Don we now our gay apparel

ITHACA, N.Y. — The Patent Office: My childhood best friend was advanced for his years. He had a moustache at the age of 8, wore pressed trousers and chatted reservedly with neighborhood retirees about gardening. Thanks to his large, successful paper route, he had a disposable income, some portion of which he annually set aside to purchase a dozen or so salami pops from Hickory Farms. It was his Christmas present to everyone he knew. In the days after Christmas, he’d research and calculate the value of every gift he in turn received, weigh it against the cost of a salami pop, and, within a week, discreetly present you with either a refund or a bill for the difference.

The best friend of my teenage years was jobless. He gave everyone library books. He’d wrap them in fancy paper and include a card saying something like “Merry Christmas! I read this and thought of you; it will change your life. It’s due back at Wright library on Jan. 7.” If there were overdue charges, he’d bill you.

Another friend recently told me he’d been assigned to be the secret Santa of a co-worker he quietly despised and bought the special someone “a bag of that really nasty-looking yellow banana-shaped Mexican hard candy, a toothbrush and some brown shoe polish.”

In fond homage to these gifted gift givers, in honor of family, friends and foes past and present, of holiday smiles real and fake, of love itself and all that that noble word suggests, I offer up the following merchandise, all of it made in China but designed in Ithaca. Each item is as stylish as it is practical and will keep the wearer warm(ish) throughout the winter of our discontent. ’Tis better to give than to receive, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Metal-detector tuxedo

Hobbyists’ metal detectors were popular at the seaside of my youth, elevating beachcombing from idle pastime to revenue stream. But they were dorky and intrusive, looking like a cross between a golf club and a vacuum cleaner. The metal-detector tuxedo strongly resembles a real tuxedo. Ideal for outdoor weddings and concerts. The wearer looks ruminative, Byronic, detached; no one will know he’s hunting for change. Pant leg vibrates discreetly with each hit. Saves on the cost of rentals, literally paying for itself after 50 to 100 public events (depending on socioeconomic milieu). Everything after that is gravy.

Housefit™

A friend of mine has achieved global renown with her “wearable mosque,” which “explores various ways of negotiating spatial relationships between Islamic traditions and modernity in the U.S. and Western Europe.” Honestly I have no idea what she’s talking about, but she’s been written up in The New York Times, and I want to get in on the action. Housefit™ is a secular, mass-market version of the concept. It looks like an ordinary pair of sweats, except there are CO2 cartridges embedded throughout and when you pull the rip cord, after about 90 seconds of loud hissing and a series of violent but harmless expansions, you find yourself seated in the middle of a large, bouncy-castle-type structure, where you are free to live and do your thing.

Cellphone anorak

Instead of ringing or buzzing, it cascades with light, letting other people know you’re on the phone without unduly distracting them from their own conversational pursuits. The automated hood silently mushrooms up, over and around your skull like a convertible top, optimizing privacy and acoustics.

Nanoelectronic leisure suit

This one’s awesome, so save it for loved ones you actually kind of like. Basically, it’s a slim-fitting, stylishly tailored suit that looks like silk from a distance and more like a weird polyester blend close up but is actually made up of nanoelectronic fibers. Our fighting forces will wear or are already wearing — I can’t remember — a form of dynamic nanoelectronic camouflage for urban combat, allowing them to sneak around looking like a graffitied brick wall one second and like a potted plant the next. The money dumped into this will obviously have been a huge waste, because within a few years everything involved in war, from planning and bombing to fleeing and grieving, will be carried out by robots. Unless someone can parlay this research into the consumer textile sector. I don’t mean to brag, folks, but that someone is me. Nanoelectronic leisure suit changes style throughout the day, depending on what you’re up to. It has two settings: One is for custom designs and scheduling (uploaded through a USB link in the left cuff). The other is a sort of “Zelig” setting that uses GPS and real-time social-media coordinates to figure out where you are, who you’re with and what you should be wearing at every moment.

Pret-a-porter adult diapers

Chronic gamblers have long known there’s nothing shameful about purchasing adult diapers (it just means you’re busy), but many laypeople are hesitant. Marketing euphemisms and a lack of design vision are to blame. Major labels and a sleeker silhouette — in short, a diaper designed to be shown off rather than crammed under denim — can bring a classic but underrespected product out of the pharmacy and into the boutique. Branding is key. Gamblers can buy the Texas Hold ’Ems; lawyers, lobbyists and politicians, the Filibuster; athletes and spectators, the Winning Streak. Your loved one can combine this product with the Housefit™ and the cellphone anorak for sustainable, self-contained and hands-free green living.

Fasties™ Ramadan-themed breakfast cereal

The box is empty. Not, strictly speaking, a clothing item. Nor, upon reflection, an appropriate Christmas present. You know what? Forget Fasties.

Auditory cologne

Exactly what it sounds like.

Pants kickstand

Oh, God, where to start?

I like to think my daughter is advanced. Two years in Beirut taught her the Arabic word for “fart”: “biz.” “I did a biz,” she’d say, truthfully and beaming with palpable pride. “You’re mixing bizness with pleasure, aren’t you my dear?” I’d reply.

About this time last year, she showed up late at nursery, let one rip in her snowsuit, announced to all that she was mixing bizness with pleasure, then as the ensuing hush spread over the play tables, asked me loudly and repeatedly for something, and I swear to God it sounded like “the space princess’s anal thermometer.”

“I don’t know,” I said, fumbling with her things. “Do I have it? What’s it look like?”

“It goes on your head. It has springs.”

“As it happens I’m meeting the space princess in my office in a few minutes,” I whispered, checking my watch. I promised to ask about the thermometer, which was hard not to picture as a sort of spelunking helmet.

Layla was too young then to legally abandon even for a few hours, and the nursery staff, not wanting me to stand around talking to kids or otherwise interfering, had decided I should loiter outside in the garbage area next to the playground. I was to conceal my presence there, but the fence was low, so typically I’d spread out in a recycling bin and surf the Web with mittened hands for four hours while Layla made developmental strides indoors. The staff had graciously provided me with a Wi-Fi password.

I was thus unwinding into my morning when a fellow parent appeared and, from his standing position, looming over me, began talking. This fellow fancies himself a philosopher, and — to be fair — is in fact employed as one. To protect his privacy, I’ll call him Doug, but in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll point out that his name is Douglas Lavin.

“I can’t decide what to do about Christmas,” Doug was saying.

“Aren’t you Jewish?” I asked, not looking up from my pile.

“We celebrate it.”

“Sounds like you know what to do about it, then.”

“I’m talking about Santa Claus. Are you going to tell Layla about Santa?”

“I’m pretty sure she already knows, it’s sort of in the air this time of year.”

“That he doesn’t exist?”

“Wait, what? No, that he does.”

“Oh, so you’ll be letting her believe.” His hand went through his lustrous hair. His coltish eyes wheeled.

“For the time being. I mean, it’s Christmas, and she’s 2.”

“I just can’t lie to Helena,” Doug said exquisitely, “about anything. I can’t even skip pages while we’re reading. You know what I mean?”

“Not really,” I said, shifting myself amid the yogurt pots and Dorito packets. “Layla thinks I’m out here with the space princess searching for her anal thermometer.” I offered him a seat in one of the other bins. He declined, with a self-effacing gesture I interpreted as occult hauteur.

Doug stood there looming, leaning and lecturing to me about adult-child relationships, the role of trust and transparency in the growth of a child’s mind, shifting from one foot to another, at one point even bringing up some David Foster Wallace story about the “serious reality” of magic for children and the ill consequences of a parental lie about a toy cement mixer. He was unsure how to position himself vis-a-vis the sprawled body before him, whether as professor to student or as businessman to beggar. But on he talked and talked, and I, half-listening, thought repeatedly to myself, “For heaven’s sake, somebody get this man a pants kickstand.”

Author's postscript: Several Arabic speakers have written to inform me that the true meaning of 'biz' is a shade racier than—as well as unrelated to—what is stated above. One of them even found it ironic that in a paragraph about how it's OK to lie to three-year-olds, I was the one who'd been misled. Faithful readers of this column may be assured that I see nothing funny about this, and that Layla will be punished accordingly.