Unemployed and Well Nourished
There are certain charms to being unemployed. Early morning I sit with a thoughtful cup of coffee and build a desire for $495 Evan Kinori pants with each slow sip. I whip out the tape measure that I recently purchased to bring my dream of owning expensive single-pleated cotton twill pants to fruition. It's hard to take pant measurements when you're single I realize. What am I going to do? Ask one of my straight friends to take my inseam measurements? So I putter about a bit, reply to Hinge matches and wonder if I should still keep talking to the girl I stopped dating 4 months ago. Luckily my former colleague asks me if I’d like to go climbing before I spend the whole day back and forth between pants and ruminating.
I drive to pick him up. As I approach, I see that he's waiting pensively with his hands hooked between the straps of his backpack and his shoulder. There's tension on his face. We both quit our jobs at the same time in rather unpleasant circumstances.
"what's up man?" I ask as he climbs into the car.
"you know, I was just thinking I'm a 35-year-old man wearing a backpack waiting for someone to pick me up and go to the adult park (climbing gym) at 12pm," he replies, then pauses, looks at me, and says "what a bunch of fucking losers."
I, for one, am glad I didn't ask this guy to help with pant measurements. I tell him I've been watching the Disney show Loki "It’s about a loser who gets trapped in a time warp type deal which feels appropriate."
I note the number of people at the climbing gym at noon, which seems like a relatively good measure of the tech unemployment rate. Afterward, I head to the J.Crew store in the Domain to buy pants. The Evan Kinori ones will have to wait until I either have a job or a girlfriend, I tell myself. I'm trying on a few pairs in the dressing room when I overhear a woman in the neighboring stall.
"I like how those look on you. What do you think?"
"They're a bit too relaxed at the thighs, don't you think" comes the reply from a man.
They exchange a few more pleasant notes on the fit of his pants as I stare at the loser in the mirror, envious of another man living his dream. Then after what feels like an unusually long pause, the woman says, "you know I love our friendship, don't you? so many guys would make such a fuss about this," and she laughs.
The guy chuckles with no words added, and in that chuckle, I can feel him waiting for the sweet release of death to end his unnameable pain. I walk out with a decent pair of pants, glad that I'm not that guy.