Buying a hat

Fedex has it now. It's on a truck somewhere north of Houston. There's no turning back. I've gone and bought a hat.

Not like my beloved Peruvian wool knit hat from the Linden Hills Coop that's incredibly warm and silly looking. Or like the real French beret made in the Pyrenees (not some hideous Australian knockoff) that I bought for my wife at Saks. She never wears it so she gave it to me, and I never wear it because I look exactly right in it, which makes me feel as if I've stepped out of central casting and I'm waiting for my baguette and bicycle from the prop girl.

Not even a New York Times logo baseball cap, bought at The New York Times itself, bought twice even so each son would get one and then inherited twice when neither wore it more than once.

No, I'm talking about the kind of hat that friends and strangers alike will see, and think, "another silly fart trying to look like Don Draper." Hah, a lot they know.

The hat adventure is an inevitable consequence of the winter coat adventure. I have a terrible electric blue down coat good for walking the dog in fifty below but I didn't have anything else. Brooks Brothers sells a double-breasted camel hair I wanted for $1300. They sell a wonderful cashmere chesterfield for $1200. (Last year their super-fancy label had a dark blue double-breasted number that was right out of a Gilbert and Sullivan production for twice those prices. I wanted it desperately, it became the beautiful girl I couldn't talk to, I gave up.)

So I went to eBay and bought a dark, dark grey, double-breasted, way-below-the-knee overcoat from Hart Schaffner & Marx, that famous Chicago brand. It was $106 plus shipping, it's in perfect condition, and even if the lapels say it's from the 1970s, I look great in it. What's more, Barack wears Hart Schaffner & Marx. But if winter in Minnesota isn't enough reason, the coat cries out for a hat.

A real hat, a fedora, the kind my father put on his head before he walked out the door with The New York Times tucked under his arm, smelling of coffee and Yardley's lavender, heading for the A train that took him to Wall Street. Fedoras are in right now, they're sprinkled liberally all over the web. You can buy one with silly little brims that makes you look like a 1950s hoodlum for $50; you can buy one with felt made of beaver fur that makes you look like a 1950s capitalist for $500.

I was paralyzed. I spent days not working, poring over the alternatives, learning the different shapes and creases and brims. I agonized over linings, sweat bands, silly little feathers, price, and, when I'd decided everything else, brand. Then I made myself buy a hat so I could return to living.

Anyway, Fedex has it, and they should be bringing it to me in a day or two. It's a real Borsalino, and if you laugh at it, I'm going to have Guido beat the crap out of you.