The Emperor's New Clothes

Oh, how I hate to shop.

As my friend Jon pointed out via the comment section the other day, I don't know chintz from Chinoiserie and I can't tell the difference between a Champagne from a prosecco.

I don't like frou-frou food. I do like sports. And I loathe having to shop - especially for clothes.

I'm a gay man, not gay-acting. Yeah - you can all shut your pie-holes.

Yesterday, between yard work, exercise and well, lunch, we went and did some shopping for clothes. Mostly bum-around clothes.....or as I call them, non-work clothes.

But even buying jeans, socks and underwear, to me is just a painful event. Like museum fatigue, I get store fatigue, but faster and a more acute case. g-d help us all whenever I have to get suits and dress shoes!

It was just the casual wear where we dropped way too much money. I guess not really. We just do not update wardrobe that much. We're kind of lesbianic that way. But I was in need of jeans and sweats. Winter's a-comin'.

But oy, I hate trying on jeans - as you can see in the above picture. I didn't even keep my old pair on. btw.....I do have briefs on, so I'm not nekkid under that flannel and t shirt.

I did have this very brief supernova of seemingly good luck with the first pair of jeans I put on: a 32" waist that fit! The rest of the jeans were "loose fit" and I didn't like the overall look. But I can't tell you how long it's been since 32" even remotely fit me. Over a decade for sure.

I remember back during the 1980 Winter Olympics reading the Eric Heiden's thighs were 29" wide. My then-scrawny waist wasn't yet 29", let alone my thighs. Oh, how times change.

I tried a more "regular cut:, and well, I could get into the 32" version and they looked good, but you know it wouldn't take much for them to be a wee bit too tight (probably one cookie), so I went to 34", which are just fine.

Still - 34" isn't bad. For me. Lately. A few years back, I had made it up to 37" at one point. I did make it to back down to 35" last year, but most places do not stock odd sized waist sizes. So I'm now down a little further and wouldn't mind getting down to a comfortable 32".

Of course, many clothes manufacturers now fib about the size of their clothing to make folks, like me, feel better about themselves and their purchases. Hell, I might still be a 37" waist, but I'm not about to take out a tape measure to find out. Ignorance is bliss, so they say. Let me have my moment.

The bottom line is I got a pair of jeans, two pairs of sweats and some new underwear before I called the little outing to be over, no new shirts be damned. It was less painful for me to go cut the lawn and do the laundry.

Now I don't need to go back to a store until, like, April!



Song by: Sinéad O'Connor