March 5, 1998

What a month it has been. Jesus Christ appeared on the bus one morning, getting on at the hospital, speaking to us even before the bus doors opened and continually once he was on board. He is holding up remarkably well, appearing in this incarnation as a 60-ish male with short gray/white hair, wearing a blue nylon jacket, blue jeans, sneakers, glasses, carrying a blue gym bag. As he passed down the aisle, he gave us all a blessing and informed us that he was our personal redeemer. He took a seat in the back of the bus and spoke all the way downtown. Personally, I was hoping for a nicer voice and better projection; it’s a miracle anyone heard a word of the Sermon on the Mount if it was delivered in this low, cold, steely monotone. I wanted to ask about healing, but I was too shy, and thus disembarked not much better off than when I had boarded the bus.

On a different note entirely, I have stumbled up to a new level of hipness and sexual attractiveness because I do not like to shop, and I do not like my jeans to shrink, so they can’t go in the dryer, so when they’re washed and I come home at the end of the day, I have no pants to wear. Thus, I needed a second pair of jeans, and they have to be Levi’s or I won’t wear them, but you can’t get those out of a catalog, so I had to go to a store. Abbie came with me because she is mall-compliant, but she said, “You’re not going to try them on; that takes forever.” And I assured her that I wouldn’t because I wanted to make a quick getaway. Now, I should have picked up a pair of 505’s, but it had been years since I bought the last pair, and for some reason, probably advertising, I remembered the number as 501. I went to the 501 area, found the right waist and inseam measurements and bolted to the register.

Once at home, however, I discovered that I had purchased button-fly jeans, no zipper, for four steel buttons. The classics. But, just as I don’t like to shop, I certainly don’t like to exchange. I’d rather eat toads. So I quickly rationalized the purchase. On Monday, I put my zipper jeans in the wash, and upon coming home from work, I confidently passed up the wet pair on the drying rack and pulled on my new (dry) pair.

To say my first attempts at fly buttoning were clumsy would be to put a charitable gloss on the spectacle, but within a minute or so, I had them on, and hey, I could feel the power surge of new sensuality immediately. I went downstairs and in the kitchen Laurie told me right out they made me more attractive. Abbie said that now I was really hip. I found myself swaggering, until I had to go to the bathroom, at which time I learned that there’s also a trick to unbuttoning the buttons, and I didn’t know it yet. I thought of myself as Harry Houdini, but that made me think of that water tank escape, and it was counter-productive. It’s lucky I caught on soon after that, or both pairs of jeans would have been wet, and I’d have been right back to square one. Suffice it to say that I have now become casually adept at getting in and out of my own pants, and I look forward to a new era of glowing hipness and being the magnetic object of lustful gazes.