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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
« Something for Everybody, From Everybody | Main | I Confess... That I Don't Know What to Write About »
Man, I hate clothes sometimes.
Don't get me wrong -- it's not that I want to go without clothes.
(Trust me, nobody wants me to go without clothes. I scare plenty of children and old ladies as it is, without jiggling anything 'flabtacular' in their faces. The more of me that's covered, the better.)
But I just wish that clothes didn't have to be so fricking complicated all the damned time. I'm a fan of living a simple life, you see -- sleep, work, eat, watch a couple of Simpsons episodes, write a bit, cuddle with the wife, and do it all over again. I don't have the bandwidth for things like 'fashion' or 'style' or 'unstained T-shirts'. That's for rich folks.
Instead, I get by with the basics -- jeans and rugbies in the winter, shorts and golf shirts in the summer. Sneakers or loafers on the feet, and big, fat, white tube socks on the ankles. And calves, and creeping up onto my knees. I'm talking way up there -- any further up my legs, and my socks would need a button fly, if you sniff what I'm wafting. Of course, that's only with jeans -- with shorts, the socks get scrunched way down, or come off entirely. They're really the only moving part in the whole production; I don't accessorize, I don't 'mix 'n' match', and I am not a 'clothes hound'. 'Keep it stupid, simple' -- that's my motto.
And so, I would hope that my clothes would never cause me grief or embarrassment. I think I've made it abundantly clear that I'm not particularly interested in them, that I see their presence as a necessary evil, but that our relationship will never extend further than that. I've been up-front, forthright, and honest -- shouldn't my clothes get the damned hint and back off? I'm serious -- I am not playing 'hard to dress' here!
Alas, my clothes are oblivious to my desires. Or more likely, they're just pissy little bitches; I don't know who jammed a stick up their collective fabric asses, but I think they've got it out for me. It seems at every turn that they're catching on something, or leaping up to catch some messy bit of food, or bunching and rubbing in the most unholy of places.
(Okay, to be fair, I suppose there actually are a couple of 'holes' right there where I'm talking about. So maybe there are 'unholier' places out there, somewhere.
All I know is that if my clothes are gonna ball up and go cavorting in some of these places, I should at least get a nice dinner and some flowers first. And a little Vaseline wouldn't hurt, either.
Not as much, anyway, and that's the damned point, then, isn't it?)
Now, though, my clothes have taken their despicable dealings to a new level -- they've started a conspiracy. Yes, you read that right -- a conspiracy. Those little bastards have been fraternizing with my wife's outfits -- I know they have -- and have formulated a plan far more evil and embarrassing than the 'In-The-Chair Wedgie' or 'Sliding-Down Zipper' schemes could ever be. Now my clothes are playing 'Follow the Leader'. The bastards!
See, several times in the past few weeks, I've gone to my closet, or my basket of clean laundry that I never put away (or my basket of 'not-really-dirty' laundry that I keep for emergencies) to find a shirt beckoning to me. It's not always the same shirt; it changes, time after time. But there's always one that seems separate from the others, or closest, or least stained. And it's always right there, within easy reach. I'd actually have to go out of my way to grab another shirt. And, as we've learned, I'm not doin' that. There's no room in my morning routine for any of this 'reaching' business. I'm a busy man. A busy, lazy, apathetic, slacking man. So I go for 'the shirt', every time.
And it seems like every time -- every beaver-lovin', monkey-suckin' time -- the color of the shirt I put on exactly matches whatever the hell my wife is wearing. Exactly. We're like fricking Doublemint twins, without the gum and the manic laughs. Or Thing One and Thing Two. Tweedledee and Tweedledipshit. Every fucking time.
I want to know how the hell they know. How do these shirts figure out what my wife's gonna wear, and then arrange themselves just so, in the perfect configuration to make me absent-mindedly snatch the one that's gonna make me look like a toothless goober all damned day long? How can they know?!
It has to be her clothes. They're in cahoots; I just know it. Look, my wife doesn't go into my closet. And she sure as hell isn't gonna touch the baskets of clothes -- for one thing, she doesn't know the elaborate system I have for determining which one is the 'clean' basket and which is the 'not quite so funky that I can't wear it' basket. And she's not going to take her chances with playing in my dirty clothes. She once caught a whiff of one of my shirts just after I'd worked out -- she swears she couldn't taste 'salty' for a month after that.
So it's not my wife doing the rearranging, and she's not close enough to my clothes for them to see what she's wearing. It has to be some sort of interclosetary communication going on. Maybe they've got a string running between them, and they're sending messages back and forth on buttons. Or they tie notes on the legs of moths and fly 'em round-trip. Or maybe they've worked out a system using my boxer shorts as semaphore flags. I don't know, and I don't care -- all I know is that it has to stop. I'm tired of the 'Oh, did you two plan your outfits this morning?' and the 'Wook at the couple wearing the same shirts! Isn't that pwecious?', and especially the 'Aw, how cutesy-wutesy. Is woo wearing your widdle married uniforms?'
Grrr.
One more comment like that, and somebody's getting a tube sock enema, you understand me?
But it's not really the peoples' fault -- I myself would mercilessy and relentlessly taunt any couple who walk around in public with matching outfits. That's the law of the West, and it's unfortunately deserved. It's the clothes that I have the real issue with -- damned dirty clothes. They're the ones that have to be stopped, and I can only see one way how. I'm simply going to have to start buying the ugliest, loudest, funkiest clothes around, and wearing those. Sure, I'll look like a damned freak, but it'll still be better than the crap I'm getting now. And I'll be certain that nothing I'm wearing will even come close to matching whatever my wife's got on. And finally, I'll be free of my clothes and their tyranny.
It's the only way, folks. So please, when you see me on the street with the polka dot sweater and zigzag-striped jeans, don't mock me. Don't jeer, or point, or stand and laugh. I don't like this any more than you would, but it's the only way. It's either this, or I walk around naked. So just remember that I'm doing you a favor, all right? You owe me, man!
lol... you crack me up charlie. it makes me laugh harder because the same thing used to happen to myself and the ex... i know exactly what you are talking about!!! you know how they say that people start to look like their partners (or their dogs) after many years together??? this is the beginning... we even had people thinking we were brother and sister (and we'd never been to tasmania!!)
[ A blog for all of your 2000 parts! ]
Maybe there's something wrong with me (scratch that, there's definitely something wrong with me) but I love this tagline best of all! But I am a little concerned for you... Are you sure you want this blog to be for all of John Q. Stankass' 2000 parts?
PS: Can you believe I've already had 15 hits!! And that's not counting my own visits -I had site meter ignore me.
Yeah, HR Lady, I was a bit concerned about that, myself, at first. But then I found that 'stankass' is body part # 2001.
Whew! Lucky for me, eh? :)
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Or you could just wear nothing but beige, and allow your dearest to wear everything but beige.
Oh come on. It's all the reige.