To the overtly effeminate, dapper young Asian man wearing skin tight yellow and black acid wash jeans on the N train last night, I only have one thing to say to you. Where can I buy a freakin’ pair? I want them…nay, I need them. I can understand why you may have thought I was staring at your not so discreet bulge—which was made even more painfully apparent by the tightness of the sausage casing over your legs—especially as it was at my eye level. The way you flaunted it, putting your hand on your hips and shifting side to side, was like watching a psychiatrist’s gold watch swinging back and forth, inducing a momentary state of hypnosis.
But what I was really hypnotized by was your pants. A rare, bright gem amid a pile of pale subway riders. Those blackboard-chalk-yellow pants swirling around in front of me got me spinning until suddenly I found myself back in 7th grade, outside of the window at Jean Country BEGGING my mother for a pair of acid wash jeans. They had every color imaginable hanging up on a wall—hot colors on black and bright pastel colors on white. I wanted them as badly as I secretly wanted to keep playing with Barbies and Jem and the Holograms, despite the fact that it was no longer cool to do so in middle school.
I’m sure it wasn’t the pants my mother objected to, but we didn’t have very much money, so I missed out on a lot of the “hip” styles of the times. Mind you, these were fashion’s worst ever times—the 80s. At the end of this decade, when we awoke in a horrifying haze of big hair and shoulder pads, we swore that we’d NEVER go back. But one only need to trot into Brooklyn to see how the Hipsters have brought the most questionable of the 80s trends back into fashion. Thus the reason, I am sure, that you yourself were wearing those glorious pants.
So, when all of my predominately Italian American junior high school classmates were wearing IOU sweatshirts and gold chains – I had on the Sears wannabe special. If I had been a boy, I would have begged for Z.Cavaricci pants as well, surely to no avail, and drench myself in Drakkar Noir. When Skids became the fad, my mom said they looked like pajama pants and refused to pay the outlandish price for a pair. Even if she had, those baggy checkered pants wouldn’t have fit me, even in size small. Because I was a 90 pound, gangly dork with braces, a spiked mullet and bad taste. And later when even my father had those MC Hammer pants, I was not able to get a pair.
Despite the fact that I was convinced I was stylish, I once overheard a friend saying I needed help in the fashion department. I guess my ruffled skirt with spandex half leggings and tie dye shirt with suspenders didn’t impress. But I did have some cool things. For example, I saved up for ages to get an acid wash jean jacket (from Sears), and made it cool by sewing a huge, airbrushed Jon Bon Jovi face patch onto the back. I still have it. Maybe I should throw it on next time I go into Williamsburg. And for my college friends who claimed I was stuck in the 80s in 1994, the reason is that once I could afford the clothes, I didn’t want to give them up so fast!
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| AmyMC, circa 1987 |
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