by Patrick Okell
I live on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. I like it all right. I can walk home from work, which is nice except for the hill part. The last four long blocks of my walk are straight up. Some days when I walk home I'm tempted to call a taxi from the 7-Eleven at the bottom. I'm always walking in a suit unless it's Friday (casual day), the one day out of five I am allowed to express my individuality through khaki dockers and a blue button down shirt, and about halfway up the hill I begin to sweat. Sweating in a suit really isn't cool unless you are knocking over a bank or something. Sometimes people driving down the hill yell stuff at me as I walk up it. This annoys the hell out of me. I'm minding my own damn business, doing my "Little Engine that Could" routine climbing up this hill, trying not to dirty a good shirt and some jackass screams something at me. It makes me jump and sort of lose my stride and then I wish I had a handgun, and the thought that I wish I had a handgun so I could blow some wanker's head off is disturbing enough to sort of ruin the rest of my walk. The other day some guy, who looked relatively normal — mid twenties, short hair and a goatee I think — aimed a vicious look at me and yelled, "hey, fagfuck!" I'm not sure what a "fagfuck" is, but I don't think I am one, and even if I were, I don't think he should yell it at me or anyone else. After I finished thinking about how I would like to pump the back end of his car full of lead, I started thinking about why exactly he would call me a "fagfuck."
I was wearing a blue suit and a gray raincoat and walking up Queen Anne Hill. It didn't seem very "fagfuck"y to me. It's true I was carrying a bag with a block of watercolor paper I had just bought at Seattle Art Supply. This may have been what appeared "fagfuck"ed about me, not that art supplies should in any way "fagfuck" anyone. But I checked the bag, and there was nothing saying "Seattle Art Supply", or "Art Supply", or "Art", or "Supply" or even "Seattle", just a white and yellow bag. The bag was opaque so he couldn't have possibly seen through it and known I was carrying watercolor paper. I thought that perhaps he knew the bag from its white and yellow design because he too shopped at Seattle Art Supply and could tell at 40 miles per hour what it was. This puzzled me though, since that would mean, if art supplies alone made one a "fagfuck", that he too was probably a "fagfuck."
It also struck me as odd that I was called a "fagfuck" as I walked up Queen Anne Hill. You see as far as I know Queen Anne is not really known for having a large "fagfuck" population. The fact that I was wearing a blue suit and walking up Queen Anne Hill, would, I think, much more likely result in my being called a "yuppiefuck" by some bitter graduate student like my friend Hadley.
It's true, Queen Anne Hill is full of yuppies. There's really nothing wrong with that I suppose. I guess I'm one too, and I guess there is nothing wrong with that either. In fact it is sort of amusing to live in a yuppie neighborhood after living in a crackhead neighborhood for a few years. On Sunday morning I see a lot of people — women mostly, though some couples — clad in running tights, sweatshirts and baseball caps walking backwards up my hill. They walk to the top backwards, then don't turn around actually and walk back down forward, then back up again backwards. This all goes on just steps from my front porch. Apparently it does something to your ass. It definitely does something to my ass: makes it want to sit down on the porch and smoke cigarettes while I watch this fitness-freak parade.
You see, like I said before, I live on a steep hill. This sort of reminds me of what I was intending to write about. My hill is so damn steep that one day a few months ago my pants blew off it and straight out into the jet stream, and from there who knows — China, Renton, space? At least that's what I thought. But you have to remember I live on a steep hill full of "yuppiefucks."
It was just before this Christmas past, and I received an order to fly down to Frisco on business. (I like to call San Francisco "Frisco" 'cuz it seems to piss off the Friscans.) You could read it, and I could tell it, like there was some big deal gone sour and the firm knew they needed someone with my confidence and competence to go down there and sort things out — a sharp new blade straight out of the gate to cut through the crap and get it done. The truth is though that it was the week before Christmas, and there was some tedious, mind-numbing work (my specialty) to be done and nobody else wanted to go. Naturally, I was the man for the job. I didn't really mind though. I wasn't really in the Christmas spirit yet and I figured a week down in the El Nino-addled Bay area winter might do the trick. I could catch up with some cats from law school I hadn't seen in a while. And the real beauty of it was all the low stress billable hours I would accumulate. Not only was the work boring and stress free, but you can pay me to read magazines in an airport all day long! So, anyway, not to get overly engrossed in work issues, I was quite glad to wear some paint off the numbers of my newly-issued Corporate Amex card and cost a particularly unsavory client a bundle of clams.
I hurried home, as much as you can hurry while waiting for the bus, stopping by my neighborhood dry-cleaner's on the way. I like this place because it is always 30% off. In fact they have "30% Off" painted in big red letters on their window. I don't know what the regular price is (though my friend Mike Visaya did the math and claims that it is 43% more), and it doesn't seem to be a limited time special — it's just "30% Off" all the time. Damn nice of them if you ask me. And they spare no starch — even "light starchy" cracks when you first bend your elbows — nearly waterproof too! I had just enough time to drag my ass up the hill and shove a couple of freshly pressed suits into my bag before heading to the airport.
The trip to Frisco was fine (didn't even miss the flight), and the week was good. I was locked in a small, windowless room full of very sensitive documents for most of the time. I managed to get to some fine restaurants on the client's tab though, and ate as much as I possibly could, rode around in a lot of taxis and saw some friends from law school and my wonderfully crazy uncle.
It happened on the third day. That day I awoke late as usual to the knock of the maid bringing me my breakfast and morning paper. I swallowed the orange juice and tried to shake off the bourbon of the night before. I pulled the jacket of suit no. 3 off of its hanger and then, standing there dumbly in socks, underwear and shirt, looked in horror at the hanger swinging empty from the closet pole. Half my suit was missing - the bottom half!
Now this would be a truly great story — a story as good as the one of my dad on his first business trip showing up sopping wet for the meeting after, in a rush to find the hotel conference room, he mistakenly trod over what he thought was a strangely blue rug, but turned out to be a round jacuzzi pool — if I had been forced to run out of the hotel pantless and desperate and ended up late for work in a pair of black leather motorcycle chaps from the nearest Castro clothier. Unfortunately that is not what happened. You see this being suit no. 3, I naturally had two others (having brought 3 in the interest of economy and the liberation of casual Friday). I simply pulled suit no. 1 back off the bench a little early and ambled down the street to the office.
That night I called my mother to see if, when she was up at my place picking up my mail, she might have a look around and see where my pants might have gotten to. She called back later to say that they were not in the closet, on the floor, under the bed or anywhere else in the apartment. I realized what had surely happened. They must have fallen off the hanger after I picked them up from the cleaner's. She checked the garden outside my door and the immediate sidewalk. Nothing. It had been windy as hell that day, I remembered, and the load of dry-cleaning hanging over my shoulder had blown off my back like a cape. I surmised that they must have simply blown away — off of that hill and into oblivion.
It sort of burned me up. That suit probably cost me between three and four hundred bucks. Sure you could spend a lot more on a suit, but it wasn't exactly chump change either, and besides, I liked that one. Bitter at the prospect of having to shell out hundreds of hard-won clams on another work uniform, I resolved to eat two deserts and drink more wine with dinner the next three nights. The rest of the trip passed without event, or at least without event that I need to mention here. (I realize I am probably shocking you, poor reader, with this exercise of restraint.)
I arrived back in the jet city (that's what they used to call Seattle before they came up with the infinitely more lame, "Emerald City") on Saturday afternoon, with just enough time to a grab a couple of Beanie Babies at the airport gift shop and head up to the annual Christmas party. I caught the bus up from Sea-Tac's bleak, off-ramp aesthetic, through what Nordstrom passes off as hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping downtown, and finally to my not-quite-urban enclave of enormous houses and cramped apartments. I stopped in at the cleaner's just in case they had a line on my stray pants knowing full well that they wouldn't.
As I trudged up the hill with my suitcase dragging behind me, I fixed my eyes on a telephone pole part way up the block. As I neared it, knowing it marked the first stage of my ascent, the cyclone of, "lost cat," "found cat," "yardsale," "meditation lessons," and "aromatherapy" fliers stapled to its creosote blackness began to come into focus. One in particular caught my attention. I'd never seen another quite like it. "Have you seen my pants?" asked the hook line. I stopped walking and read on dumbly: "Lost pants. 100% wool, blue flannel. Waist:34, Inseam: 32. Lost on 12/17 at or near 404 Highland Drive." That was my size. That was my address. It continued, "If found please call Patrick at 301-9835." That was me. Those were my lost pants! I looked up the street at the pole marking the halfway point in my climb and saw another crisp white flier. My mother, in an act of utterly humiliating kindness, had postered my new neighborhood in an effort to recover my pants.
I tore the paper away from its staples and hurried toward the next pole. Doing the same, I spied another hanging from the stop sign across the street. Three more blocks rendered a fistful of fliers and I knew there were still more. There was one nailed to the post holding up my mailbox outside my door. The "404" on the flier lined up neatly with the "404" on the box, right under my name in new, reflective letters. Looking around to be sure no one was watching, I tore it off and ducked into my apartment.
"Jesus! Does your mom hate you?" was Mike Visaya's comment when I related the tale to him over the phone. This of course only after I had checked my answering machine for any legitimate leads or crank calls. I imagined getting calls late at night and hearing a deep, panting voice ask, "are you wearing pants?" or "I've got your pants, now do what I say or they become cut-offs!" I could hear neighbors calling to me as I walked down the street to work in the morning: "Did you find your pants?" or "Try to keep your pants on today!" Not even two months in the new pad, and my hipster image was broken beyond repair.
A few weeks later it was the beginning of the new year and I was home from work studying for the bar exam. Yeah I know I should have passed it in July, but anyone who knows anything knows that passing it the first time isn't cool. I mean just look at J.F.K. Junior. Hell, if I failed it a couple more times maybe I can start a bad magazine and marry a model. So it's about 11 a.m., and any lawyer worth a damn has somehow managed to bill 7 hours by now, but I am just getting up to settle in to a full day of memorizing the tortured nuances of secured transactions and commercial paper.
I am standing at the sink shaving when I hear voices from the laundry room. My apartment consists of the converted bottom floor of a big, old, three-story house. The laundry room is on my floor and there is a door leading directly into it from my bathroom. I could hear two of the women who live in my building, Amber and Naomi. They're both about my age and very pleasant to talk to, that is when I can remember my name around them if you know what I mean. Naomi is a sometimes model, sometimes waitress and aspiring actress, while Amber works for an advertising firm.
I heard one of them say what sounded like my name. I stopped shaving and turned off the water so that I could hear them better. Amber asked Naomi if she had met me yet. Naomi answered that she had, and then said something that might have been, "he's really cute," or maybe, "he seems nice." I don't know, I couldn't quite make it out. At this point I was smearing shaving cream all over the door as I pressed my head against it in hopes of hearing better.
"Too bad about his pants, " laughed Amber.
"What do you mean?"
"You didn't see the fliers?"
"What fliers?" Naomi's sultry voice asked.
"He lost his pants somehow and put up fliers all over the neighborhood trying to find them. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen."
"He lost his pants?"
"Yeah, I don't know how the hell he lost his pants, but it said, 'Lost pants … at or around 404 Highland Drive … please call Patrick.'"
"That's really strange …"
"Yeah, I know. What a freak." Amber cut her off.
"No, I mean I found some pants."
"You're kidding."
"No, they were hanging on a bush out in the garden near the street."
"Oh my God, they must have been his pants!"
"I had no idea."
"How could you not know? The fliers were EVERYWHERE!"
"I don't know, I guess I just didn't pay attention."
"What did you do with them?"
"With what?"
"With the pants."
"Oh, for some reason I brought them home. I don't know what I thought I was going to do with them. I ended up finally donating them to a homeless shelter. They were kind of ugly."
"Really?"
"Yeah, sort of a cobalt blue flannel with a bit of a darker navy plaid pattern."
"Poor guy." Amber laughed.
"Yeah, wow — what a riot."
I pulled my face away from the door. The part that I could see in the mirror, the part that wasn't covered with shaving cream, was red with shame. They thought I was a loser. Naomi and Amber and the whole neighborhood thought I was pathetic and wore ugly pants! Not only that, but the next guy who hustled me for change outside my office would probably be wearing them.
She gave them to a homeless shelter?!! At least in my old, crackhead neighborhood, I could have bought them back at some junkie's sidewalk sale at 3 a.m. for a buck and a half along with old toasters and Diana Ross LPs. Maybe my bitter graduate student friend, Hadley was right. Maybe yuppies do suck.
