Tonight I’ll attend the Nasher Prize reveal at The Warehouse. Though I’ve never gone to one of these gigs before, I imagine it’ll be the sort of social setting that will make me so nervous that I’ll slam three glasses chard and drop vulgarities into casual conversation in an ill-advised attempt to appear relaxed. And this jeans problem I’m having certainly won’t help. Let me explain.
This morning I put on a recently washed pair of burgundy Bonobos jeans. Maybe they are maroon. But burgundy sounds way more like a color one should wear when one is in the company of a Rachofsky, so I’m going with burgundy. Before my daughter left the house for school, I knelt to tie her shoes and picked up a whiff of what smelled like stinky feet. “Are you wearing dirty socks?” I asked her, bowing lower to better smell her feet, looking, I’m sure, like a peasant pleading to a lord to spare his life. Such are the indignities of parenthood. Anyway, I smelled nothing. A mystery. No time for a full investigation. Kid off to school and I to work.
It was there, seated at my desk, that I realized from whence the odor emanated. From me. Or, more specifically, from my jeans. I texted my wife: “My jeans must have sat in the washing machine after they’d been clean. Am I right? My pants today stink like feet. I’m not quite sure what to do about this.” She replied: “I worried about those clothes stinking. Only solution is to rewash them. And maybe come home to change before your event.”
This is no good. As the jeans have warmed to my body temperature, they have ripened, like a fine cheese. I have no time to return home to change pants. So here I sit, perplexed, smelling like an unpasteurized Camembert.
Surely someone has a life hack for this problem. Can boxer briefs be considered “cocktail attire”?
