Have You Seen My Pants?

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.

Sacked

Last night I went to a meditation class. I've often thought it might help relieve stress and be relaxing. I've got a fair bit of time on my hands. I haven't told anyone about it except my girlfriend. My friends would think I'm nuts. Not because they don't like meditation necessarily but because they wouldn't recognize lack of relaxation as a problem I currently have. As I mentioned before, I've got a fair bit of time on my hands.

I got laid off last year on April 1st. I don't like to say it, "laid off," that is. Not because I'm ashamed of having lost my job but because I'm not sure if I was laid off or just fired. So every time I say I got "laid off" I get this twinge of guilt like maybe I'm lying. But my Dad didn't like to hear me keep saying I got fired. He said it made it sound like I embezzled or something. I didn't like seeing my dad distressed and "sacked" sounded too British, so I went with "laid off". Plus it sounds sort of industrial, which is cool.

Whatever it was, my boss came into my office and gave me a misty-eyed speech about how things weren't working out and that it wasn't all my fault and it wasn't all theirs … blah, blah, blah, and that he really wanted to work with me and find a place that would be good for me and where I would thrive etc.. He said that this wasn't the end of our relationship but the start of a new process … It was all very heartfelt and touching. That was the last time I ever spoke to him. Don't get me wrong, its not like I got up and walked out holding my head high and never looked back and that's why I never saw him again. I hung around for nearly a month wringing out every last miserable cent that I could from that firm. He just never came back to my side of the building. A colleague got the same speech about 25 minutes after I did. We went out and got bombed that night.

I didn't tell my girlfriend right away. First it was because I was bombed. Then she had to go to the emergency room because of a minor but painful kidney infection. I drove her there and sat beside her bed while they waited for tests to come back. We watched TV on the lousy hospital system and I played with medical gadgets in the room. Once we knew it wasn't really serious it was kind of fun. It felt dramatic somehow but not dangerous. We watched some funny shit that I don't remember on Conan O'Brien. She said she was sorry to keep me up so late and that she could take a cab home and that I should go home and get some sleep since I had to work in the morning. I told her not to worry about it, that I had worked plenty of days with much less sleep and that maybe I'd just go in late. I mean what were they going to do fire me? Yeah, she agreed, they wouldn't fire me for having to take her to the hospital in the middle of the night. They were assholes but they at least liked to put on a good show, and that would not be a good show. So, anyway, I didn't tell her that night. I mean Christ I couldn't tell her I lost my job when she was lying in the hospital could I?

The next morning I was going to seriously sleep in. What the hell were they going to do fire me again? The only problem was I remembered there was a meeting at 8:30. An email had gone around the previous afternoon and it said that it was mandatory that all associates attend. From the tone of the message it sounded like some heavy shit was about to go down. I read the message just after I got fired. It made me wonder if I was the heavy shit that was going down. Don't get me wrong I'd been late to many meetings and even missed a few, and I knew they couldn't fire me because they already had. But for some reason, since they had already fired me, it seemed doubly important that I show up and be on time. Maybe I just wanted to show them that I could be on time. Also, I was curious. I wanted to see if they were going to talk about me at the meeting. Not that they would if I was there, so the best that I could hope for if I showed up was that they wouldn't really have much to talk about at all.

I got a couple of hours of sleep and got up and drove into work. Driving in violated my first new rule — that of not driving in anymore but instead taking the bus, because it no longer mattered how late I was to work and I needed to save money. But, like I said above, I needed to be there on time. So Abibi the parking man got twelve last bucks out of me. That's OK though I liked that guy and when he let me get the "early bird special" even when I was late I hope he was pocketing the cash. The meeting ended up being a general ass chewing of the associates by the managing partner. Then he left and it was a general ass chewing of the junior associates by the senior ones.

After some complete bullshit about how some of us needed to show some dedication by canceling vacations and working for the team, one of the senior associates who seemed to be grooming himself for managing partner looked around the table and asked if anyone "wanted to call bullshit" on what he'd just said. I so wanted to call bullshit that I ached, but somehow I didn't feel like I really had the right since I'd been fired the day before. One of my friends raised his hand and said he would like to. I felt like kicking him under the table and telling him not to do it, knowing that the long knives were out, but it was too late. He called bullshit because the entire office was so slow for work and had been for the last year and a half that it was ridiculous that anyone should even think about canceling a vacation, because if anyone was out and work did actually come up there were at least six other people who could pick up the slack instead of surfing the Internet full time. He was right and after the meeting I gave him one of those fist high fives that the rappers give each other.

Once the bullshit meeting was over, the bullshit senior associate came into my office and said that I showed "a lot of class" by showing up at that meeting given what I'd been told the day before (apparently he knew I'd been sacked). He said it said a lot about my character and that I was going to be fine without this job. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I'd showed up pretty much out of curiosity, habit and not really knowing what else to do. He said that he wanted to sit down with me and have a good serious talk about my future and other things soon but that he was really busy that day. I said no worries, that I was sort of tired because I'd had a rough night. He gave me a knowing sort of look and said that he understood. I realized that he thought I'd had a rough night because I was broken up about losing my job. He didn't understand. I was just short of ecstatic about losing my job. No, I said, it wasn't that, it was that I'd had to get up and take my girlfriend to the hospital. He looked concerned. Was she OK, he asked? I really really wanted to tell him she was dying and had been for a while now. That would certainly make them feel like a bunch of assholes. I just couldn't do it. I told him instead, that yes she was fine that she just had a kidney infection. I went from unleashing an unstoppable tide of sympathy and guilt to him thinking I was just having a lot of sex. I guess either way I tricked him. He said we would talk soon, that he considered me part of his family and that he and the others in the office would not forget me. I never saw him again either.

After that I went down to the parking garage and took a nap in my car. I'm not sure how much class that showed. When I got back upstairs there were two voicemails and two emails from a particularly annoying associate. I had been working for her over the past month and a half on a big project that had once kept me awake and in the office for three straight days and nights. Everything she ever gave me was a nightmare and on a ridiculously tight timeline. Anyway, she wanted four different things done and they all had to be done before lunch or the sun would explode or some shit. Luckily she always ended her emails with some snide remark about how if I didn't think I could handle it to let her know right away and that she would find someone who could. Her voicemails sounded frantic but that was normal. I emailed her back saying that I really couldn't help her because I was swamped with some other really urgent stuff that had just come up and that she'd be better to find someone who could deliver what she needed when she needed it. I then headed down the street to a café in Pioneer Square and picked up a newspaper. It was a nice spring day and I sat outside among a bunch of other paper-reading, coffee-sipping, nothing to do at 10:30 in the morning types. The sun felt great and my life seemed full of possibility.

I didn't tell my girlfriend that night either. In fact I didn't tell anyone. I was just too tired to go over the whole thing. Plus, I knew that once I told people it would cease to be entirely my problem. Hell, my problem wasn't that bad at all. It was only April and I'd already made much more than I had ever made in a year at any previous job. I could just get up and leave like I was heading to work every day and go do anything I wanted. No one needed to know but me. It could work.

This Is a Test

Dave set this up for me to somehow steal my identity and drain my bank account