Despite how tight these pants were they didn't give me cameltoe, which is the unending agony of non-neutered men who need to dress like rockstars once a week.  The pants I stole from my first video shoot were so flattering (I actually had an ass!) and the calves were just slightly flared.  However, they were so flattering that the waitresses at work would rub my cameltoe for good luck.  It looked like I was hiding a meatball sub in my pocket.

I have always hated buying pants.  First of all since I'm tall most pants my waist-size are for sixth graders.  Then if you get pants long enough they have sag-ass or if they fit perfectly you can't get your cellphone in them.

So one day I was late for work and I realized that I had on the wrong pants.  I zipped into American Apparel and parted with $75 for plain-ass black pants.  But I rather did like wearing them.

I dealt with the button blowing off and even sewed it back in place (very proud of myself because it was the kind they have on Levis) but then something weird happened all over the pants.  They started splitting.  I thiiiiink it was because we had some kind of bonfire and the polyester half melted.  I took them back to the store and said, "I like these pants, but the button blew off and they're ripping in this weird way.  Can you repair them?"

"We don't do repairs."

"Oh."

"When did you get these?"

"Last week." Month?  Shit.  I was still dating Leigh when I bought them...

"Do you have a receipt?"

They're American Apparel.  Where the fuck else could I have bought them?  The Gap?

I pretended that I paid with a credit card, but that just meant she looked me up in the computer system and couldn't find me.  "Either way, I can't take them back with this much damage."

Today I was leaving the East Village and I had the pants on me anyway.  So I thought of what to do.  I yanked the fucking button off the fly.  I went down to the American Apparel in the LES.  "Hey I just got these jeans and the button blew off right away."

"Oh, well we can..." she looked at the rips in the pocket.  The rips in the calves (??), the rips below the ass pockets.  "When did you get these?"

"Last week."

"Do you have a receipt?"

"I paid cash.  I like the pants but I just need a repair."

"We don't do repairs."

"You don't?  Well, I don't need a return.  I like them, but the button blew."  She was about to falter like the other woman did.  But then we hit a loophole.  American Apparel does store-credit for non-sale items.  At The Gap (where I worked one spring in high school) this would mean that the $60 pants you got for Christmas could be returned for the criminally-low sale-price of $5 if you didn't have your receipt with you when you went to exchange them a few weeks later.  However, if you don't have the receipt but you just want store credit they're supposed to fall all over themselves to help you if those pants are resalable.

The thinking behind this goes back to Seers/Roebuck.  Dumb housewives are supposed to make stupid household decisions while their husbands are at work knowing that--if they get in trouble or decide later that the curtains don't fit--they can return them even without a receipt for store credit.  More shit from Seers!  (I decided after my undergraduate work that I would never place "modifiers" in "air quotes" so long as "modern society" made it possible for "otherwise smart people" to be "ignorant morons."  I also promised I would never apologize for describing dumb people of any race, gender or sexual orientation.  Just as I would never apologize for describing a tree as green.  It's not the tree's fault anyway, right?

So I'm at the store and technically they owe me a store credit for the same pair of pants that they have on the rack.  The biggest anti-capitalist move of American Apparel is that they just sell the same shit every season.  Gap (AKA the same store with different advertising firms) keeps repackaging the same shit.

This means that you can walk into the Gap, pull five sweaters off the front table and take them to the register and ask for a refund.  At American Apparel you can just wear the same black polo for five years (I bought my first in Chicago back before there were AA retailers and you had to get them in boutiques) and get a new one for free everytime you lose a button.

"I actually bought it at the store down the street.  In cash."

"Oh," the manager said as she leafed through my pants.  "And did you do this yourself?"  She held up the ripped pants.  I still have no idea how this happened?  Maybe I dropped a lit cigarette on the polyester?  Maybe I bumped up against a hot grill?

"I ripped them that way on purpose."  Here I am.  I'm at the American Goddam Apparel at the top of the Lower East Side.  I'm wearing platinum headphones and carrying my original 12" of The Supremes "Where Did Our Love Go?" that Pete got me as a housewarming gift in 2004.  My backpack holds a synthesizer. 

"Oh?  Okay, well we don't do repairs."

"Oh."

"So you'll have to do an exchange."

I walked out ten minutes later with a better pair of pants.  I put on my headphones and I listened to "Where Did Our Love Go?" on my iPod.  Who has time for vinyl anyway?