Trying on jeans

Naturally - Juliette and I were tooling around the mall after her violin class and I started trying on jeans because we went on a healthy diet and my old pants are falling off. My old pants were falling apart anyway. I bought two pairs second hand at Sandy's and the third pair I found on the shoulder of Pennywell Road. It was time to treat myself. So we went to American Eagle because I like the colours in there.

The colours are like real raspberries and mustard seeds and the insides of kiwi peels. There were elephant pants and skinny flares and wide legs and drainpipes. I told the clerk I was confused. She said I could go ahead and wear whatever kind I liked best. It felt comforting to have her permission. The jeans were all low-rise. Somehow, no matter how small a size I tried on, the top flopped and swam.

"If I get this size 10 on," I told Juliette, "I'm going to have to enlist the hallelujah chorus."

"Did you get them on?"

"Yes."

"Are you going to buy them?"

"I'm not sure I want them."

"You don't want the hallelujah chorus?"

"Are these jeans all made for pregnant people?"

"I don't know."

"Because the top is still too big."

"Maybe we should try another store."

Joel Hynes

In the next store the mirrors hung outside the change rooms. I hate that. A woman was talking in Spanish to her 11-year-old, who was trying on skinny flares. My own 11-year-old sat on the carpet and read the instructions on the Nintendo DS game she had just paid for with four sandwich bags full of dimes and pennies.

When I slunk out in my flares the Spanish mother assessed and found me lacking. I found myself lacking. I found myself thinking the jeans would be all right if I altered and decorated them. "Why is it," I asked Juliette, "we are back in the '70s all the time? The '70s were ludicrous. I hated them then and I don't want to relive them now."

"Try on the skinny legs."

"If I go out in these," I said, "especially if I attend a writers' event in them, people might think I am trying to look like Joel Hynes."

"But do you like them?" asked Juliette.

"And I might unconsciously start trying to write like him. Maybe I should try that store over there that has posters of older women in the window. I think, to wear the jeans in this store, you have to be either Joel Hynes or a person who listens to Nelly Furtado."

"I wish I hadn't left my DS in the car."

"One more pair."

Sex

The older woman store had one little rack of jeans. It was a circular rack. The store was deserted. We had to pass large blouses with red necklaces sewn to the collars. The mirror was inside the change room. The jeans had a waistband. I heard the clerk reassure a phantom customer, "I know what you mean. It's a challenge, that's for sure."

When I emerged she said, "Did you find something to suit?"

"I'm having a hard time," I said, "finding jeans I like in the mall." She nodded sympathetically. I said, "Either they make me look like I want to have sex with everyone I pass, or they make me look like I am never going to have sex again. It would be nice if there was something in between."

As I departed, she called behind me, "I know what you mean, It's a challenge, that's for sure." And that's what she's doing now, that clerk. Saying that very thing again, even as you read this, and the rack in the older woman store is circular because this re-enactment had no beginning and it has no end.

Kathleen Winter is a freelance writer who lives on Butterpot Mountain. Her book of fiction, "boYs," was published in 2007 by Biblioasis.