An envelope waits when I arrive at the Park Hyatt hotel in Milan. It is very precious. A bellman comes to my room to give it to me by hand. Inside is an invitation the size of a billboard in gold embossed letters: 

GUCCI 
MONDAY JANUARY 14th
AT 12:30 PM
FALL WINTER 2013-2014
MEN'S COLLECTION
PIAZZA OBERDAN 2/B MILAN

When I look at it, holding it with two hands, of course, because of its weight, I am struck by the incongruity of how I ended up here. It isn't every day that a journalist who majors in writing about the culture of sports in America, with a minor in the cult of high school football as an outgrowth of my 1990 book, Friday Night Lights, gets an invitation like this. 

My seat assignment is A3, in the front row. Celebrities get the front row. The fashion editors of Vogue and Women's Wear Daily and The New York Times get the front row. I am a FROW, not that I knew what the term meant before now, but I am fucking FROWING. Fifty-eight-year-old men who live in the nation's capital of fashion dreariness, Philadelphia, where wearing a striped tie with a striped shirt to a cocktail party causes Main Line doyennes to whisper "the horror, the horror" in between the third and fourth martinis and little nibbles on saltines with Velveeta served on silver trays, do not get the FROW.

But I am not here because of my particular journalistic qualifications. I am here as a private client of Gucci, one of five pampered and feted on an all-expenses-paid four-day trip to Milan and Florence. Business class on Alitalia Flight 605 from JFK to Malpensa on January 12. Private pickup to the Park Hyatt Milan, where the concierge has been clearly prepped before our arrival, calling me Mr. Bissinger with better pronunciation and far more enthusiasm than my friends. Gucci employees everywhere, like secret agents without the whole talking-wrist ritual. The fashion show with the presentation of the men's 2013-14 autumn/winter collection. A guests-only presentation at the Gucci showroom with champagne, way too much champagne. A sumptuous dinner with an unrestricted view of the Duomo, which shimmered with golden light in the shadows of the chilly night. A fitting the next day for a made-to-measure suit and shoes and shirt at the Gucci store. On to Florence and the Four Seasons. The Gucci Museo for a private tour of the retailer's legacy and then dinner. Then, on the final day, Gucci Casellina, where I am shown trade secrets that will get me lowered permanently into the Arno if ever revealed. And let's not forget the gifts waiting in each hotel room: chocolates stamped with the iconic interlocking GG insignia, a crocodile credit card holder, a crocodile wallet, and a tie. 

There are other clients coveted and important to the retailer, who will also get the royal Gucci treatment. We five got lucky. We are Team Gucci, with representation from Argentina, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We are for the moment Gucci Olympians who have spent Olympian sums and will presumably spend Olympian sums during the week. 

I believe I qualify.

God, do I fucking qualify.

Before I left, I promised my wife I would be restrained. She is very concerned, because she knows what can happen. But inches from the runway, waiting for the smooth mannequin boys with surgically removed hips and buttocks swaying like sunglassed Gumbys with the newest designs from creative director Frida Giannini, I know the promise is useless. 

···

I have an addiction. It isn't drugs or gambling: I get to keep what I use after I use it. But there are similarities: the futile feeding of the bottomless beast and the unavoidable psychological implications, the immediate hit of the new that feels like an orgasm and the inevitable coming-down. 

It started three years ago. I have never fully revealed it, and am only revealing it now in the hopes that my confession will incite a remission and perhaps help others of similar compulsion. If all I buy is Gucci, I will be fine. It has taken a while to figure out what works and what doesn't work, but Gucci men's clothing best represents who I want to be and have become—rocker, edgy, tight, bad boy, hip, stylish, flamboyant, unafraid, raging against the conformity that submerges us into boredom and blandness and the sexless saggy sackcloths that most men walk around in like zombies without the cinematic excitement of engorging flesh. 

I own eighty-one leather jackets, seventy-five pairs of boots, forty-one pairs of leather pants, thirty-two pairs of haute couture jeans, ten evening jackets, and 115 pairs of leather gloves. Those who conclude from this that I have a leather fetish, an extreme leather fetish, get a grand prize of zero. And those who are familiar with my choices will sign affidavits attesting to the fact that I wear leather every day. The self-expression feels glorious, an indispensable part of me. As a stranger said after admiring my look in a Gucci burgundy jacquard velvet jacket and a Burberry black patent leather trench, "You don't give a fuck."

I don't. I finally don't.

Some of the clothing is men's. Some is women's. I make no distinction. Men's fashion is catching up, with high-end retailers such as Gucci and Burberry and Versace finally honoring us. But women's fashion is still infinitely more interesting and has an unfair monopoly on feeling sexy, and if the clothing you wear makes you feel the way you want to feel, liberated and alive, then fucking wear it. The opposite, to repress yourself as I did for the first fifty-five years of my life, is the worst price of all to pay. The United States is a country that has raged against enlightenment since 1776; puritanism, the guiding lantern, has cast its withering judgment on anything outside the narrow societal mainstream. Think it's easy to be different in America? Try something as benign as wearing stretch leather leggings or knee-high boots if you are a man.

The most expensive leather jacket I own, a Gucci ostrich skin, cost $13,900. The most expensive evening jacket I own, also from Gucci, black napa leather with gold threading, cost $9,800. The most expensive leather pants, $5,600. The most expensive jeans, $2,500. The most expensive pair of boots, $2,600. The most expensive pair of gloves, $1,015. Gucci by far makes up the highest percentage of my collection. The Gucci brand has always held special power for me, ever since the 1960s, when the Gucci loafer with the horsebit hardware was the rage, and my father, who fancied himself as being anti-status when he secretly loved it, broke down and bought a pair. Followed by my mother's purchase of the famous Jackie O. shoulder bag. As a 13-year-old, I circled the old store on Fifth Avenue several times before getting up the courage to go in and buy a Gucci wallet covered  with the insignia.