<the clown pants of doom>

I am wearing the clown pants of doom. The gargantuan clown pants of doom. I am wearing the discarded sweatpants of a much larger man, with my girlfriend's last name stencilled across the ass in Machine Bold.

My Amazonian girlfriend's "little" brother is 6'5", 250 lbs. of solid muscle, and these are the sweatpants he wore during his year of police academy training.

When he became an officer, he no longer needed the grey cotton sweatpants with his last name stencilled across the ass, nor the grey cotton top with his last name stencilled across the chest; and in a gesture at once loving and baffling he donated these castoffs to his sister, my girlfriend, who gave them to me.

I'm a small man and I swim in them.

The garantuan clown pants speak. The gargantuan clown pants say, "This man is not feeling well. This man is staying home today."

The gargantuan clown pants say, "With Bill Gates's cash in one hand and the keys to a Lexus in the other, this man could not get a date in a Southeast Asian whorehouse. Not in pants like these."

I am wearing the pants while I edit the galleys of my book. Two hundred pages down, two hundred and fifty to go. I look like an extra from a John Cassavettes film. But I don't care. I am happy in my work. I am happy in my pants.

I am wearing the pants of a much larger man.

They suit me.

20 April 2001