So, apparently one of my neighbors woke up a few weeks ago, looked in the mirror and said, "Well, that's it. I'm 64, I'm portly, I have a penchant for young Asian boys...time to start wearing caftans."

I always wondered what sort of man feels caftans are a viable apparel option. I assumed they were men who always had a caftan aficionado lurking in their soul yearning to be free and one day they give in to desire and don the fabled garment.

But now I suspect the transition into caftans is more impromptu.

Since I met him six years ago, every time I've seen my neighbor he's been very nattily dressed: Nicely tailored suits for work, neatly laundered and pressed jeans and polo shirts or sweaters for casual wear. He retired two years ago and since then he's maintained his neat wardrobe, even as his waistline expanded he was always impeccably dressed. No sweats for this guy. On Friday and Saturday nights he goes out with a crisply dry cleaned shirt, sometimes with French cuffs, sometimes with a tie, and jeans or nice dress slacks and Italian loafers. He's often accompanied by young Asian men who dress in ultra skinny jeans and Uniqlo shirts and accessories.

So imagine my surprise a few weeks ago I saw him in the hall wearing a linen caftan. How do you not say something to man who suddenly starts wearing caftans?  Lemme tell ya, it's really difficult to not react. I thought, "Maybe that's what he wears around home and he's just dashing down to pick up the mail." I didn't want to make him feel awkward so I pretended not to notice and kept the conversation to the usual polite neighborly topics. But it was an exceptionally long elevator ride.

And then it got weird.

He held the lobby door for me and followed me outside. He was not just dashing down to pick up his mail. He was standing in front of our building hailing a cab. In a linen caftan.

Then I thought, "Ohhhhh, it's probably some sort of theme party. A caftan party." I imagined him lounging on an oversized pillow sucking on a Hookah with friends also wearing caftans.

And then a couple days later I saw him returning from the library (carrying a library tote full of books) wearing a silk caftan with brocade trim.

The next day I saw him in our local grocery. He was in the cereal aisle reaching for a box of Raisin Bran. Wearing a different linen caftan, it was embroidered around the neck, cuffs and hem.

Huh.

That's something you don't see every day.

Nope. White 64 year old men wearing caftans is not something you see every day in he Midwest. Every now and then I see one of the Ethiopian cab drivers who live in my neighborhood wearing a tribal inspired caftan-like garment, and around Detroit you sometimes see guys at the airport arriving from exotic parts of the world, parts of the world where men wear caftans, but white guys who grew up in the Northshore suburbs of Chicago are not often seen wearing caftans, real caftans, in public.

I thought, "Maybe he just has the thee caftans, maybe one of his young men has a thing for older men in caftans and he's just obliging the whim of a young suitor."

And that might be the case. Love makes you do crazy things.

But.

I've seen him five out of the last seven days and he was wearing a different caftan every time. Linen, silk, trimmed in brocade, embroidered, plain...all manner of caftan. This is not a whim. A whim is one or two caftans. This is a full-blown wardrobe makeover. 

Apparently this is a thing, now. 

I mean, you know, rock on, be who you want to be, wear what you want to wear. I'm not berating or judging him. You wanna wear a caftan, wear a caftan. This is America. People have died fighting for our right to wear caftans.

But.

It would be a lot easier if there was some sort of protocol for what to say, or not, when someone you know starts wearing caftans. It would be even easier if he just acknowledged it, opened the conversation. Just a simple, "Oh, by the way, I wear caftans, now. I'll be wearing them to pick up the mail, to hail taxis, to the library, when buying breakfast cereal, and so on." That would be an all clear signal indicating caftans are an open topic of conversation.

Then you could say, "Yes! I noticed! They're lovely. Where does one find caftans in Chicago?" Or something like that. Maybe a, "My, that's a lovely caftan you're wearing today, Mr. Neighbor," on subsequent elevator rides.

But he's acting as if he's wearing his usual suits or fine casual wear. I suppose that's the proper attitude required for pulling off the look. The caftan look. You have to commit. And this guy has. Rock on.

But.

Today I saw him in a light blue silk caftan. It was a little more snug on him than the others. Which struck me as odd because I thought the whole point of caftans was a loose flowing garment that swooshes around the body creating a cooling breeze underneath, offering a bit of cooling comfort to the wearer. This caftan was too tight to swoosh. I doubt there was any cooling comfort.

And.

It called attention to something I heretofore had not thought about. What do men wear under their caftans? Well, I don't know about all caftan-wearing men, but my neighbor was either wearing a very thin banana hammock or nothing at all under his caftan. I know this because his buttocks and front-ocks were straining against the tight silk.

As his neighbor do I have any obligation to inform him that his junk is showing? This never happened when he wore finely tailored suits and natty casual attire. These caftans have catapulted me, and us, into an entirely new and uncharted area of neighbor relations. 

And it caused me to ponder about the source of the caftans. Where does he acquire them? Could it be that he's been collecting them for years and has just now decided to wear them? Perhaps the tighter caftan was acquired in his thinner days and he's still trying to squeeze into it. Or maybe he inherited a collection of caftans and that was the only ill-fitting one.

Caftans are one (albeit odd) thing, but an ill-fitting, tight, body revealing caftan is another matter entirely. He has heretofore exhibited refined taste, so I have to believe he's aware that all his stuff was on display through the thin, tight silk. You might think it's similar to a guy wearing really tight jeans. A little off-putting but no big deal. Uh-uh. This was nothing like that. This was borderline perverted and the whole visage was: Creepy old man. Or: Guy who escaped from the psych ward and robbed a thin Sheik and stole his caftan. There's just a Theater of the Strange quality to his appearance in the tight caftan.

Up to now, my stoner metalhead neighbor has been the worst thing I've had to deal with neighbor-wise in my building. And Caftan Man has been fighting that battle with me. Turns out he's been calling the cops on our stoner neighbor for years, long before I moved into the building, because our association board merely slaps a nuisance fine on the stoner and as long as they get their money, they won't do anything more about it. Caftan Man and I think the board likes having him in the building because it's a regular source of income for the association. As long as he keeps smoking putrid weed and listening to Metallica at wall-shaking volume, they get a nuisance fine payment. Caftan Man and I became allies in trying to handle the headbanging pot smoking a-hole on our floor. So, there's an established camaraderie between us, hence my conflicted feelings about whether or not I should say something about the peek-a-boo caftan. "Excuse me, neighbor, I don't quite know how to tell you this, but if it were me I'd want to know...your, erm, caftan is wedged into your butt cheeks." (Yes, this is something new I learned about caftans...I wouldn't have thought it possible to get a wedgie from a caftan, but if it's too tight apparently it'll wedge its way right in there.) And no, caftans are not worse than putrid pot-smoking metalheads, but since the tight-silk junk revealing caftan incident I am not exactly eager to see what Caftan Man will wear next. There's awkwardness where before there was none.

Maybe it's his goal caftan and when the scale said he dropped a few pounds and he thought he could squeeze into his smaller caftan. I find myself oddly intent on coming up with excuses for the ill-fitting caftan because I don't want to think of him as the creepy guy who lives down the hall.

I find myself yearning for the halcyon days of the other caftans, the looser caftans, back when I was merely trying to adjust to seeing him in caftans. Now the tight caftan hugging his body and offering me a good assessment of what's under the caftan is the image burned into my brain. If he turns up at our next tenant meeting in that thing...well...let's just say there are a few older, conservative tenants who have been quite vocal about his predilection for young Asian boys. This caftan thing, especially the tight, revealing caftan, will be more fuel to their fire. And their fire is that he's a pervert running a gay brothel. (I'm quite certain that's not the case. Frankly, he's too much of a rule-citing fussbudget himself to do anything illicit like running a brothel. The man has a library card and eats Raisin Bran. He's not exactly the madam/pimp type. Then again...maybe that's his cover...)

Bottom line, this caftan thing is causing me far more concern than it should. So if you decide to all of a sudden start wearing caftans, do your friends and neighbors a favor by having a frank conversation about it. Explain why you want to wear caftans and assure them you are not creepy. Be open to their comments and questions, build a bridge to understanding. Don't make them silently wonder and cringe and worry over you and the caftans.