Hahaha! Sometimes narratives get a little heavy around these parts. Not these ones.

Sometime in the last decade, my jeans stopped fitting. In theory, I should just be able to buy a bigger pair to reflect my expanding borders and general middle-age drift. But the problem has proved, like my body, to be less defined—and more shapeless—than I had hoped. I cinch my belt, and I feel the flatulent “oof” of mortality and failure as my pants sag perpetually, and somewhat mysteriously, kneeward.

“Wait a minute,” close readers familiar with pants are no doubt saying. “You are fatter, and yet your jeans are falling down? What?”

I, too, ask “what?” in that tone, many times a day, as I stand up and my jeans don’t follow along in the accustomed fashion. My understanding of physics and basic pants-ness is this: When you get fatter, your jeans get tighter. At some point, you reach an uncomfortable juncture where you can’t button the jeans. You are then faced with a moral choice. Do you buy bigger jeans? Or do you continue to wear the much too tight jeans for some months in the sad, vain hope that the restriction of blood to your lower half will inspire you to eat less, exercise more and lose weight? 

And yet, as if I am living in some unusually boring Kafkaesque nightmare, my jeans don’t work like that. I am, according to the scale and various unforgiving mirrors, more than I once was. But my pants have not become tighter. Instead, they keep falling down. Tightening the belt is ineffectual. When I walk the dog, traipse down supermarket aisles or just stand up in COVID isolation to grab a snack, the jeans slide down. I am constantly hitching them up.

I consulted with my wife, who is better at clothes than me. She suggested the problem was that as my belly had gotten bigger, I had started cinching my jeans lower. Bigger pants buckled higher was her prescription. So we got bigger pants, and I buckled them higher. This made me feel old, awkward, disproportionate and fat. My lower half appeared to be in the grip of some sort of pants python intent on swallowing my torso. A small price to pay for pants that didn’t fall down. 

But, unfortunately, the pants gods rejected my bargain of increased body negativity for increased butt security. The pants did not cease to scroll down. Instead, they scrolled down with even more determination. The threat of catastrophic drafts and perhaps illegal public disrobing loomed. “Look at this!” I said to my long-suffering wife, demonstrating the strategic and moral problem. She recoiled in horror and a certain amount of giggles. Also in perplexity. Obviously, bigger jeans were not the answer. So back to the old, slightly less ill-fitting jeans I went.

I more or less expected getting older to be an exercise in humiliating corporeal failures, and I haven’t been disappointed. Once I was thin and fit and could clean dog poop out of the backyard without straining my back. I could look at reflective surfaces without existential despair. 

The strain and the despair are unpleasant, no doubt, but on the other increasingly withered hand, I still have a full head of hair at 50, and I’m not going gray. Time is cruel, but it could be crueler. I didn’t expect these jeans to fit forever. I have seen old people and can extrapolate; I always knew my body would betray me at some point. 

I did hope, though, that as I got fatter, I would also get wiser. Vaguely, I dreamed that there would come a day when I would understand my own clothes.

I was an extremely unstylish child. This was certainly my parents’ fault to some degree; these days they mostly wear T-shirts with college logos and fanny packs, and incriminating photos from past decades confirm that this is consistent with their history of sartorial apocalypse. 

Pictures of me from the same era feature a lot of unwieldy collars and enormous glasses. I remember one pair in particular that I wore for a week or so before some not especially benevolent peers pointed out that they had little Superman icons on the corner screws. “So are you Clark Kent?!” the wits exclaimed. I might as well have worn Underoos to school.

I knew dimly that my clothes made me look like a fool and a target, and I tried as best I could, like the first primordial lungfish, to thrash and gasp myself into a better, less drab existence. In college, my roommate had a black biker jacket, which I thought was cool. So I bought one myself. Often, we would hang out together in matching outfits, like sad tourists who had wandered into the wrong gay bar. It will give you a sense of how good of a friend, and how lovely of a person, this was when I tell you that it was only years later that he mildly suggested that copying his outerwear was not the best choice I had ever made for either of us.

Eventually, I met my wife, and she started buying my clothes, and that was certainly a lot better for everyone. But you can’t exactly say that you’ve found a style of your own when your wife is buying your clothes. I don’t necessarily look (too) terrible, but I also still don’t know what I’m doing. Younger me thought at some point I might learn a foreign language, learn to read music and learn to dress myself. These did not seem like immoderate ambitions. But the years pass, and we all learn that there is no dream too small to end in failure.

We have since discovered that slacks and other pants that are not blue jeans don’t slide from my hips in quite so prompt and terrifying a manner. There is still some hitching, but not as much. I prefer jeans, but as we’ve established, my clothing preferences aren’t to be trusted, and anyway, the jeans don’t prefer me. 

If there are clothes that do, it seems clear at this point that I will never find them. I dreamed of better things than Superman glasses and ended up in a motorcycle jacket. It’s time to admit that I’m going to die in the wrong pants. It’s not great. But there’s some freedom in accepting you’ll never fit, like those jeans—so long constricted, yearning to let it all hang out.

Style

I Have Been Defeated by My Pants

It was my girlfriend Liv’s 21st birthday. Because I have ADHD, I naturally had forgotten to get her a present. That day I was meant to be meeting her to spend an evening drinking cocktails at overpriced bars. Instead, I spent a guilt-fueled morning gathering a collection of token presents for her, so she wouldn’t instantly remind me that I was the worst boyfriend ever. The problem was that none of the presents was quite “right.” After all, this was her 21st. I had to get her something spot-on. 

Fast forward six months to the summer we were traveling through China. On one train ride, I had been flicking through a Lonely Planet travel guide when suddenly I saw my way out of the predicament of the present. 

We’d just finished the summer teaching in Chinese classrooms and earning our TEFLs (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). Then a few weeks traveling the big cities: Shanghai, Chengdu, Xi’an.

By the time we got to Beijing, it was time to spring my surprise. I snuck out of the hostel early and spent the morning alternating between the fire that was the Beijing smog and the frying pan of Beijing’s smelly, crowded subways. I returned an hour or so later, feeling both lighter due to the pride that filled me and heavier for all the camping gear I carried. 

I sat at the entrance to the hostel and got chatting with a traveling group. They were heading to Shanghai that day and had some weed on them. Do I want to buy it? They can’t risk taking it through the airport-style security you must go through to get on China’s high-speed trains. 

Weed is especially rare in China. So, what do I say? “Sure!” This is a camping trip, after all. 

I return to our room to explain to Liv what her birthday present is—a camping trip on the Great Wall of China. She asks me if it's legal to camp on the Great Wall. Not exactly, I explain. But it’s 13,000 miles long; they can’t patrol it all, right? 

If you ever go to Beijing and visit the Great Wall, you’ll probably go to Badaling. It’s the part of the Wall that you see in tourist pictures, all rebuilt and shiny new, prepared for your tourist photos. That was not where Liv and I went. We went up to Gubeikou—via six hours of bus rides with three changes. We’re trying to avoid being caught, remember?

So, we get to Gubeikou and to the gate that admits entry onto the Wall. No other English-speaking tourists must ever make it this far because the admittance attendant didn’t have anything to say to us other than “closed.” However, we hadn’t come this far to turn back now. Plus, I was still trying to redeem myself for forgetting my girlfriend’s 21st birthday. 

As I said, it’s a big fucking wall. So, we simply walked away and began to climb again. 

An hour and a half later, we had hiked high enough away from the small village below us and up onto the Wall. Our tent was made and basecamp was established for the night. Liv offered me a wink and a wry smile that said “Well done, you.”

At this point, I pulled out the weed. It was pre-rolled so no messing about. We smoked and smoked and watched as the sun set. At that moment, we were a little pearl in a giant oyster of a Chinese summer adventure. 

It is remarkable how quickly a picture-perfect scene can be so quickly disrupted by the eerie, unnerving descent of nightfall. For weeks, we had taught in classrooms and toured the big cities. Now, up here on the hills of remote China, it was quiet. Too quiet. Unnervingly quiet. There wasn’t even a dog howling at the moon. 

“What was that?” said a startled Liv.

I brushed it off. “Nothing, of course, just some animal.” 

But the sniffing grew louder. Without any light whatsoever, it was too easy to let the shadows play with our imaginations. 

“James,” Liv said, “What animals do they have in Northern China?”

We had Chinese SIM cards, so we quickly loaded up Google to settle our nerves. No such luck. Our search revealed that they have both bears and wolves in this part of China. Now we’re panicked.

We rush into the tent. Inside it, I try to collect myself. Liv has lost her head. She’s sharing her location to her group chat and telling her friends to make sure her mum knows she loves her. I interrupt that there’s no time to think about that now. Sending those kinds of messages would somehow make this whole nightmare more real.

How could I have been so stupid? Why didn’t I check? Surely this isn’t how I’m going to go? To a fucking bear on the Great Wall out in the middle of nowhere? I’m not the live-fast-die-young type. Let me grow old in a care home somewhere. 

“Liv. What if we get outside of the tent?”

“If it is a bear, what if we go out?”

Liv looks at me like I have lost my mind. (At this point, there’s a good chance that I have.) If it merely smells us, it might come to investigate. But on the other hand, if it sees us, then it might turn and leave us alone and go hunt some smaller prey. Between us, we can look big in the dark, right?

She leans forward and says I should go first. We find the time to rock-paper-scissors. My heart is banging.

I lean forward. Liv lets out a scream with anticipation. I turn around to shush her sternly, fully aware I have no idea whether a scream makes a situation like this better or worse. There is no precedent for the process of my decision-making. Every reaction is now a hot mess of instinct, conditioning and my brain scrambling to piece together any scrap of Ray Mears and Bear Grylls that I’ve caught over my life.

The sniffing grows ever louder. It’s screaming in my head over against the absolute silence from a petrified Liv in the corner.

I lean for the zip. I take several attempts to grasp it because my hand is shaking so much. Eventually, I manage to steady my nerves long enough to take hold. Do I do it slowly or all at once, like a Band-Aid?

Band-Aid. Go! Zip open. I clamber out. My best foot forward. Or kind of forward. It's shaking so much that it oscillates six inches either way with every inch that I creep forward.

I see what’s going on and my brain pieces it together even though it’s forgotten all other functions. I scream. Liv practically backflips in fear. She has no idea what I’ve seen.

The weed’s got us way too high. I still hear the sniffing still but it’s not a bear or a wolf. 

It’s a rabbit. A big rabbit I must say, but a rabbit, nonetheless.

I turn to her with a huge smile on my face. I can’t even explain at first. God, it really is the biggest kind of rush thinking you’re going to die. Now don’t get me wrong. At this point, I realize I never was in any actual danger, but I thought I was. I genuinely believed I was going to die and so my nervous system acted accordingly. Blood had drained away from every non-essential area and was coursing through my body. I mean coursing. My heart was throbbing right into the underside of my ribcage.

I started to laugh and I just. Could. Not. Stop. 

Liv looked angry, as if she were going to kill me. Still laughing, I leaned in and kissed her. It was meant to be a quick kiss. A reassuring kiss. However, the combination of adrenaline and relief, it turns out, makes for a potent aphrodisiac.

I tried to pull away, but she pulled me back in. She kissed me hard. I could feel her breath panting. There was something in her breath, a heavy breath outward, the kind that would usually be rude, right in my face. She opened her eyes but didn’t look up when I pulled away.

A switch in my mind just flipped. My heart hadn’t slowed down from the scare, but my nervous system managed to spare me just a little blood for one essential purpose. And so it went—the hottest, most passionate, most animalistic sex that I ever had. There we were, young, alive and fucking on the Great Wall of China. 

Adventure

Goosebumps

NSFW

Best of 2021

Travel

I Thought I Was Going to Die and Then Had the Best Sex of My Life on the Great Wall of China

I've been told that the prostate is like the male clitoris, the most sensitive, explosive trigger to activate the male orgasm. I want to know this feeling so bad, and now that I have a partner willing to experiment with me, I can. The thing is, I'm terribly afraid of my ass. It's always been something that my shit comes out of, not something anyone's shit goes into.  

I can't remember ever not being afraid and ashamed of my butt. When I was little and I had a dirty diaper, I'd hide behind the couch so my parents wouldn't find me. I felt bad having this stinky backside—it was embarrassing. There was also something about the smell that I was drawn to. It was this kinky perversion. I liked the smell of my own stink, as I believe many of us do, but I was so afraid of touching or interacting with my poop. While I dug my own stench, I was also afraid of being found out that a) I smelled so bad and b) I was into it.  

As I got toilet trained, it was uncomfortable asking my parents to help me wipe my ass. It was humiliating to get on all fours or lift a cheek so my folks could clean me up. Then when I started going to school I just shut it off. Somehow my body knew not to poop at school. I was deathly afraid of being found out, not only that I defecated but that it smelled so bad. I think another factor was that much of my childhood was spent constipated, I never had a quick poop. This meant that if I was going to poop at school, everyone would know I was pooping cause I'd be out of class for so long—the ultimate embarrassment as a second- or fifth- or even seventh-grader.

Somewhere along that timeline, in elementary school, I went apple picking with my family. My brother and I enjoyed the hayrides and gathered as many apples as we could. We even went into the farm shop where they were selling sweet cinnamon apple donuts. I remember an awful feeling washed over me in the shop. I had to go. Really bad. I told my father who rushed me to the port-a-potty, but just as I was pulling down my pants it all came out everywhere. I completely exploded before I could get to the seat, shit-stained the walls, my legs, pants, shoes, socks. It was a war zone. I remember my parents finding a hose to wash me down and wrapping me in a cloth they had in the car, tossing most of my clothes in the trash and doing what they could to clean up my mess before we drove home. I felt the rough cloth cover my naked body, withered and cold in the back seat, overwhelmed with guilt and shame. 

That event was the pinnacle of my poop trauma and solidified a deep divide between me and my asshole. I didn't want to have anything to do with it from that point on. I had been betrayed. I did eventually get over my fear of shitting at school, but I could only do it in a private bathroom and would stake out which high school bathrooms were most secretive where I could take my time pooping in peace. If anyone ever knocked, or I was in a pressure situation and didn't have time to relax into it, I'd just hold it and feel uncomfortable.  

I know a lot of my shame around my butt was also tethered to uncomfortable feelings about my body in general. I always felt a bit big in my body, and sometimes I'd hear other kids call me chubby. I'd hide in my clothes, afraid to ever be in a situation where I'd have to take off my shirt, always sucking in my gut when I did. I never considered myself to be attractive and often found myself eating and snacking without thinking about it, ending up full most of the time. I was incredibly privileged to always have more than enough to eat, but I didn't know how to stop when I was full. I was disconnected from my body and turned to food for comfort and love.

It has taken me years of therapy and embodiment practices to begin to build a relationship with my body and feel good in my skin. I've gone through a lot of changes physically and have become generally comfortable with who I am as I take care of myself in the ways that feel right for me. 

A friend recently told me about his experience with a partner who did anal play and it elevated him to another planet. I was envious of his experience; I want to have that kind of sex, to know what it feels like to reach new sensual heights. I also have a partner who has offered, on multiple occasions, to put her finger in my butt, and we've gotten really, really close. I've started building a comfort level with my asshole in the bath, feeling around and seeing if I can get a finger inside when I'm clean. But a huge worry is my partner putting her finger in my butt and it coming out brown.  

I know I’m on the precipice of something special and am challenging myself in new ways. These days feel like everything is all about finding comfort within discomfort. Even if I don’t get to the ecstasy of anal play that I know exists, I am happy to finally be “loosening up” and discovering my whole body as a thing of majesty, beauty and constant change.

Why I'm Afraid of My Ass

As a 14-year-old in the summer of 2001, I was the coolest kid on the planet—despite my frail, zitty six-foot-three and 135-pound frame, with thick glasses, severe seasonal allergies and hormones making everything substantially worse. 

I had just gone to basketball camp, where I met my first love, Polly, and we shared our first kiss next to the nacho cheese machine. After camp ended we kept in touch over AIM, made plans to spend a day together and then met up with some fellow kids from camp to see a movie. The day was nice, full of swimming and ice cream, standard pubescent pursuits. Then we headed to the movie theater to see the highly anticipated summer blockbuster, The Fast and the Furious. Now, if you are somehow unfamiliar with this cinema classic, it stars Paul Walker (rest in peace) and a young Vin Diesel as bad boys who race cars, flex, sweat and attempt to speak in a coherent manner. It’s sorta like if Mountain Dew was carbonated with toxic masculinity, committed to film.

At the theater, we rendezvoused with our fellow vernal losers and barely got our seats due to the showing being completely sold out. No surprise there, who doesn’t want to see cool cars driven by hotties who can barely annunciate? Hell yeah. As the curtains opened and Vin Diesel showed off his big-ass arms, Polly suddenly put her hand on the crotch of my baggy skateboard shorts. This had never happened before. All of the blood in my body surged in one direction. I was absolutely beside myself with competing thoughts of excitement and all-encompassing anxiety: I’m in public, what if people see? Holy shit this is awesome. What if the kids from camp think? This is illegal, I’m going to jail. I’m going to die. What if she thinks my dick is weird? My dick is weird. I’m the fucking guy coolest guy in the world. (Next to Vin of course.)

Much to my immense excitement and utter disbelief, Polly proceeded to remove my chaste penis from its billowy cage. She then leaned over the arm of the deep movie theater chair and put my penis in her mouth. What? Incredible. All of the aforementioned ecstasies and fears returned tenfold. My first blowjob! I’m going to jail! 

Vin looked at me through the screen and, with his thick thumb-like head and jacked arms, nodded in approval. Hell yeah! Kickflip. In the midst of all this befuddling glory, I looked to my left at a kid from camp who was staring at me. His eyes were wide open and his mouth fully ajar. Busted. I’m definitely going to jail. But Polly didn’t care—she didn’t even notice! She kept blowing while cars were racing. Kids were staring. My heart was pounding. And then I came.

When I say came I mean I ejaculated all over myself: face, torso and baggy skateboard shorts, all covered. I had never been shot with a confetti cannon by Rip Taylor or slimed on Nickelodeon, but I could imagine it felt like that, just with less Vin Diesel and semen. Polly remained somehow unscathed by the natural disaster that just occurred and looked at me smiling. Then she sat up, gave me a kiss on the lips and returned back into her seat to enjoy the incredible film. 

I looked to my left again and that damn kid from camp was still leering wide-eyed and open-mouthed, except now significantly more mortified. The reality set in: I was covered in jizz, my jizz. Kids from camp were staring, and my mom had to pick me up in who-knew-how-soon? It was my first glimpse into the darkness that occurs post-orgasm. What had I done? I ran to the bathroom and doused myself in sink water so that when my mother picked us up and asked why I was wet, “I spilled my soda” made sense.

This has been one of my go-to stories since its inception. It’s funny, erotic, graphic, crude and from the adolescent period in one’s life when initial sexual encounters have a high probability of going wildly awry. As the years went on and I became more experienced sexually, understanding myself and my sexual being, this funny and nasty story revealed itself to be much more. It had deeply affected me and would take years to decode. 

My burgeoning relationship to sex and my own sexual body was connected to a serious sense of shame, guilt and risk-taking. Because it had been my first sexual encounter, one attached to shame and guilt, it triggered a maelstrom of positive and negative connections. That peeping kid from camp? His horrified face was now synonymous with sex. In my ensuing sexual encounters, I always wondered, “Am I bad? Am I disgusting? Is this wrong?” I thought sex in general, my sex, was something I should be ashamed of—a desire that I had enjoyed, just as I had enjoyed Vin’s cinematic performance. Explosive.

With the help of therapy and trusting partners, the pejorative connotations to sex and my own sexuality changed or faded away. I learned to love myself and to be proud of my kinks and sexual idiosyncrasies. Nacho cheese machines and Vin Diesel included. 

I’ll Always Remember My ‘Fast and Furious’ Blowjob

Drugs & Alcohol

Up, up and away! Time to get out of the house with The Doe.

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

American Stories

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Motherhood

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Mother Earth

Tearjerkers

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

New Beginnings

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

Money

The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

Every three months or so between 1978 and 1981, CBS flew me first class to Manhattan, put me up at the Plaza Hotel and paid all my expenses. In return, they picked my brain about their soap operas (officially renamed daytime stories in the iconic 1982 film, Tootsie). 

This California girl is a story savant, but back in the Paleolithic age, I had a lot to learn about style. On that first trip to New York, everything I packed was polyester. Do you really need to know anything else? 

Trust me, you can’t get into the Russian Tea Room wearing tight white jeans and a Hawaiian shirt unless you’re Gilda Radner. I stepped up my game for the next trip, buying a dry-clean-only dress at Contempo Casuals. It was better, but the paparazzi aggressively turned away from me as I left the hotel.

It all changed a few months later: the night my belt broke at Studio 54.

On this trip, I didn’t fly solo. I brought my boyfriend, a dentist turned band manager. I had a meeting. He had a meeting. I pitched ideas for shows like Search for Tomorrow to Bill Bell and his five assistants. My boyfriend pitched his band Rhoads to concert booking agents. Bill Bell was impressed I had sold three original soaps to prime-time networks without ever having worked as a writer on a daytime show. The booking agents were impressed that the lead singer for Rhoads (named for guitarist Randy Rhoads, who left Quiet Riot to team up with Ozzy Osbourne) was famous Randy’s little brother, whose real job was a delivery boy for a local L.A. florist. 

So, I started coming up with story ideas: What if no one knows she used artificial insemination to get pregnant? What if her priest is being kind to her because only he and her doctor know she has a brain tumor? What if she and the priest have sex and, then, the brain tumor vixen doesn’t know if her baby’s daddy is the sperm donor or Father O’ Flynn? I had multiple situations in which every character on every show could shock America. Meanwhile, my boyfriend told the promoters that the drummer in his band, Nick Menza, was being scouted by Megadeath.

Turns out soap operas love brain tumors, and Rhoads was signed as the opening act for the Foghat tour. Time to celebrate! And since it didn’t matter what it cost because we weren’t going to have to pay for it, why not go to Studio 54, the hottest club and disco in the whole damn world?

I had a dry-clean-only dress. It wasn’t a Halston. It was definitely not a Studio 54 dress. And unfortunately, it wasn’t the Rudi Gernreich minidress my dad brought home in the early ’70s—a neon-yellow jersey material with see-through plastic in places you don’t want your dress to be see-through. I would have killed to have had that dress in my suitcase. Instead, I put on my black front-and-back V-neck dress. Then I cinched the belt, making the dress very short.

The only weapons I had were genetic: nice legs and huge, real boobs that pointed straight forward, like they’re saluting. I went braless because, well, just because. Also, there’s that Italian Viking boyfriend. Gorgeous and 6-foot-6-inches. He didn’t like to wear underwear, either. We had a lot in common. 

Really, I have no idea how or why. The only thing I know for sure is it wasn’t my style. Until my belt broke. Hang on, I’m getting ahead of myself.

What can I say about Studio 54 that hasn’t already been said? Only that it was more than any photo or film can show. The music massaged your ovaries. It was so loud I knew I would need a hearing aid when I got old, but I didn’t care. The lights were cosmic in that they felt like a natural phenomenon. I knew it wouldn’t be too long before I had a blinding migraine and would need a Quaalude. Well, I came to the right place for all of that.

Celebrities made eye contact with you at Studio 54. We were all in the moment together. Grace Jones danced by in a neon green onesie, and she was so beautiful I forgot to breathe. Anyone you saw up close—or could reach out and touch—you danced with, even if only for a few seconds.

I was in the bathroom when my belt exploded. It didn’t just break; it totally shredded. My dress, once ruched into a mini, fell hard. It was now just below my knees, which meant that the V’s in the neck and back also fell. The front V stopped beyond my navel. The back V clearly introduced the crack of my ass. 

I didn’t know what to do, so I threw my belt away and walked tall out of the bathroom into a pack of gay men who discovered me and dragged me to booths where the really important people were hanging out. “Look at this dress!” 

Everyone was looking. I was spun, touched and interrogated. Who is the designer? “God,” was my answer. And they accepted it. I danced that dress off and back on the rest of the night, happy I had said no to Playboy years before and that the remarkable phenomenon that was Studio 54 was my coming out party. 

This history is requested by my daughter’s friends, like Adriana Mencias, a talented stylist from Tucson, and my Beverly Hills forever friend Mario Gonzales, tailor to the stars. Mario can vouch for the fact that although I still have very little style, I continue to walk tall.

Always remember: Today’s fashion blunder is tomorrow’s haute couture.

The Night I Broke My Belt at Studio 54

I have a walk-in closet full of clothing. I also have nothing to wear. 

I know it seems like a First World problem (probably because it is), but getting dressed sucks. Seriously, there are days when I am to the point of tears because nothing in my closet fits. And then comes the guilt as I’m literally standing in a closet full of clothing, crying, because I feel awful about my body and how it looks when I try to create an outfit that’s cute, comfortable and appropriate for whatever the weather is doing.

Some of that is my own fault—hello, weight gain of the 30s combined with the stress of the crazy world we live in. But, mostly, women’s clothing is completely stupid. And it leaves me wondering: Why is that? So many things about the options available just make no sense to me.

Exhibit A: women’s clothing is generally paper-thin, if not thinner. It’s basically transparent. And, if you’re unaware, we women typically wear this undergarment called a bra. Creating a shirt or a dress that is thinner than the paper shooting out of my printer is just mind-boggling to me. What’s the point? 

And, when summers get hot and humid, the last thing I personally want to do is layer a tank top under another tank top to keep people from seeing my underwear. But alas, unless I want to show up to a business meeting with my bra clearly visible to the businessmen in the room, double tank tops it is. 

Maybe it’s a conspiracy with the deodorant and perfume manufacturers, since all that layering in hot weather causes lots of sweat and odor. Case in point: I just attended an outdoor music festival in our tiny town. The high of the day was somewhere in the 90s, complete with a sky-high humidity level. After struggling to find something cool and comfortable to wear, I settled on a pair of denim shorts and a tank top that was entirely too fitted for my ample stomach. However, I just went with it because the tank had some lining (in front only, of course) so I didn’t have to double tank it up.

Speaking of bras: What’s up with dresses that have a slightly narrowed cut right at the shoulders where the bra straps fall? I’m not even talking about halter tops or off-the-shoulder dresses here. It’s not enough of a narrowing to justify the hassle of finding a strapless bra. It’s more so that the designer decided to curve the dress straps inward just enough to where bra straps become impossible to hide. Looks great on the hanger, not so much on the person.

And that tank top with a front-only lining that I wore to the outdoor music festival? It dipped a little too low in the armholes while shifting down just the right way so the sides of my bra were unfortunately hanging out. It’s like someone is playing tricks on me with an evil little scheme: Let’s make this shirt fit in all other ways except this one.

I mean, yes, people generally know that a lot of women wear bras. That doesn’t mean, however, that all of us are comfortable with our bras hanging out. 

Trends irritate me. Trends that make getting dressed even more difficult really irritate me. This year seems to have an overabundance of crop tops. In every single department of every single clothing store. It’s like Oprah went off the deep end and said “You get a crop top! And you get a crop top! Everybody gets a crop top!” 

There’s no way I’m showing off my pasty white belly unless I’m in a swimsuit. And come to think of it, I have a tankini so I don’t even do that. 

And don’t even get me started on complicated shirts. Wrap shirts, in theory, are beautiful. In reality? I can’t figure out how to get the dang thing on! Huge cowl necks are also a problem. Do you let it all hang out in front? Do you fluff it? Do you tie it in a bow and throw it over your shoulder? 

After three decades of struggling to find cute clothing, I have finally made a rule for myself that I cannot buy something if I can’t easily get in or out of it. So far, it’s working pretty well—I haven’t gotten caught in a shirt with no way out in at least a year.

Along those lines, who decided that dresses should have to be slipped on over the head? I have a feeling I can’t be the only woman on Earth who does her hair and makeup before getting dressed. I also put deodorant on, which inevitably gets transferred onto whatever dress I am struggling into at that moment. Seriously, why not just add a zipper?

My husband can go online to Levi’s and buy 12 pairs of jeans and just know that they’ll fit. He just looks at the style number on his jeans and orders himself a few new pairs. And somehow, they just magically fit. Me? Not so much. Me trying to find well-fitting jeans is something I don’t even like to think about.

For one thing, sizing is all over the place with women’s clothing. Case in point: I wear an extra small in the Michael Kors brand. However, I’ve got clothing hanging in my closet from Ann Taylor Loft that’s something ridiculous like a double zero. Vanity sizing does no favors for anyone. Can somebody please make some rules about measurements and sizing in women’s clothing?

Any woman under five foot three knows the struggle of finding pants that fit in all the right places, including in length. There’s this thing called the petite section which, in theory, should provide the solution to pants and jeans that are miles too long. 

This is where boob pants come in. You know the ones I mean: elastic-waist slacks that have such a high rise to them that they double as underwire. They’re generally marketed to women of a certain age, and hey—more power to you if you can rock those things. 

However, I do not wish to wear pants that sit just below my boobs. I don’t find it terribly flattering. Or comfortable, for that matter. And it baffles me that clothing manufacturers have yet to understand, in 2021, that not all petite women are over the age of 80.

From sizing issues to silhouette issues to weird ways to get in and out of clothing, not to mention the boob pants, I find it hard to fathom we don’t have a better way of creating fashion for women in this day and age. 

Can someone please fix these stupid issues in women’s clothing? I would be eternally grateful. And, heck, I’d even help you design them. 

Why Is Women’s Clothing So Stupid?

In my defense, I had no idea how sexy my feet were. Had I been aware, I might have been on my guard against kinky strangers trying to prey on them. But for better or worse, I was totally clueless about the ravishing appeal of my lower extremities when I met a charming stranger at the farmer's market and was seduced into an affair of the feet. 

There I was, picking through the heirloom tomatoes when I suddenly felt a pair of eyes on me. Looking up, I met the gaze of a terribly good-looking stranger. So handsome that I had to glance subtly over my shoulder to be sure he was looking at me, and not some L.A. model standing behind me. 

Flustered, and with my curiosity aroused, I pretended to focus on the piles of fruit in front of me. When I worked up the courage to take another peek, my mystery dude was still staring. But now a feeling of familiarity began to wash over me. 

“Have I seen this guy on TV?” I thought. “Or do I know him from somewhere else?” But because I couldn’t place him—and also because I was in a long-distance relationship—I decided to simply enjoy the ego stroke and walk away. And this is where my feet got me into trouble. Instead of marching me straight back to the office, they turned me around to take one last look. 

Now Mr. Seriously Handsome was walking straight towards me with a broad smile on his face. And that’s when it hit me: OMG, that’s the flirty French waiter from the wine bar I went to last week! Flattered that he would cross several tables of produce to talk to me, I thought fuck getting back to work on time, and decided to stay and have a chat.

After the whole “Hey, do you remember me?” thing, we officially introduced ourselves and had a perfectly normal, mildly flirty chat. And just when I was thinking I should probably get back to the agency, he came out with it. 

“Hey, I noticed you wear a lot of open-toed shoes, and I’m doing this project where I photograph people’s feet. Would you mind meeting me in the park one day so I could take some pictures?”

You’d think by this point there would have been alarm bells warning me to abort the mission, but no. The only way I can explain my lack of freak-dar is that I worked in an advertising agency full of edgy designers, all of them with side projects that seemed equally weird. The wine bar guy was also at least ten years younger than me, and I couldn’t imagine he was really interested. So I gave him my number and headed back to the office thinking he was just another crazy L.A. artist/waiter.

The next day, he called me and we arranged a day to meet at the park. But when that Tuesday rolled around I had to call and cancel our little photo session because a long-awaited Indian trunk was finally being delivered to my house.

“That’s OK,” he said, “I can come to you.” Caught off guard, I gave him my address. And this is where a mild panic began to set in. Number one, because he could have been a serial killer. Number two, because I wasn’t sure my nail polish was right for the shoot. Number three, because I had never quite gotten his name straight. So now some nameless French serial killer was on his way to my apartment. What the fuck was I thinking?!

He showed up within the hour and was so cute and charming that I immediately relaxed. And I came clean about the name confusion which he finally set me straight on. (But in order to protect the names of mildly kinky Frenchmen, we’ll just call him Jean Doe.)

He was super easy to talk to, but as we chatted I noticed he didn’t have a professional camera on him. When he did finally get around to taking pictures he just whipped out his cell phone. Then he posed my feet on a chair. Click. On the terrace. Click. Coquettishly crossed on the carpet. Click. 

It was all starting to feel a bit odd, but the conversation kept flowing naturally as we took a seat on the couch. This is when he reached out, ever so suavely, and took one of my feet in his hands and began to massage it.

It felt vaguely wrong, and yet so incredibly good. And though I kept telling myself I should stop him, I could never get the words out of my mouth. I mean a Frenchman with movie star good looks was giving me the best foot massage of my life, and I was supposed to resist? Come on.

Just when I wanted to groan with pleasure, he bent over one of the objects of his affection and started sucking on my big toe. I gasped and pulled my foot away without thinking. But did he flinch for even a second? No. He just pulled my foot back to him like an errant little sheep that had wandered from the flock and started caressing it again. All the while, we talked about music, work and life until he moved over to my other foot—this time with no toe-sucking.

When he finished, he thanked me as if nothing weird had transpired, kissed me on the cheek and left. I assumed that the pictures he took were for his spank bank and that I would never hear from Jean Doe again—something that filled me with a sense of relief, and my feet with a vague sense of disappointment.

I was ready to write it off as a funny anecdote when he called me again a few days later and told me he was looking at my pictures. Uh oh. I should have hung up, but did I? No. Nor could I resist when he invited me over to his place to cook me dinner. What can I say? My feet are sluts. He was also a perfect storm of temptations: French, a cook and a wine lover, who I now knew gave a killer foot massage.

With more than a twinge of guilt, but unable to resist, I agreed to what was obviously a footy call. Merde!

I showed up at his place the next night. Just like before, we joked around and had a perfectly normal conversation. The pasta, cabernet and strawberry tart were also amazing. But I knew where all of this was heading.

So as the evening progressed, I allowed my wayward feet to meander over to the couch and place themselves in his lap. They were, of course, given the royal treatment. And when he began to kiss them, I didn’t pull away this time. Nor did I hit the ground running when he unzipped and pleasured himself while fondling my tootsies.

Oh, the thrill and shame of it. Yes, the wine probably helped, but there was no denying that I had essentially whored my feet out for a good meal with a handsome stranger. Who the hell was I?

Aside from the kinky foot play, the whole evening seemed perfectly normal. He was considerate and utterly charming the entire time. Still, when I walked out the door I decided that this bipedal affair must come to an end.

That is until he invited me to have lunch at his place the following week. Oh god, this was becoming a thing! “But if there’s only action below my ankles,” I told myself, “It’s not cheating.” And with this rationalization, I promptly accepted his invitation.

This time I was treated to shrimp with smoked paprika and a nice white wine from his collection. Before I knew it, we were kissing on the couch. There went the whole “below the ankles” theory out the window. 

Eventually, he did move south to my feet, which were like putty in his hands. He caressed them while he got off again, and then asked if there was anything he could do for me. Racked with guilt, I forewent the offer and instead asked him a question.

“I’m just built that way,” he replied, nonchalantly. 

And while I felt more curiosity than anything about his fetish at this point, my little tryst with Jean Doe began to feel rather sordid. Especially since he had to rush off to a friend’s wedding right after we finished. My feet might be a little slutty, but they definitely deserved more. 

This time I walked out, and never crossed his doorstep again, despite him calling me from time to time for about a year. (Apparently, my feet had that certain je ne sais quoi.) When I look back now, I cringe a little bit, not at his behavior, but at mine. He was perfectly OK with who he was. But I was obviously a little more of a freak than I was willing to admit—not to mention in a relationship.

So why did I do it? The food? The wine? The foot massage? Because it was forbidden? Or was it just the attention from an incredibly handsome man that made me pimp my feet out? I’m not sure I have the answer. But I do know my feet will always remember him fondly.

When it’s all said and done, I suppose it could have happened to anyone. At least anyone with attractive, naughty feet. What can I say, friends? Vive la foot fetish!

I Pimped My Feet Out to a Frenchman

The other night in bed my wife gazed into my eyes and then recoiled in horror.

“Your eyebrows!” she said. “What has happened!?”

It's all too true; over the last couple weeks it seems like my eyebrows have reached some sort of hideous aging threshold and have turned into old man bushy ape-brows, all thick and bristly and intense. I waggled them suggestively.

“On the downside, my eyebrows are repulsive,” I said. “But, on the upside, you need never have sex with me again!”

My wife laughed, because even after twenty years and the unfortunate eyebrow situation, she still thinks I'm kind of funny. Also, she laughed because what I said was true: We are not doing much of the sex. I can't honestly even remember the last time we had sex. There was, I think, a handjob in the last six months. Actual full-on sexy sexing with penetration and thrusting and all—over a year. Maybe more.

The sex death of our universe is not, in fact, about my eyebrows. It's not because we've grown apart, either, or because my wife does not understand me, or because she understands me all too well.

It's mostly because she has chronic pain issues.

Over the last few years, her occasional migraines have stopped being occasional, and become an every day, twice on Sundays—sometimes more than twice on Sundays—gauntlet of pain and despair. Cannabis helps, but, despite a lot of doctor's visits, she hasn't gotten much relief. Working is difficult. Sex is more difficult than that.

I would be lying if I said I didn't miss sex. Like most couples, we did a lot of fornicating early in our relationship, back when our eyebrows were young and new and filled with concupiscence. She had to get her clitoris ring out because my penis was too large and too often inserted for clitoris ring comfort. I fisted her so often that her vaginal juices exacerbated my eczema. Police chastised us for making out in my car. There may have been light bondage. We may have hired a sex worker, because my wife may be bi. There were fluids and dirty talk and embarrassing hickeys and general naughtiness. It was fun. It gave us stories to tell our grandchildren. Or rather, stories to adamantly not tell our grandchildren.

And then we had a kid, and got older and creakier and more boring, and the sex faded into the background—until my wife's migraines finally put a stake through its heart for good.

Our culture is constantly telling me that that stake through the heart of the fucking is also a stake through the heart of our marriage. Novels and television shows and relationship advice columns assure me that if the passion has gone, someone is going to start to cheat, and soon there will be tears and bitterness and drama. My wife will notice my eczema flaring up and suspect. I will hit the wall in rage like Adam Driver, but, you know, with bushier eyebrows and less brooding appeal. And then we'll have to hire lawyers and start divvying up the books and the cats and the large dog and the large high-schooler.

It's true that the future is always in motion, and you never know when you're going to turn into Adam Driver. But, overall, divorce and moving out seem pretty unlikely, and not just because of the difficulty of assignations under lockdown. (Not to mention the difficulty of moving out.)

My sex drive hasn't disappeared. But that's why God invented masturbation and, shortly thereafter, internet porn. It's not necessarily an ideal solution in every way, but the fact that our basement floods semi-regularly isn't ideal in every way either. Not everything in a marriage or in a life is going to be perfect bliss.

Different people are different, of course, and how much, and what kind of imperfect bliss you can reconcile yourself to varies wildly. Some people, I'm sure, would find a sexless marriage intolerable, just as some people would find a polyamorous marriage intolerable, or a kink-less marriage—or what have you. I don't think anyone is bad or immoral for wanting more sex in their marriage, or for feeling they can't adjust to a sexless marriage.

But I do resent all the cultural scripts that tell me that I'm boring or broken or that my marriage is doomed because I'm not fucking enough. I'm all for normalizing kink, but we should also be willing to normalize kink-lessness. Lots of sex isn't a moral failure, weird sex isn't a moral failure, and not having sex isn't a moral failure. The amount and kind of sex you have doesn't have to define a relationship. Or a marriage.

Because, clitoris ring or no clitoris ring, I love my wife. She's my sweetheart still; the person who I want to lie down beside each night and my cuddle partner. There is no one I would rather laugh with about not having sex. We've been together for more than two decades, and we've had maybe two fights in all that time. We share cats, we share books, we share the large high schooler. I still make her laugh, and vice versa. Sex just isn't the most important thing. If I'm given the choice of sex with someone else or no sex with my wife, it wouldn't be close. I'd choose my wife every time. And I do so every day.

My Wife and I Are Living in a Sexless Marriage

When I was around seven or eight, my family brought home a female kitten named Tiger.

My first memory of Tiger was watching her, hop from room to room, a playful ball of ginger and white fur.

My second memory was watching Tiger dig her claws so deep into my brother's head that I could see the blood trickle down his temples.

I knew this, my brother knew this, everyone knew this and yet he decided to do it anyway. And so, he was punished.

Tiger spent her life explaining, in her way, how she did like it when you picked her up, sat too close or petted her too hard or too long. And she was good at it.

Those who broke her rules were hit with a claw. Most got the message right away, but for those who needed reminding, Tiger was happy to oblige. Now, while I have known many strong females in my life, none could quite articulate the need to respect boundaries as well as Tiger.

Even today, with all three of us fully grown men, whenever we bring up the topic of dangerous animals, we find ourselves reminded of Tiger—as we speak in soft worried tones, and rub at our old scars.

She scared people, she scared cats, she even scared the neighbor's dog: It was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, squat and energetic, and I can still see the look of glee on its face as it chased her into my house and up the stairs. I also remember what happened when Tiger was halfway up the stairs, how she stopped suddenly, as if remembering, and how she turned and attacked.

I can still hear it, the sudden yelp of surprise as Tiger sent a flurry of slashes across the eyes of the dog. Then he ran, with Tiger close behind, chasing him down the stairs, out into the street and, finally, into his home.

And there he remained, bloody and terrified, with Tiger returning to the house, more or less fine, only now all of her hair stood on end. She must have spent a whole month sitting there, frowning like a ball of angry fluff.

Everyone was scared, except for me, who as someone who liked to be left alone, found her attitude to be amazing. Nobody gained respect like Tiger.

Another memory begins with me sitting on the couch, minding my own business. She was there, hopping up on the seat next to me. I was so scared that I can still feel it, the tightness in my chest as I sat there, holding my breath. And I remember the way she looked at me, neither angry or afraid, but what I saw in those big green eyes was curiosity, and that scared me more than anything. This woman had stared down parents and fought off dogs, so how could I not feel absolutely terrified as she sat there, trying to figure me out?

Then, after a moment, as if some unsaid agreement had been made, she stepped over, onto my lap and curled up into a ball. This was, and still is, one of my greatest moments. To have someone who can make people listen, and I mean really listen, to have someone with that kind of power choose to sit with me? How could it not mean something?

I've always known that beings like Tiger change the world, not through bullying, but by fighting back, by saying no when the bullies come and try and pick you up. But it wasn't until she sat on my lap that I realized that animals like Tiger are there to teach us. They just have to be there, to give you enough time to pay attention and to learn how to grow.

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