Boyfriend Jeans

 

This morning I was thumbing through the hangers in my closet, hair still wrapped in a damp towel, when I realized: I HAVE NO PANTS.

I just stood there, sorta stunned. No pants just doesn't happen to me. Pants are my favorite clothing item - especially jeans. I'm drawn to them. When someone passes by in a flattering outfit, it's the jeans I notice. When I go to a store to pick up a new work-appropriate blouse or a little something for Sunday, I inevitably leave the store having found nothing to go on top, but three pairs of jeans I couldn't live without.

Bill: I thought you were shopping for works shirts?
Me: What? That store didn't sell shirts.
Bill: Shade Shirts doesn't sell shirts??
Me: nope.
Bill: so what's in the bag?
Me: Oh, I found the cutest pairs of jeans--
Bill: pairS? As in more than one?
Me: uhm...yes?
Bill: Don't you have, like, twenty pairs already?
Me: What? they were on sale! And they're totally different than all my other jeans.

I'm forever handing jeans out to my sisters in an attempt to downsize my pressing collection. I look at Bill's side of the closet with dubious confusion. How the heck does he get by with only THREE PAIRS of JEANS?! And one of them splattered with acrylic and oil paints, used only for working.

Pre-baby, I could have worn a different pair of jeans each day and survived for over three weeks without having to do laundry.

Post-baby, I have exactly two pairs of jeans that fit (not well, mind you. I'm talking 'able to get on' type of 'fit'). This morning, I realized that both are in the wash.

I started to panic - no pants! - and seriously considered retrieving a pair to wear dirty. But everybody knows that once you throw something into the hamper with all the other dirty clothes, they roll around and smear themselves all over each other so that everything is infected with the dirtiness of everything else. Anything hamper-fied is basically toxic until washed. So I resisted, and instead pulled on my pair of black trouser shorts with that pleasant stretch that allows them to fit well even when I'm (ahem!) a few sizes curvier than my norm. I was briefly concerned about exposing the innocent eyed world to my pasty stems - but I decided that no pants was probably worse. Besides, the trouser shorts tastefully extend to my knees (wouldn't be caught dead in anything shorter). I had nothing to wear on top, but that didn't bother me because I had PANTS type thingies that were working for me, and everything else was frosting. Or something.

Then I looked out the window.

Blowing wind. Rain. Churning clouds of grey and black. COLD.

Usually I'm jumping for joy at the promise of this kind of day - but today I was pants-less and in shorts. And I was work-bound. My office (cough:CLOSET:cough) tends to take whatever the temperature outside and amplify it; so when it's a hot day outside, my office is sweltering. When it's a cold day outside, I have to chisel my computer from its casing of ice to answer my e-mail.

I dejectedly pulled on a pair of black yoga pants. I trudged down the stairs and announced loudly to Bill that "I HAVE NO PANTS. I'm in my PAJAMAS." He watched me flumping down the steps, probably trying to figure out how he might safely respond, when I turned around and began to huff back upstairs. "I can't wear pajamas to work." I said loudly over my shoulder, baffled that he would even suggest such a thing.

I looked through my drawer again. My closet. Again. Still, no pants emerged. I was stuck.

I was considering the merits of a brown paper bag when I noticed a pair of Bill's jeans - freshly washed and hanging unassumingly from it's hanger right in front of my face. I pulled the jeans from the hanger. I pulled them on.

They fit.

I considered how Bill only owns three pairs of jeans - and how I'd basically be stealing from the poor and deprived to feed my own insatiable jean-gluttony - but then I remembered about the prospect of going to work nekkid, and I zipped those suckers shut.

I pulled on a purple thermal top over my grey t-shirt, grabbed my red sneakers and trudged down the stairs again.

"I'm wearing YOUR pants!" I announced to Bill with a warning look. "And you can't stop me!" I looked at the pair of jeans Bill was wearing - the pair we had bought him together on a night out, recently. The pair he liked so much he has been wearing them non-stop. Such a treat to have a new pair of jeans. I jammed my hands into the pocket of the jeans I stole from him and ground down my guilt with the heel of my shoe.

Bill just grinned at me. "Hey! They look really good on you! You should keep them!"

What?! "What?!"

"Yeah," he said, beaming. "I don't really like that pair. And haven't you said that you've wanted to try a pair of boyfriend jeans?"

"These aren't boyfriend jeans!" I said, trying to get him to be at least a LITTLE perplexed at my audacity. I was wearing his pants!

Bill said, "But isn't that the idea? Jeans that look like you took 'em from your boyfriend?"

"You're my husband." I said, trying for some reason to get him to see how much more evil it is to steal from the one you've sworn to love and obey than it is to steal from some dumb ol' boyfriend. "And 'boyfriend jeans' are meant to fit loose accross the hip. NOT snug like we wear the same size of pants!" I stomped into the kitchen.

Bill, aware that we were entering dangerous territory, here, called from the other room, "Yeah, but aren't you always saying how trim I am?"

"Yeah!" I called back. "Could you work on that, please!? You're supposed to always be at least ONE size bigger than I am!" I walked back into the front room.

Lizzie was laughing. "Right?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah." She said. "I know EXACTLY what you mean. My friend Evan keeps asking me 'what are you doing with all your pants while you're on your mission?' Because he loves my pants. We wear the same style (skinny). And we wear the same size." She shook her head in bemused disgust.

Then I had to laugh. Because Lizzie's friends were all trying to steal her stuff before she leaves on her mission. Her car, her Mac, her music, her PANTS. Like she suddenly wouldn't like computers and pants in 18 months when she returned.

And then I had to laugh harder. Because I've heard of girls wearing 'boyfriend jeans' - but never boys wearing 'girlfriend jeans'!

And I decided that I'd be glad to fit into Bill's jeans, so long as he didn't try to start wearing mine!