Dressing Code for Summer

So I saw this man standing by the bus stop with a yellow jacket and a pair of blue jeans that went all the way down to his ankles and met the thick brown leather shoes tightened by black strings. It was high noon of the summer. The tarmac surface of the road had turned into a soft and watery layer, when it met the treads of my slippers I could hear a squeezy and sticky sound. Not a single soul could be found on the street except for the intermittent sounds of the cicadas somewhere in the trees, and me and this strange man, who was probably waiting for a bus, too.

I was in my sleeveless shirt and running shorts, and desperately praying for the bus to show up. But the man seemed to be enjoying basking in the sun, which had pushed me to run a red light when crossing the road. I hesitated for a moment, but finally decided to walk over and have a word with him.

"Hey, what's the matter with you?"
"Excuse me?" The man said with nonchalantly as if he was doing me a favor by giving me a response.
"Are you sick?" I continued. "Why are you wearing so many clothes and standing in the heat on a day hot like this?"
"Which is soothing and lovely, isn't it?" He grinned, and adjusted the woolly skullcap on his head.
Good old sun, how could I have just missed that! "Don't try to fool with me." I was a little irritated. "Look at you, and look at the world around! It's 39 degrees Celsius. Everybody is looking for a shadow, and my shirt is soaked in sweat."
"But the world, the temperature, the crowd and your sweat shirt do not concern me." He answered peacefully. "The weather is perfect for me, and I want to enjoy it as much as I want."
"Then just admit you're sick and I'll let you go with it." I stepped forward and looked him in the eyes.
"But I'm not sick." He shrugged and grinned again. "Why do you make such a fuss about a person enjoying himself in the sun? The weather never suits people in a fixed way."
He seemed to have made a point, but I didn't want to give in and leave him in the sun like that. "Then what if winter comes?"
"Well, there's never winter for me." He said. "Winter, what a terrible word! Whenever the heat wanes, I move like a migratory bird. Three month from now, I'll be somewhere in the southern hemisphere where the heat waxes and culminates."
"I see." I stepped closer to him and whispered in his ears. "You're not human. You're an alien. You are-- what the sci-fiction says-- a lizard-man. You're a lizard-man in human's form. And just like a lizard, your metabolism depends on solar energy-- the more heat there are, the more lively you are. Am I not saying the truth, lizard-man?"
The man winced and gave a whole-hearted laugh. "You're surely got a wild imagination. At first, you call me sick. Now you claim I'm from the outer space. But let me ask you a question, why are you so obsessed with the way I'm dressed? All because I'm different?"
"You're not different. You are abnormal!" I was irritated again by his "what's the big deal" indication in his tone. "You see that woman passing the road? She's wearing a lace shirt and a pair of short jeans. Her shoes are leather but they are sandals. I call that different. But YOU-ARE-ABNORMAL! Only the fact that you're a lizard-man explains this abnormality."
"But why? Can't a person just be the way he is? Doesn't he have a right to be abnormal as long as he enjoys himself and does nobody harm? I know it!" He suddenly stopped, approached me and, quite by my surprise, whispered in my ear, "You're a Communist Party member. Only the Communist Party wants to decided on people's personal affairs, like how many children they should have, what kind of book they should read or what movie they should watch, and now, what clothes people should wear in summer."
"No, I'm not a fucking Communist Party member!" I leaped and shouted, horrified by his accusation. But before I could find a reason to rebut him, he continued.
"Forty years ago, the Communist Party decided that the clothes wore should be of no more than 2 colors, so you saw people then either in blue or green. Thirty-five years ago, the Party decided that group dancing was obscenity, so they cracked down upon those who gathered and danced at night. Thirty years ago, the Party decided public kissing was a crime, so people were thrown into jail for doing that."
"You don't live in the past. Things change. All that you said are normal now." I finally got a chance to have myself heard.
"Yes, things change. I agree with you on that. Abnormal becomes normal. Like the
Communist Party forced women into abortion twenty-five years ago, but now encourages them to have more children."
"But the way you dress yourself in summer was abnormal fifty years ago, and will be still abnormal fifty years from now. Because it's a universally accepted"
dressing code proved by generation after generation that one doesn't do sun-bathing in jacket and long jeans and leather shoes."
"Well, I think you're a hard-core communist, only you've never realized it. Only the Communist Party tends to conclude things with the statement that there is a universally accepted truth proved by generation after generation. The way how the world runs is how the Communist Party sees it run. Whether a behavior is normal or abnormal is totally up to the Party's call. You've been trying to tell me that I've broken the dressing code, that only you're wearing clothes in compliance with it, the universally accepted truth, the rule of mankind, the law of historical development, or whatever you call it, which is bullshit!" He zipped his jacket tight, pulled down his cap so that it covered his ears, and said, "The truth is people can live whatever life they want to live." Finishing last words, he hopped onto the bus that pulled into the stop and disappeared.

So I lost the argument. But that was not the embarrassing part. What embarrassed me was that he labelled me as a communist, and a hard-core one? The truth is I never belong to any party or club. I don't even party! And I don't want to decide for anyone's life, certainly not his. But that son-of-a-bitch says he always lives in summer and follows the sun like a migratory bird. He certainly has got millions of money to do that. No doubt that he is a rich capitalist bastard. Fuck the capitalists and fuck the corrupt life they live! I'm going to report this strange man to the local bureau that oversees people's behaviors and let them keep a good eye on him.

Wait, I think I've got a better idea. I'm going to call on people to sign for a petition that we, the people, should wear clothes in accordance with normality. Wearing jackets, long jeans, leather shoes and woolly hats in hot summer should be deemed as abnormal and is not acceptable. Anyone doing that should be denounced and put into house arrest. I'm going to do that, and to be effective, I'm going to found a club and recruit people who share my view so that we can re-establish sanity in the way how people dress themselves. So if you're with me and support my cause, please make a donation to help us achieve that goal. My bank account: 1234-5678-8765-4321 (People's Bank, International).

Beware, capitalism is ruining us with its ideology. To exploit the surplus value of those garment makers, it even wants us to wear more clothes in summer. Wearers of the world, unite!