They were supposed to be charcoal. I’m not sure where the disconnect happened, but when I opened the package they were, amongst other things, not charcoal. I splayed them on the ground in my bedroom to confirm the suspicion I had when I first peeled open the package. There they were, on the floor, laid out like the outline of a dead body in the winter light from my windows. Definitely purple.
I peeled off the tags immediately. This is a strange habit of mine, some commitment thing, maybe. I don’t return clothes things via mail, being all too aware of the way they would sit on my counter-top for two months until the return-period ended, until I grew bitter towards them. They are mine now. They are mine, and they are purple.
I didn’t know corduroy came in purple. I don’t know what corduroy is, necessarily, despite it being my “vibe.” This is also the third time in five weeks I have been forced to admit that I don’t know what size pants I wear.
The first was when I ordered the other, $12 dollar pair. They were charcoal, and were exactly what I dreamed of. They were also too small, a fact I recognized before they were even out of the package. I ordered 32 x 32, yet there I was, coming brutally to terms with the fact that whatever I am, I am not 32 x 32. They came with a small note reading, “Hope you feel cool in these!” and I tucked the note into the pocket and hung them on my door. I do not return clothes via mail, so after three weeks of hanging there I gave them to my friend Ralph in exchange for a box of Guinness-brand mac + cheese and a sleeve of stamps he found in his grandfather’s house. Ralph tried them on in the bathroom and came out wearing the pair he showed up in saying that they fit. We were driving to a concert an hour away, and I told him to please put them back on. I told him he wasn’t allowed to take the note out of the pocket.
The second time was when Christopher asked me what size I wore. We were playing Bananagrams though neither of us could remember the rules. It was one AM, and I had flown in from New York three hours earlier and was immediately brought to a bar. I asked “size of what,” and he said “clothes.” I didn’t know, and told him 34 x 34, and he said that wasn’t true. I told him that I liked to cuff my pants, but secretly started to worry about the pair of 34 x 34 charcoal corduroys which were currently on their way to my apartment.
The third time was when I tried on the purple corduroys. The waist was fine, but the pant leg hung about an inch past my heel. I didn’t try cuffing them. You don’t cuff corduroy. The tag on the pants promised that they weren’t purple. It said they were “Baltic Navy.” A week later at the Red Carpet Lounge my friend google’d “Baltic Navy” and a bunch of pictures came up showing airplane carriers out at sea. We figured the Baltics wouldn’t have a navy, being “not a country,” and that this must be a different navy in the Baltic sea. Anyways, Levi Strauss & Co. had lied to me.
I can’t help but wonder what old Levi Strauss would think about that. I bet, as a 17-year old in Franconia, Bavaria, he wouldn’t have dreamed of lying to his fellow Franconians. They were an agricultural, Catholic people. They would have considered such lies to be befitting of the landed nobility, perhaps, but amongst his village-folk it wouldn’t have been done. He would’ve had high ideals, been stringent and diligent in his Bavarian values which are, of course, creamy. He would recognize the hard work a farmer puts into their land, the toil which leaves one exhausted by midday, and would have shot straight. Once he started peddling dry goods at his brother’s shop, barking on the streets of St. Louis, he might have learned, slowly and brutally, the value of these little lies. The way they turned a no into a yes. His brother’s dry goods store would’ve been the most important thing on earth, and his success in selling pants would have decided whether or not they ate dinner that night. Sure they’re charcoal, he would’ve said, keeping them out of the sun’s light.
Levi Strauss took a boat, not a carriage, to San Francisco. I think that says everything you need to know about a man. I would have taken a boat, too, but this isn’t the sort of image of myself I try to promote. I suppose wearing Baltic Navy corduroy doesn’t help. Levi died with today’s equivalent of 200 million dollars to his name. He was the sort of guy to sell to prospectors, and can you imagine what you’d have to say to do that? How many broke and broken men must have come to him thinking the answer to their problems, the solution to the pointless and brutal thousands of miles they came to make their fortune, was pants? He was the sort of guy to think of attaching rivets to make his pants more durable, and then the sort of guy to patent the idea.
Maybe on his death-bed, which would’ve been carved of ivory, he thought he should have shot straighter. Should have been more honest with his time on earth. But as soon as he pulled that velvet duvet up over his 73-year-old chest he would’ve forgotten the idea and smiled as he slipped into a comfortable, natural, marriage-less death.
Every time I put on these purple pants I think about returning them. This is just about every day, because they are new and exciting to me, and I think sweeter since I don’t quite know if I want them. I have a tab opened up on my computer, waiting to press “confirm” on their return. I know I won’t click it, because I don’t return clothes via mail.
Corduroy is made by weaving extra sets of fibre into the base fabric to form wales. The wider your wale, the most corduroy your corduroy is. It is a durable fabric, and has the sense of being popular amongst sea-captains. In reality, they became popular in the 1970s, and their history amounts to making professors seem sensitive and hip.
There is a fear within me that colors everything I do. The color is, we can say, purple. You might not know it until you get to know me, but once you see it it is everywhere. It’s the color of fear which doesn’t allow me to return clothes via mail, which stands between me and the people I love. It is the sort of fear which drives me around the country ad nauseam, which is always the reason I say “no.” It’s easy for me to think industrious, productive people like Levi Strauss, people who have an easier time taking what they want, don’t feel this fear. That those types of people are bold and courageous like the Baltic Navy. But there is no Baltic navy. The Baltic navy is a lie constructed by mashing together two things together which seem like a new, third thing. And people like Levi Strauss have just seen more clearly what it takes to get what they need, and they call their purple something else so that people will buy it. They have learned that the currency of existence is consequence, and that to live a life you need to spend it. They have decided what sorts of things and which sorts of people they are okay with wronging, and have accepted the way in which their wrongs will haunt them, and against all that haunting they have decided to act anyways. Have decided to enter the world accepting of the way they will cause friction, have calculated the amount of friction their souls can withstand, and lived a life. I don’t like purple. But if you take purple away from me, I’m not sure what I’d look like.
Bring them to SF and we can return them at Levi's HQ. Or, if you need the purple pants that badly, we can at least alert them that there is no Baltic Navy