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The Sweatpants of Opportunity

Can someone please explain to me the reasoning behind ‘button-fly’ pants?

Honestly, isn’t life hard enough as it is, without adding apparel-related aggravation to the litany of nonsense we deal with? Personally, I like my clothes to be as simple and unobtrusive as possible — give me shoes I can slip into without retying, shirts I can pull over my head without buttoning, and pajamas with those handy assflaps for late-night emergencies. Now that’s convenience, folks!

(While we’re at it, ladies, how about more bras fastened with velcro, eh? It’s too late for me, sadly, but you could save whole generations of horny boys many hours of fiddly frustration by wearing picker-uppers that don’t require Plasticman-esque dexterity and a locksmith’s kit to unhook.

Or better yet, don’t wear the contraptions at all. Don’t ‘cross your heart’, ladies; have a heart. I’m just saying.)

But back to the pants. I’ve never quite grasped the concept of the button fly, when perfectly good zippers are readily available. Sure, back in the bad old days, that was probably the way to go. Cavemen probably ran around with button-fly leopard skins, because they were too busy farting around with fire and the wheel to work on a proper zipper. Maybe Socrates kept it real with a button-fly toga, and Columbus had to unsnap-unsnap-unsnap-unsnap to take his first wee in the New World.

But now we have the technology, people. There’s simply no need to bother with four or five persnickety little buttons when one good *ziiiiiiip* will get the job done. It makes no sense.

I’ve never owned a pair of button-fly jeans, myself — but I’ve dealt with them. My wife owns a couple of pairs, and — lord, honey, don’t let this get around — there have been times when I’ve had occasion to remove them from her person. As expediently — I really can’t stress this enough, people — as expediently as possible. If you know what I mean.

What I’ve found, of course, is that ‘expedient’ and ‘button-fly jeans’ are not concepts that play nice together. Unless you happen to keep a Jaws of Life kit under your bed, getting those damned buttons unhooked is an all-day job. I’m not sure I’ve ever managed it, frankly, without one of us falling asleep first.

(Usually her, but I do remember waking up once while drooling on her thigh.

Which would have been just super, but the damned pants were still on her. Bah.)

I can’t imagine those things come in handy when you’re rushing to the bathroom for some reason or another, either. You’d have to start undressing three rooms away to have any chance at all of hitting the bowl ‘running’, as it were. I have enough trouble with a simple zipper in those situations; if I had to actually think and work and fumble around, you might as well strap me into a diaper right now. I’d never make it.

(At least I wouldn’t have to worry about Something About Mary-style shenanigans in that case, but still — the remote spectre of horrifying genital scrambling is a small price to pay for easy access to the equipment in an emergency. Just so long as it’s ‘remote’. Very remote.)

So what brought all this nonsense on? Well, I mentioned above that I’ve never owned a pair of button-fly jeans. And that’s true — no jeans. I did, however, receive a lovely pair of sweatpants from my mother-in-law for Christmas, and discovered a few days ago that they are, in fact, buttoned up the fly.

And that got me to thinking. And I realized what you’ve read above — so far as I can tell, there’s generally nothing good about button-fly pants. Not the kind you’d wear out in public, anyway. But I did find a silver lining to the sweatpants I got for Christmas:

My mother-in-law has now made it possible for me to have sex with her daughter without actually taking off my pants.

Because you simply can’t do that sort of thing with regular, no-fly sweats. And you certainly aren’t going to get busy through an undone zipper, folks.

(That’s the kind of mistake you only make once. You think rug burn is bad? Try dabbing Bactine on zipper nicks down in your nether regions some day. That’s called ‘rock bottom’, folks.)

But with these buttony sweatpants — yeah. It’s just possible. What a world we live in, eh?

Now, don’t get any funny ideas, there, Scooter — this is all purely theoretical. It takes two to tango, and I’m not sure my lovely and oh-so-patient wife would see the inherent beauty of such a thing. And I’m fairly certain that’s not what my mother-in-law had in mind when she bought me the pants. This is pie in the sky talk, not pickle in the pants stuff, got it?

Still, it’s an idea. It does get mighty cold around here during the long winter months. Hell, at the very least, maybe I can give her the sweatpants, and let her wear them around the house. We may never do… you know, the ‘thing‘ in them, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about getting those damned jeans off her again. That shit is work.