“Thank you Mask Man” –Lenny Bruce                        

 

 

My husband had shoulder surgery the day Los Angeles began voluntarily donning the ubiquitous mask.

Sixteen weeks later he looked up from the Off -Duty section of the Wall Street Journal and announced he wanted a different kind of  droplet protector. “This says twenty-five dollars for the less expensive, but fashionable mask. That’s ridiculous.”

“Masks are in demand,” I shrugged.  We both knew the “mask” had become a utilitarian device essential to warding off the villanous Covid 19. Apparently now we were invited into a new fashion trend. But we so disliked the term mask because it evokes fear and hiding, a feeling and action proving to be all too true!  We resorted to calling our masks the “thingies.” 

“Forget it,” said my spouse slamming down the paper. “I’m not paying for that.” I watched as he picked up a fresh disposable blue and white thingie, and left the house to take the dog for a walk. By this point we would be penalized by the county if strolling without a thingie. Despite all the up close and personal sidewalk action that takes place in West Hollywood, Ella the Labrador refused to wear one.

I thought deep and hard about my husband’s state of being. I could tell he really wanted a cool thingie. That afternoon I went non-digitally shopping to one of my favorite haunts.

The store is near WE HO, very convenient. It quietly shouts chic in a way that says: fabric that breathes matters, shape for comfort matters, and an ample selection for a variety of shapes, matter. I thought here, would be imminently promising for some great masks. The air-conditioned space felt like a sophisticated SOHO art gallery wearing my own disposable thingie.

“Hi,” says the lovely sales associate who had helped me the last time I was there shopping. “How is your husband feeling after the shoulder surgery?” 

“You recognize me with my thingie on?” I ask pointing to my face, as if I had to. Her pale green eyes shone above hers.

 “Of course. You were here the day of his surgery.”

I thanked her for her inquiry.

“I’m here to buy a mask for him. He’s been so good.” It was true. He had bravely slogged thru the pain of the cut into the meaty part of his shoulder, followed by the painful physical therapy exercises. Only of late had he been able to work out with a conscientous trainer who exposes him to intermittent, but healing pain. If not a pretty mask, for months my spouse has been wearing a handsome badge of courage.

“Of course,” she said, and with six feet apart we strolled over to the mask table where a gentleman wearing blue rubber gloves was pricing the pieces. Would they would cost more than what I was hoping to pay?

“Twenty,” said the man behind a fashion statement that loudly sang in a cacophony of colors.

“Bingo,” I thought while deeply breathing in my own CO2. Certainly, I had come to the right place. Now to narrow it down. Within my own cloud of suffocation, I studied the inventory. Purple with checks, green with amber florets, on and on and deeper and deeper I swam into swirling polychromatic patterns.

Not sure of how much time had passed I finally felt as if I were coming out of an induced viral fog. And I knew what to do.

I imagined which mask my husband would wear if it were a bow-tie.

Call it his St. Louis roots, a leftover of his unfailing midwestern sensibility, he has held onto a drawer-full of this tidy-winged cravat born accessory. He loves them. We may never go anywhere again but he still has a drawer-full, just in case we might one day.

“I’ll take that one,” I pointed, ever so pleased with my keen method of deduction and selection. With great immediacy and swift action, I selected a mask as if it were a bow-tie. It was as if the mask had spoken to me, for him, from behind which he would be speaking.

“Of course,” said my new favorite sales associate in this entire sickly world.

Within moments I was on the sidewalk, alone, gulping the oxygen available to me. I felt buoyant, for tight within my grip was a neat bag inside which was a gorgeous mask that brings to mind a symphony of cheerful possibility.

“Wow,” my husband said when he removed the mask from the bag. “Neato. I love it.”

That’s quite a statement from someone as subdued as he. He poofed it open, placed it over his nose and mouth, fastened the ties around the back of his head and took the Ella for a walk. Again. no thingie for her. They looked adorable  sauntering down the sidewalk. She all in black, but for her orange collar, he in gray, but for his pinkish, purplish, and striped mid-night blue  thingie.  Thank you, mask man.