)

Photo by Rachel Marla Smith

“I look like a sausage,” I bleat. “Will you please buy skinny jeans?” she says. Rachel likes my gams. What can I say? She’ll be the only one to see me live and in the flesh in a pair of A&F khakis. Trust me, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

A loud bang on the door cuts the photo shoot short (sorry ladies) and I dis-robe, re-robe and skulk out with Rachel running point. I do take pains to leave the store with a special souvenir for my readers (completely legal!). My first-ever AnnArbor.com giveaway! To win the special prize, comment on this post and offer suggestions on what you think Abercrombie & Fitch’s overpowering store cologne is called. Keep it clean(ish)! The best response (judged by me and Rachel) will win the prize. I’ll even hand deliver it. Good luck!

The conclusion of this terrible tale Abercrombie & Fitch kills my will to shop (your loss, Hollister). The indents on my hips left by the khakis itch, and I know it’ll take at least a few showers to shake that A&F scent. I know there’s only one antidote for my mood—the Briarwood hurricane wind simulator! Located near the kids’ play area, the hurricane wind simulator boasts winds up to 78 mph—perfect for washing the stink off me. I swipe my credit card and stand inside the beast for a few minutes, experiencing the gale force winds. It musses my hair and dries out my eyes but brightens my mood. Then we get mall sushi.

Walking out of the mall, we pass President Tuxedo. Rachel grips my hand a little harder and we step into the parking lot. I’m going to look like a beachcomber with a metal detector on my best friend’s wedding day. As the kids say, ROTFL. Wait, is that right?

Check back next Monday for part three of the wedding series where I try to get in shape. Ugh.

(Richard Retyi writes the biweekly column, Lie to Your Cats About Santa. Read more of his AnnArbor.com work here. E-mail story ideas, feedback, or your Missed Connections to richretyi@gmail.com.)