We’re trendsetters, you and I. We’re writers, creators, pavers of the road forward. We gotta try stuff out and see if it works.
Take, for instance, the murse. The man purse. The European man-bag. Like the line from Madagascar 2: carry your stuff and still look tough.
Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe carried purses. So did the Three Musketeers. They were all fashionable gentlemen of their day.
I work with a bunch of engineers – eggheads the lot of ’em. Not one, zero, not even a percent of one, would ever be caught DEAD with a single-strap backpack. Because it’s a cross-body bag, like ladies wear. Eeeew, icky. Lookit me, I’m a girl!
That’s the mentality that keeps society stalled. The kind of thinking that drives us backwards.
But we’re writers, you and I. Our job is to move the world forward. We can’t leave it to the homophobic eggheads to do it.
In truth, it’s the fold-phone from Samsung that has driven me to the murse. I absolutely love the phone – in fact, I’m writing this post with it.
But it’s heavy – like two cellphones glued together! So heavy that my pants fall down when it’s in the pocket. So I have to carry it.
But the murse carries the phone, and my wallet, and my keys, and some gum, and a couple Granola bars… you know, critical stuff.
I got it from Amazon at a net cost after discounts of about $8. So, for the price of a Happy Meal, I get to be fashion-forward!
I took it with us on our trip up to the trendy beach town of Cambria. While my wife and daughter went tidepooling, the dogs and I sat down and enjoyed a cookie, pulled from the back pocket of my handy-dandy, Uber useful murse!
Icky indeed…
John D Reinhart 
As an amateur photographer at first, and now a retired flaneur, I’ve always carried some kind of bag of camera bits record what I see. It doesn’t bother me. Now that I’m older, and trying not to look my age, I’m wearing lighter coloured clothes especially in summer. They have similar connotations but I think that it’s my male pensioner friends who wear navy blue, grey and dark brown who look a little sad!
Alan, thanks for your comment. I’m slowly coming to accept my “dad bod,” and I agree it is a struggle. I’ve found that light-over-dark emphasizes the midship’s increasing prominence, as does a dark belt with light-over-light. A sad state of affairs in either case. Instead of clothing choices, I’m thinking about adopting a confident mein and a sharp look: judge me by my waistline, do you? Then I’ll smack ’em with my murse!