Corduroy pants

Most people hardly ever, if ever at all, stop to consider how important pants are, and the average man, getting in and out of pants every morning and night, never pauses while doing so, or at any other time, even for the amusement in the specula­tion, to wonder how unfortunate it would be if he didn’t have pants, how miserable he would be if he had appear in the world without them, and how awkward his manners would become, how foolish his conversation, how utterly joyless his attitude toward life.

Nevertheless, when I was fourteen and a reader of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Spinoza, and an unbeliever, a scorner of God, an enemy of Jesus Christ and Catholic Church, and something of a philosopher in my own right, my thoughts, profound and trivial alike, turned now and then to the theme of man in the world without pants, and much as you might suppose they were heavy melancholy thoughts no less than often they were gay and hilarious. That, I think, is the joy of being a philosopher: that knowing the one side as well as the other. On the one hand, a man in the world without pants should be a miserable creature, and probably would be, and then again, on the other hand, if this same man, in pants and in the world, was usually a gay and easy-going sort of fellow, in all probability even without pants he would be a gay and easy-going sort of fellow, and might even find the situation an opportunity for all manner of delightful banter. Such a person in the world is not altogether incredible, and I used to believe that, in moving pictures at least he would not be embarrassed, and on the contrary would know just what to do and how to do it in order to empress everyone with this simple truth: namely, that after all what is a part of pants? and being without them is certainly not the end of the world, or the destruction of civilization. All the same, the idea that I myself might some day appear in the world without pants ter­rified me, inasmuch as I was sure I couldn’t rise to the occasion and impress everybody with the triviality of the situation and make them know the world wasn’t ending.

I had only one pair of pants, my uncle’s, and they were very patched, very sewed, and not the style. My uncle had worn these pants five years before he had turned them over to me, and then I began putting them on every morning and taking them off every night. It was an honor to wear my uncle’s pants. I would have been the last person in the world to suggest that it wasn’t. I knew it was an honor, and I accepted the honor along with the pants, and I wore the pants, and I wore the honor, and the pants didn’t fit.

They were too big around the waist and too narrow at the cuff. In my boyhood I was never regarded as well-dressed. If people turned to look at me twice, as they often do these days, it was only to wonder whose pants I was wearing. There were four pockets in my uncle’s pants, but there wasn’t one sound pocket in the lot. If it came to a matter of money, coins given and coins returned, I found that I had to put the coins in my mouth and remember not to swallow them.

Naturally, I was unhappy. I took to reading Schopenhauer and despising people, and after people God, and after God, or before, or at the same time, the whole world, the whole universe, the whole impertinent scheme of life.

At the same time I knew that my uncle had honored me, of all his numerous nephews, by handing down his pants to me, and I felt honored, and to a certain extend clothed. My uncle’s pants, I sometimes reasoned unhappily, were certainly better than no pants at all, and with this much of the idea developed my nimble and philosophical mind leapt quickly to the rest of the idea. Suppose a man appeared in the world without pants? Not that he wanted to. Not just for the fun of it. Not as a gesture of individuality and as a criticism of Western civilization, but simply because he had no pants, simply because he had no money with which to buy pants? Suppose he put on all his clothes excepting pants? His underwear, his stockings, his shoes, his shirt, and walked into the world and looked everybody straight in the eye? Suppose he did it? Ladies, I have no pants. Gentlemen, I have no money. So what? I have no pants, I have no money. I am an inhabitant of this world. I intend to remain an inhabitant of this world until I die or until the world ends. I intend to go on moving about

in the world, even thought I have no pants. What could they do? Could they put him in jail? If so, for how long? And why? What sort of a crime could it be to appear in the world, among one’s brothers, without pants?

Perhaps they would feel sorry, I used to think, and want to give me an old pair of pants, and this possibility would drive me almost crazy. Never mind giving me your old pants, I used to shout at them. Don’t try to be kind to me. I don’t want your old pants, and I don’t want your new pants. I want my own pants, straight from the store, brand new, size, name, label, and guarantee. I want my own God damn pants, and nobody else’s. I’m in the world, and I want my own pants.

I used to get pretty angry about people perhaps wanting to be kind to me, because I couldn’t see it that way. I couldn’t see people giving me something, or anything. I wanted to get my stuff the usual way. How much are these pants? They are three dollars. All right, I’ll take them. Just like that. No hemming or hawing. How much? Three dollars. O.K., wrap them up.

The day I first put on my uncle’s pants my uncle walked away several paces for a better view and said, “They fit you perfectly.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Plenty of room at the top,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“And nice and snug at the bottom,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Then, for some crazy reason, as if perhaps the tradition of pants had been handed down from one generation to another, my uncle was deeply moved and shook my hand, turning pale with joy and admiration, and being utterly incapable of saying a word. He left the house as a man leaves something so touching he cannot bear to be near it, and I began to try to determine if I might be able, with care, to get myself from one point to another in the pants.

It was so, and I could walk in the pants. I felt more or less encumbered, yet it was possible to move. I did not feel secure, but I knew I was covered, and I knew I could move, and with practice I believed I would be able to move swiftly. It was purely a matter of adaptation. There would be months of unfamiliarity, but I believed in time I would be able to move about in the world gingerly, and with sharp effect.

I wore my uncle’s pants for many months, and these were the unhappiest months of my life. Why? Because corduroy pants were the style. At first ordinary corduroy pants were the style, and then a year later there was a Spanish renaissance in California, and Spanish corduroy pants became the style. There were bell-bottomed, with a touch of red down there, and in many cases five-inch waists, and in several case small decorations around the waist. Boys of fourteen in corduroy pants of this variety were boys who not only felt secure and snug, but knew they were in style, and consequently could do any number of gay and lighthearted things, such as running after girls, talking with them, and all the rest of it. I couldn’t. It was only natural, I suppose, for me to turn, somewhat mournfully, to Schopenhauer and to begin despising women, and later on men, children, oxen, cattle, beasts of the jungle, and fish. What is life? I used to ask. Who do they think they are, just because they have Spanish bell-bottomed corduroy pants? Have they read Schopenhauer? No. Do they know there is no God? No. Do they so much as suspect that love is the most boring experience in the world? No. They are ignorant. They are wearing the fine corduroy pants, but they are blind with ignorance. They do not know that it is all a hollow mockery and that they are the victims of a horrible jest.

I used to laugh at them bitterly.

Now and then, however, I forgot what I knew, what I had learned about everything from Schopenhauer, and in all innocence, without any profound philosophical thought one way or another, I ran after girls, feeling altogether gay and lighthearted, only to discover that I was being laughed at. It was my uncle’s pants. They were not pants in which to run after a girl. They were unhappy, tragic, melancholy pants, and being in them, and running after a girl in them, was a very comic thing to see, and a very tragic thing to do.

I began saving up every penny and nickel and dime. I could get hold of, and I began biding my time. Some day I would go down to the store and tell them I would like to buy a pair of the Spanish bell-bottomed pants, price no consideration.

A mournful year went by.1 A year of philosophy and hatred of man.

I was saving the pennies and nickels and dimes, and in time I would have my own pair of Spanish style corduroy pants. I would have covering and security and at the same time a garment in which a man could be nothing if not gay and lighthearted.

Well, I saved up enough money all right, and I went down to the store all right, and I bought a pair of the Spanish bell-bottomed corduroy pants all right, but a month later when school opened and I went to school I was the only boy at school in this particular style of corduroy pants. It seems the Spanish renaissance had ended. The new style corduroy pants were very conservative, no bell-bottoms, no five-inch waists, no decorations. Just simple ordinary corduroy pants.

How could I feel gay and lighthearted? I didn’t look gay and lighthearted. And that made everything worse, because my pants did look gay and lighthearted. My own pants. Which I had bought. They looked gay and lighthearted. It meant simple, I reasoned, that I would have to be, in everything I did, as gay and lighthearted as my pants. Otherwise, naturally, there could never be any order in the world. I could not go to school in such pants and not be gay and lighthearted, so I decided to be gay and lighthearted. I was very witty at every opportunity and had my ears boxed, and I laughed very often and discovered that invariably when I laughed nobody else did.

This was agony of the worst kind, so I quit school. I am sure I should not now be the philosopher I am if it were not for the trouble I had with Spanish bell-bottomed corduroy pants.