What if He Shot Me in the Face?

Because wearing a Kevlar vest can really prove fatal to one's style, today's NYT has a terrific article about Miguel Caballero, a fashion line that specializes in bulletproof clothes.

These are polos, dress shirts and coats that can stop bullets, and they are becoming the civilian's uniform in the burgeoning Drug War. Only a few of them have a Superman logo across the chest, although the most popular style, by far, is the one incorporating the Target logo.

These aren't just heavy coats. These things will stop a shot from a submachine gun. Someone can shoot you with an MP5 and you can brush it off and keep on walking with nothing more than a gunpowder stain on your chest and the vindication that can only come from knowing that you just proved something to those assholes who said nobody would ever shoot you while wearing one of these things. Plus, you have heck of a bar story to one-up that guy who always brags about having been stabbed. Once. In the arm.

That said, there are a few caveats to the clothes. The store recommends that you avoid being shot at. Should this prove an impossibility, the owner does admit that these armored sweaters do have some limitations:

He points out that the clothing is not designed for the kind of warfare that is breaking out in some parts of Mexico, where drug assassins have used rocket launchers and grenades to wipe out rivals.

So I won't ask my brother to shoot me with a rocket launcher to test this out. How do they know that these clothes do stop bullets? Unfortunately, laboratory testing in Mexico is not quite up to United States standards:

Every member of the sales staff has had to take a turn being shot while wearing one of the products, which range from a few hundred dollars to as much as $7,000, so they can attest to the efficacy of the secret fabric.

Of course, it is every American's dream, you know, to shoot be shot at by your boss.

My favorite part of the whole thing, however, has to be the loyalty club for clients:

Called the Survivor’s Club, it is open to anyone whose life was saved by wearing one of his protective garments. Its rolls, he said in a telephone interview from Bogotá, are on the rise.

Next to the Finer Things Club, the Survivor's Club is the most exclusive club in this office. Naturally, it's where I need to be. The Party-Planning Committee is my back-up, and Kevin's band is my safety.

I wonder what the initiation ritual is like. My experience in such matters is that, when initiating a new member, you want to give them a jolt, to unnerve them as much as possible. But these guys just got shot at. That's their resume. After that, rituals like Crossing the Desert, The Unblinking Eye, and The Paddling of the Swollen Ass... with Paddles must seem pedestrian by comparison.

OK. I'm going to go ahead an order one of these shirts. I'll then figure out a contest of some sort (perhaps likely involving tequila) so that one lucky reader will get a chance to do what most people only dream of and shoot me. Just, please, not in the face.