I had no pants. We were going out and I had to look nice, so I went to my closet and realized that I had nothing that would help me accomplish that task. I had two pairs of jeans that fit, two more pairs of jeans that were too tight (but were still there because I told myself I'd slim back down one day to fit in them), decade-old suit pants, pleated corduroys (GAHHHH), and a pair of khakis I fucking despised and were also too tight. Standard dad closet.
So I put on the same Old Navy jeans I wore every day and hoped tossing on a jacket would make me look like some tech oligarch who drives a BMW convertible and can make jeans work at a semi-formal occasion. They did not. I came downstairs and my wife looked dynamite, which only underscored how dumpy I looked—the sort of appalling fashion mismatch you see on the red carpet of any Adam Sandler movie premiere. And the worst part was that my wife wasn't even annoyed. No, at this point, she was used to being married to a sloppy, hopeless pants case.
It's a weird thing, to be 40 years old and realize that you have no clue how to dress the lower half of your body. It's especially galling given I work at, you know, this magazine. But I've sucked at pants my whole life, and I can't tell you whether I was born hating them or if there is some childhood pant trauma that I've suppressed and have yet to unearth. My body doesn't help matters. I have no ass and my thighs are wider than a Texas highway. They do not make pants for my body prototype. I have silently fumed when a Gap or Banana Republic only has a 28-inch-size waist in stock, as if America were populated exclusively by tiny Italian men. I have cursed jeans that were too stiff and hot. I have openly despaired while trying to fasten that little hook on a pair of trousers, packing myself into them like I'm trying to close a suitcase. I have expressed sticker shock at the price of tailored pants.
And khakis? Man, FUCK khakis. I own khakis strictly because my inner eighth grader has been trained to believe that you need khakis if you're going out to a fancy brunch or singing in a choir recital. I'd rather die than wear them. They're ugly and act as a magnet for piss stains. Also, the only thing I hate more than pants is shopping, so you see my problem. I have bitched and moaned and cried out, WHY CAN'T THEY MAKE PANTS FOR ME? to anyone who will listen.
And, at long last, someone did. I found myself a guru. A sensei. A MASTER. Enter Mark Anthony Green, GQ's style editor and a man whose sartorial choices are so effortless as to be pure sorcery. I walked into his office and could instantly see that it pained Mark Anthony to look at me dressed the way I was. I was like a toddler coming home from school covered in mud and paste. I tried to explain my plight to him, listing out my grievances against BIG PANT just as I have listed them out for you. He was shaking his head well before I was finished talking.
"You're wrong about like five things, just to start this off."
Nevertheless, he took it upon himself to be my personal pant coach and teach me to find that uncanny valley where being comfortable and looking good can miraculously coexist. Here now is what I learned from him during the long and painstaking process of pant rehab:
Don't wear your pants too low. "You do a thing that a lot of guys do, that makes it difficult for you to find pants that fit: You actually wear your jeans too low," Mark Anthony told me. "So they're not on your waist, and that makes it kinda frumpy."
I looked down and my jeans were essentially suspended from my belt, like they were hanging off a clothesline.
"Those pants are just too big for you."
"But I prize comfort," I protested.
"Yeah, I can tell by your shoes. Those are the worst shoes on this floor."
Don't wear pants that are too big. I'm like any standard bro who feels fabric touch his skin and is like, OMG I'M SUFFOCATING HERE. That means I'm buying jeans that start off baggy and only get baggier from there. Mark Anthony recommended I start off by buying a pair of Levi's and breaking them in. Apparently, Levi's have a long "rise," which is the space between the waistband and the crotch, so you can wear them a bit higher. Not grandpa level, but high enough for men like me, who live in terminal fear of plumber's crack, to avoid such indignities. I need a lot of rise. Give me all of the rise.
Distressed jeans are dad jeans. Jeans that are one solid color read as more formal than any pair of worn-out jeans, which tend to look like they've done time in a Def Leppard video. Mark Anthony told me the jeans I was wearing when I met him were "distressing," presumably in both fabric and emotional impact. If I could master solid jeans, I wouldn't need more traditional semi-formal pants at all. In other words…
Throw out your khakis. In 2018, all weenie khakis can officially burn. Never again should any male child be scarred by a pair of Haggars. "Khakis are like when a guy doesn't really care and can't wear jeans, so he finds a pair of just the dorkiest, frumpiest khakis," Mark Anthony explained. "There's nothing more impotent than a pair of khakis." Thank you. FINALLY SOMEONE GETS IT. If anyone tells you jeans aren't appropriate for that cocktail party, you are now legally allowed to tell them to go to hell.
Get over the cost barrier. The dad in me believes that paying more than $30 for any item of clothing is an outrage. That thriftiness comes through loud and clear in my pantwork.
"You are built a certain way," Mark Anthony said. "For $15 or $20, you can go to a tailor and change and make a pair of pants that you begrudgingly wear into your favorite pair of pants. It's not THAT much money, especially when you realize how often do you buy pants. It's worth the investment! You're thinking about it like, Pants shouldn't cost this much. But if you buy a pair of jeans you're gonna wear four or five times a week, why would you spend less on that than a meal?"
He was right. If I was gonna find nice pants, I was gonna have to make purchases at nice places.
"Where do you shop usually?" he asked.
"At the Montgomery Mall."
"Any mall named Montgomery Mall is where you should not shop. Never been. Don't know much about it, but I know what I need to know."
Breaking in pants can be a cruel, sordid process. Back home, I went to Macy's and grabbed a pair of 501s off the rack. Then I took a selfie in the dressing room and sent it to Mark Anthony, because we're intimate friends like that now.
"Too big!" he texted back.
Seriously? Already, the pants were bisecting my scrotum.
"They're so heavy," I texted back. "Is there such a thing as tropical denim?"
"JUST DEAL, BRO."
"But my balls need to breathe."
"Your balls will be fine."
I grabbed the next size down. I could barely button them. My sciatica began to kick up like a stuck bull.
"OMG they're so tight."
"BINGO. They'll stretch, trust me. PULL THE TRIGGER."
"So I just wear these every day until they stop strangling my butt?"
"It'll take two days tops."
So I bought them. Then I took the pants home and let them sit on my bedroom chair, tags still on, for over a week. They haunted me. I feared them. I was working up the courage to break them in.
Finally, I put them on and tried working in them for 20 minutes before it became unbearable. Swampass had set in instantly. I felt fat and gross and decidedly unsexy. There was no way I could do the two days, nor did I believe those two days would be enough to magically release the denim fibers and free my poor dick. I briefly considered stuffing the jeans with baseballs, soaking them with WD-40, tying them up and sticking them under my mattress. But my sensei had a better idea.
The pants game is 90 percent mental. I returned to New York, where Mark Anthony volunteered to act as my personal shopper for the day. He took me deep into the bowels of Century 21 and picked out a pair of standard blue jeans, a pair of stretch denim jeans, a pair of white velvet pants from Europe, and a pair of joggers: pants with an elastic cuff at the bottom. He knew damn well the joggers wouldn't look good on me. He just thought it would be funny if I tried them on. I snuck into the fitting room.
"No peeking!" I told him.
"Why do you think I came along?"
I tried on the regular jeans. PASS.
"They literally made those with you in mind," Mark Anthony said. "That's why they look bad."
I tried on the velvet pants, deadly tight and grabbing at me all over. No rise at all. PASS.
Mark Anthony's verdict: "Here's the thing: You're an American man. Anything Parisian or Italian, you're not really built for them. That's just not your way. So you need to fuck with just American pants. I will say this: Your butt looks really plump in those. Delicious. Like Beyoncé."
I tried the joggers, which only seem useful if you want to smuggle a ham into a concert. HARD PASS.
Mark Anthony's verdict: "I wouldn't wear those if I were you."
I tried the stretch denim, a style that used to be the sole domain of women but has slowly seeped into the dad-jean economy. At first they felt tight, and I made my best I FEEL FAT face to the fitting-room mirror. But was it the pants that were uncomfortable, or just me? Maybe I didn't like these pants because I didn't believe in them, or in me. I knew that, at some point during my time in pants camp, I was gonna have to get over myself. I was gonna have to stop being a dipshit about all this. So I stood in front of that mirror and did my best to let go of my hang-ups about looking fat and weird and old. I meditated on my manjeggings.
And slowly, the pants felt soft and warm around my waist and legs, as if they were embracing me.
"Am I pegging?" I asked Mark Anthony.
"The fuck is pegging?"
"That thing you told me about where the thighs are too wide and the ankles are too skinny!"
"Oh, right. I had just gotten done with a story about sexual relations for, like, porn. No, these are perfect. Look at you!"
I turned to the mirror. I looked…good. I didn't look amazing, but as Mark Anthony said, we were shooting for a passing grade here. We were shooting for a look that would not visibly anger him. I looked like I had my shit together.
"I feel dynamic," I told him.
"You look taller and slimmer."
"Any crack?"
"Nah. I'm not mad at this wash and I'm not mad at this fit either."
We had done it. Levi's 512 slim taper. That was to be my pant from now on.
"What shoes do I wear with these?"
"Any shoe. Just not those."
We walked over to the register and I swiped my card and I prayed that the jeans would feel as good and as comfortable as they did in that fitting room, because I have had those euphoric moments in the department store where everything looks right, only to bring the clothes home and discover that they've somehow morphed into different, WORSE clothes that need to be returned. It's an awful feeling, so I hoped these jeans would survive the transition from store to closet without any black magic cursing them.
And survive they did. I loved the jeans so much that I texted Mark Anthony, I LOVE THESE PANTS! in all caps, like some deranged mom in a Kohl's ad. But I was being earnest: I had found pant salvation, and it was a genuine personal relief.
Once the pants fit, suddenly nothing else does. All these glorious pant discoveries came with an unpredictable downside: My shoes were still trash.
You will shake your head when I tell you this, but it had never really occurred to me in the past that the fit of your pants has to work with the fit of your shoes, and shirts, and everything else in your ensemble. In other words, my work had only begun. When I saw Mark Anthony again, I complained to him, "My shirt doesn't fit anymore!"
"Well," he said, "I mean, it didn't fit BEFORE, either."
"I think my underwear is too loose now."
"You might have too loose underwear. That's a real thing."
Even my wallet didn't fit anymore. Mark Anthony grabbed it and started rifling through it.
"You don't need all this shit, bro!"
"Hey, that's my insurance card!"
"You gotta slim this down, playboy, ’cause it's gonna be bulging out." He held up my library card. "You go to the public library?"
"For kid books!"
"I really do love you. You gotta get a better wallet."
We went on another shopping adventure, this time to a nearby Club Monaco where every other male customer looked to weigh roughly 90 pounds. I tried on a couple more pairs of sweet, pliable, stretchy pants in non-risky colors.
"How you feel?" Mark Anthony asked. "’Cause you look great."
"I feel good!"
"These are good. You can see just a LITTLE bit of your dick." My man, that's all I got anyway. HEY-OOOOOOOOO.
Suddenly, I had the makings of a wardrobe. I took the pants back home to Maryland and tried them on for my wife, who cried out, "Oh!" in pleasant surprise at the sight of me. She never knew I could rock pants so well. My 10 percent dick shadow had worked its spell on her. I was now officially presentable.
But more important, I was comfortable, both with my pants and with myself. And I was ready to accept the fact that wearing pants successfully is like doing anything else successfully. It requires thought, and care, and planning. And collaboration! Pants are work, and you have to wanna do that work if you want to avoid looking like I have for the past four decades. If I can be rehabilitated, anyone can. Set all your dipshit khakis aflame and you're already halfway there.
