Jeans Day
I have days — yoga pants days, over-sized sweatshirt days, and jeans days. Each has its own inflection, its own yearning, its own vibe. Jeans days speak with more of a Southern accent than I might otherwise allow. I find myself saying y’all without checking myself and walk with a little bit of a swagger not far from the Boot Scoot Boogie. Jeans days offer the armor of peer support, a wide net that allows every person who owns, wears, and prizes their jeans to be on my side. If nothing else, we agree on denim that touches us where it feels good.
I remember my first pair. I was seventeen and had reached my goal at Weight Watchers after months of eating by the rules and arriving at the weekly weigh-ins with my father, who had joined me in the genetic fight. The year was 1975, I was a senior in high school, and I needed the right clothes for Friday night football games in Tyler, Texas, where blue jeans were a serious must right up there with spiked sodas. Back before designer denims, Lees and Levis were the rage. And they didn’t come cheap.
One September afternoon between school and work, I drove to a popular shopping center in my Plymouth Belvedere, an embarrassment of a clunker that wanted to be cool but wasn’t. The specialty store was near the Montgomery Ward department store and the theater where in future months I would have my jaw-dropping, virgin viewing of Rocky Horror Picture Show, where I discovered a whole new social set who thrived on disco and dressing up mannequins with feathery boas, stacked heels, and lacy underwear. But I digress.
I strolled into the Levi’s Store to the tune of “Rhinestone Cowboy” or some other prolific country-gone-pop tune. I double-checked my purse for my wallet, stuffed with the pay I had earned from my first two weeks working at the J.C. Penney at the mall. I knew I’d be dropping at least forty bucks for the jeans that I wanted. Plus tax.
I marched over to the nearest wall where a neat grid of open cubes held stacks of folded jeans in an exacting display that offered no clues whatsoever about what to do next. I read the mounted information under each stack like a dullard. 34 x 30, 28 x 32, 38 x 36. What was this? I wondered. The numbers looked like multiplication homework from sixth grade.
A bouncy sort who looked exactly like a cheerleader from last school year scampered up to me. I made a quick read of her name tag: Celeste. “What can I do you for today?” she said with a squeaky twang that would have sounded corny anywhere but here.
“Hi, Celeste!” I replied, hoping she would think I remembered her name from her high school days. “Uh, I need a pair of jeans,” I said in what felt like the dumbest answer ever. Ergggghhh.
“Okie dokie.” she said as she massaged her chin with her right forefinger. “Now, then. What size do you wear?” she implored with the confidence of someone who already knew.
“I’m not sure. Can you help me?” I felt my feet shuffle as I fumbled a look toward the mirror nearby. In its reflection, all I could see was the awkward ninth grader who had worn her gray maxi coat for most the year to cover up her thunder thighs and her tummy roll. On top of that, was I really asking an ex-cheerleader to help me figure out the size jeans I needed? Get it over with and kill me now!
“Let me grab the tape measure!” Celeste announced as she sashayed away, decades before Ru Paul coined the phrase.
I felt the pit in my stomach expand to the size of a full-grown steer. For weeks I’d stepped on the scale, my diminishing weight recorded in blue ballpoint pen on my official record by an encouraging middle-aged woman who could have been my mother. “You’re almost to your goal!” she’d said loud enough for all the chubby newcomers to hear. But the success of the past six months suddenly shriveled as the perky gymnast approached me with a devilish smile, whipping the measuring tape around like a lasso. “Let’s see what we’ve got here, my friend!”
Celeste must have passed the Levi Strauss Corporation sensitivity training, because before I knew it, she had measured my waist and inseam, explained the sizing, handed me three pairs of folded jeans, and pointed toward the changing rooms. “Try these and see how they feel to you.” It was all about the feel, I learned. All about the feel.
The dressing room was built from raw wood, like the inside of a barn, the curtains some version of bandanna red. Just as my flouncy, homemade skirt dropped to the floor, a new voice boomed through the speakers. “I’ve been cheated, been mistreated, When will I be loved?” Linda Ronstadt’s demanding question saw me through. One leg in, then two, then an easy slip of the metal button through the buttonhole, and there I was, in the first pair of jeans I had ever worn in my life. I stood transfixed with what I saw in the mirror. The length was just right, the color so rich. Did they make me look thinner? I patted my thighs and even liked them a little.
“Celeste, you are my hero!” I exclaimed as I handed her three crisp bills and saw I had just enough change for a Burger King meal on the way home. I pushed through the exit swinging my Levi Store bag with the pride of a girl who could buy her way to belonging at least through football season. Who knew that before long my Levi’s would be neatly folded in a bottom drawer, and I’d be decked out in more freaky fashions with all the other outsiders belting out at the top of our lungs in the middle of the night at the theater near the Levi’s Store, “Let’s do the TIME WARP again!”
I thank award-winning writer/performer Ann Randolph for her November UNMUTE YOURSELF writing workshop Day 3 prompt, which inspired this piece. What a great way to start the day and to deepen my writing practice!
