The Trousers

It is exactly two weeks before an election that might be the most significant in my lifetime. I can so easily conjure the shock I felt on election night four years ago, and the thought of an encore has been enough to make my bank account spring a leak with all the donations to candidates and organizations and probably a few con artists who know exactly how to make my heart bleed. I’ve texted, emailed, and called people I know in battleground states. I’ve studied my ballot. I plan on voting early, standing in line for hours in a mask and face shield if I have to.

Times like these call for truly arcane internet rabbit holes to take the edge off. Because really, I’m just waiting. History shows us the paradox of crowds—that what one person does both matters enormously and is also insufficient—and how easy it is to get swept away in the tide while attempting to swim against it. I check the news and polls every morning, and I keep paid work afloat with the numbness of habit, but most hours slide by with an eerie softness as I keep an eye and ear turned outward for the pin drop of actual information. The background music to all this is my daughter’s teacher asking the students to mute themselves, again and again, and it only stops when “class” is over and my attention has to make its mid-day half-turn toward the endless convoy of requests that is parenthood.

Under such circumstances, I need the kind of stimulant that I can step in and out of: the kind that approximates both pleasure and excitement but can be detached and reattached easily as I attend to the tasks that make my life go but also generate unrelenting boredom and anxiety. I keep reading these articles that tell me to embrace those emotions, to “sit with” them, but I can’t. I can’t! I refuse. I am the opposite of a life coach. I am the devil on your shoulder telling you to spend the next hour looking for the Sprezzatura-est of Sprezzatura Corduroy Trousers on the Internet.

I should say that I know exactly which corduroy trousers you need. You need these MHL ones, which are both egregiously expensive and out of stock.

So they are not an option, and you instead need to find an approximation that you can either dismiss out of hand for not being The Trousers or purchase and never wear because you detest them for not being The Trousers. And you need to find them now.

Step 1: Study The Trousers carefully. Make note of color, fabric, rise, inseam, and details.

Step 2: Enter multiple iterations of search terms (“pleated wide wale corduroy,” “pleated corduroy trousers high rise,” etc.) in various locations, with the most success on Etsy and eBay.

Step 3: Return to Margaret Howell website and click the “Notify me when back in stock” tab, and notice casually that the “Title” drop-down includes not only “Mr.” and “Ms.” but also “Lord,” “Lady,” and “Dame.”

Step 4: Return to Etsy, Lord Hare, because while your collapsing manor house may reflect your good breeding, your bank account is super proletarian.

There are some remarkable approximations of The Trousers out there. I’ve got 14 tabs open and am working through them methodically. One pair is pretty much on the money, but it’s located in Latvia, so returns won’t be easy. LL Bean made something similar in the 1990s. Only size 27? Hmm. Then there is, of course, Garmentory, which is its own rabbit hole and almost has me convinced that I don’t need my trousers to have pleats. Almost, but not quite. And there is also the perpetual problem of inseam length, which is a topic worth several posts on its own merits but for now I’ll just ask, again, why companies keep insisting that I want cropped pants when I obviously want pants that cover my ankles. And finally: Do I want men’s trousers? Am I that guy? Or do I just need to accept that my inner gentleman requires a garment with a more ladylike waist-hip ratio, as well as a more Cary Grant-ish rise than men tend to wear these days?

Well, that took an hour, and I’ve got nothing in my cart to show for it. Alas, Lord Hare! Back to lesson preps.