Gangrey
Vol. I · No. 1Prolonging the Slow Death of NewspapersEst. 2026

My Father's Fashion Tips

Tom Junod, circa 1996 (thanks, Corey): First it was Lubriderm, what my father rubbed briskly between his palms and extended in glistening offering. "How about a bit of the Lube?" he'd say when I walked into his bathroom. I was, like, 8 years old, or something, so I had no choice but to put my face in his shiny hands. Then, for a long time, it was Nivea. "How would you like a little…Nivea?" he'd ask, with his brown hands singing. Now it was baby oil. Now he was 77, and I was 38, and we were sharing a room in a hotel near the ocean. He was sitting in bed, and I was sitting on the floor. He poured the oil into his hands and whisked them together, with a sigh of friction, and applied the oil to…

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