I have had misgivings about the coat since she gave it to me roughly five years ago, but most days during the winter, I don't leave the house without it.
It's made of thick, black wool and it runs just above the knee. It blocks most of the wind and the royal blue liner traps most of my body's natural heat. It's been a lifesaver during the bomb cyclone that froze D.C. and the East Coast.
But it hangs a bit loosely on my frame, and unless I am wearing a sweater or some accompanying outer layer, I feel lost in its folds, like a child wearing his father's clothing. And, yeah, it's a gift from a woman I dated for four years and thought I would marry.
It was never my style. Since college, I preferred leather jackets. They were warm enough back home in New Mexico's desert weather almost all year.
Leather is what my father wore, and it was at a college party in a leather coat that I first made out with a stranger. My friends surrounded me earlier in the night, and massaged the thin, slick material and asked, is it real?
"Yes," I said.
No, it wasn't, I realize now.
"A cow used to wear this," I slurred to a stranger before we shoved our tongues into each other's mouths. It's safe to say, neither the coat nor my attempts at wooing likely had any role in that encounter.
But I am someone who has spent hours looking into mirrors wondering if only my jawline was sharper or if my jokes were funnier I might somehow become lovable. Wearing leather felt like finding a talisman.
So I kept wearing leather jackets, often until the liner's stitching started to give or the color faded from the elbows and shoulders.
Leather, though, is a terrible insulator. Sure you can layer, but then you look heavier. So a leather coat should be a fall-weather treat. Well, unless you're willing to be a little cold, and I was, for a time.
It was a little after I discovered the power of the leather coat that I met her, the woman who would give me the black wool jacket.
She lived in Oklahoma and was training to become a dancer, and I was in college in Albuquerque working to become a journalist. At a greasy spoon diner near where I lived, I recognized her from the middle school we had both attended years ago, and after a few minutes of awkward hellos, I asked her out. We spent the next two years of college alternating who would drive to see the other.
At first, we weren't old enough to drink in bars, so we would mix cocktails in her dorm and stay up late talking about our families and whether we would find success in our careers. I would wear my leather jackets with her, sometimes draping them around her when she shivered.
Eventually, at my urging, she moved back to New Mexico after graduating. We adopted a 15-pound mutt. She drove to the emergency room when my appendix nearly burst and stayed with me in the hospital after a car plowed into me while I was biking to work.
And I asked her what kind of stone she wanted for a ring.
It was around the time she moved back to New Mexico when she gave me the coat. I forced a smile and raved about how warm it looked. Inwardly, I griped about when I would ever find the occasion to wear it. Couldn't she just have gotten me a nice bottle of whisky? Or why not a thicker leather jacket instead?
In the way you try to avoid disappointing those close to you, I wore it whenever possible. I donned it to a Christmas party or when her sister visited her family from abroad and I said, "Look at my coat. Yes, it is quite warm."
I wanted to love the jacket like I wanted to love her.
Soon after she gave me the coat, we started fighting about where we should live. And why I arranged to have coffee with a woman from work and was hiding it from her. And why was I flying off the handle about what we had for dinner or if the dog was whining.
A relationship can feel huge, and when you're wrapped in it, you might feel as though you're losing yourself in it. The affection that once provided warmth feels stifling.
She moved to New York, and I stayed in New Mexico, and I didn't have to wear the coat to impress anyone anymore.
Over the course of a relationship, you both give each other clothes, jewelry or other personal items that you only want to keep while you two are dating. She gave back a pair of skinny jeans, which were too tight on me, but fit her. I think she kept a wallet I bought her for her 24th birthday. I returned a computer hard drive she left behind, and the dog tag she had chosen for the mutt. And I kept the coat, and mostly relegated it to the closet.
But I turned to it on days when the thin leather jacket couldn't hold up to the reality of the weather.
I saw her wedding reception on Facebook - it appeared to be in New Mexico. It looked warm. I was shivering in D.C. and swiping fruitlessly on a dating app.
Comments
Special To The Washington Post
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)